Buck’s thread below led to an exchange between Bowser and myself in which the term “Manchurian Candidate” came up.

The Manchurian Candidate was a 1959 novel by Richard Condon which was turned into a gripping political thriller film by John Frankenheimer. It starred Lawrence Harvey, Frank Sinatra, and Angela Lansbury. Lansbury’s performance alone makes this film worth watching. This is no smarmy Jessica Fletcher playing detective on the they-stole-my-baby network, she is a diabolocal villainess of the first magnitude. Her performance was nominated for an oscar, and should have gotten it.

She is magnificent!

The film was remade by Johnathan Demme in 2004, starring Liev Schreiber, Denzel Washingtom, and Meryl Steep. It was updated, with the stock evil commie villains being replaced by stock evil corporate ones. But I am referring here to the Frankenheimer version. It is considered a classic. Demme’s will soon be forgotten.

The story is about an American patrol captured by communist forces during the Korean war, and brainwashed by Russian psychologists. One of them (Harvey) is turned into an unwitting sleeper agent, controlled by his mother (Soviet agent Lansbury). His mission is to assassinate a Presidential candidate so an undercover communist agent can take his place. The plot is uncovered by one of the patrol members, (Sinatra) now an intelligence officer in the Army.

Its a great film, with plots within plots, and a scenario which is certainly plausible (Communist conspirators camouflage themselves as Right Wing superpatriots in order to take over the government). I saw the film in high school, and haven’t trusted right wing superpatriots ever since.

Highly recommended. A great companion piece to Frankenheimer’s “Seven Days in May”, about an attempted right wing coup d’etat. They should be watched back-to-back.