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I remember seeing The Manchurian Candidate as a teen back in the day in theaters. Good thing I saw it too because after the Kennedy assassination it was withdrawn from circulation. I then got to see it again in the theater when it got a re-premiere back in the late eighties.For those who believe that conspiracies control the world, this film is for you. The ultra-right has a game plan to take over, the international communist conspiracy is given life and credence in this film and there's one character here who's got a conspiracy to beat all.When The Manchurian Candidate first came out the theater owners were instructed not to seat anyone if they came after the first 10 minutes of the film. If you buy the video or DVD, fast forward it about 10 minutes and try to pick it up from there. It won't make any sense, I guarantee.A platoon led by Captain Frank Sinatra and Sergeant Lawrence Harvey is betrayed by their Korean guide, Henry Silva, and captured by Chinese Communists. They are flown to Manchuria where Russian scientists from the Pavlov Institute experiment with revolutionary techniques in the newly developed science of brainwashing. Minus two men who are killed, the patrol is taken back to Korea where all of them have been implanted with a story about how Harvey saved the rest of them and led them back through enemy lines to UN lines.As for Harvey, he's the one who actually killed the two soldiers and he is now a brainwashed assassin ready to do the bidding of his handlers. Harvey is the son of Angela Lansbury who is in a role that's ten galaxies from Jessica Fletcher. She's the rich wife who is the brains and money behind her second husband James Gregory. Gregory is a Joe McCarthy like Senator who is forever yelling about Communists in every nook and cranny. He's a buffoon, but he's actually not aware of how right and how organized they are in The Manchurian Candidate.Gregory and director John Frankenheimer caught one aspect of McCarthy's persona in his role. McCarthy never took any of this seriously. There are many stories about him performing for the TV cameras and the press and when they were away offering to buy a round of drinks for the same person he might have been denouncing as a traitor minutes earlier. The difference between McCarthy in real life and Gregory in this film is that McCarthy had no manager and no real ambitions other than to retain his Senate seat. Gregory if anything is managed.Frank Sinatra in having The Manchurian Candidate withdrawn robbed fans of one of his best screen performances. Only in one scene when he refers to someone as a 'cat' does he slip into the hipster Rat Pack image. Sinatra is the one who starts to unravel everyone's plans because of the recurring dreams he's having about what really happened in Korea.On the way to New York to question Harvey about it, Sinatra meets Janet Leigh who really doesn't have a role crucial to the story, but functions as an Alfred Hitchcock type cool blond. With what little she has to do, Leigh does well.Lawrence Harvey is the key here. He's really a weakling and that's the key to the story. He was carefully chosen to be the manipulated assassin because of his inability to break from Mom's iron grip. Of course there have been few screen moms as evil as Angela Lansbury. She and Gregory really own this film and Angela blows everyone else off the screen when she's on. For her mesmerizing performance I recommend The Manchurian Candidate.
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