Review of The Manchurian Candidate (1962) by Tony P — 04 Aug 2017

1962 U.S. political thriller that included the subject of Communism that seemed to scare America at the height of the Cold War with the Communist Soviet Union.

The story begins in the Korean War as a platoon of US soldiers is captured and taken to Manchuria in Communist China. One of the captives Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is brainwashed by his holders to be an assassin.

Shaw becomes a U.S. hero awarded the highest medal in the U.S. the Medal of Honor as he seemingly saves the lives of the platoon risking his own life in the process.

The liberated prisoners return to the U.S. after the war hiwever Shaw's dangerous brainwashing continues with lethal consequences as he murders several politicians in the process.

The film features Angela Lansbury as Shaw's power hungry mother Eleanor Iselin who enjoys a fraught relationship with her son and is now married to a Republican Senator.

Lansbury is perhaps best known as television sleuth from the 1980s Jessica Fletcher off Murder, She Wrote. A do gooder character with questionable relatives!

Well in this film Lansbury is a villain. A good one at that.

She conspires with the Communists to elevate her husband's political career and her own power.

She uses her son's brainwashing for her own purposes toward the end of the film in an assassination sequence at the Republican Presidential nomination convention at Madison square garden.

The film was released only a year prior to the assassination of John. F. Kennedy. There is a theory that another actor in the film, Frank Sinatra purchased the rights to the film shortly after release and kept the film unavailable until 1988 as guilt for Kennedy's death. Did the plight of character Raymond Shaw inspire Lee Harvey Oswald?

A film I had never considered viewing is not a film in a blockbuster sense. It is more of a satire of the 1960s climate of the United States that I had only paid lip service to.

Definitely worth a viewing.