ANOTHER CASE OF ICONODIAGNOSIS: MISATTRIBUTION OF ALIEN HAND IN DR STRANGELOVE?

Helmstaedter and others [1-3] have interpreted the inability of the main character to control his right arm in Stanley Kubrick’s satire Dr Strangelove (1964) as an alien hand syndrome. Dr. Strangelove’s right arm has a will of its own and constantly forms a Nazi salute and, at one point, attempts to strangle him with its black-gloved right hand. But, quite frankly, Kubrick modeled this arm after the prosthesis of the evil genius scientist Dr Rotwang (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1929).

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