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Plot:
A US Army hero returns to New York from Korea, but has been mysteriously programmed by Communists to assassinate a presidential nominee, but when his Army buddy becomes suspicious of the goings on, he...( read more 
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Recent Reviews
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MCT:October 3, 2008Mr. Sinatra was in this? Huh! Anyway, this film had many strengths, few weaknesses. Unlike countless others, I'd recommend both this one and the more recent remake.
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MCT:September 17, 2008Without a doubt one of the best drama/spy conspiracy theory type movie I have ever seen. The performance of everyone involved was simply outstanding and some parts very haunting.
The fact that the movie came out in 1962 is also one big irony. A decade where many assassinated individuals were and still are treated as a conspiracy. Especially the RFK assassination where some people believe that Sirhan was a Manchurian Candidate victim that simply followed order than forgot what he had done. This movie is way ahead of its time and although it's not perfect it still stands out and will hit you hard.
The ending kept me on the edge of my seat and the build up is fantastic. The score is also perfect and so was the directing of the movie.
Extra credit to the brilliant performance of Angela Lansbury, one of the most haunting and psychological villains I have seen on the screen. Makes you want to keep a close eye on every first lady or, second lady? That is about to enter the white house. -
MCT:August 25, 2008
Well, this movie is considered a classic and rightfully so. Everybody does a terrific job and as the movie moves along it only gets better and better.
Oh, and Angela Lansbury is fantastic in this. It's a first class thriller. -
MCT:August 23, 2008
One of those suspense films where each scene is superior to the one preceding it. That Sinatra sure is a fuck up, though. "Well, I could take him in and deprogram him... but surely LOVE will prevail." You idiot.
Upon the second watching, I was feeling that I had overrated this film throughout the first 80 or so minutes when the film is somewhat slow. But when the plot in this one comes together, then I realized that this wasn't simply a good film, but legitimately a great one. And Angela Lansbury (who I'm sure must have looked 60 years old when she was a teenager) gives one of "those" performances. You've seen them, and you know what I'm talking about. She gives one of the most powerful performances I've ever seen, playing one of the best antagonists I've ever seen, exuding screen presence like nobody's business. It was simply an acting clinic, and one of the all-time great performances I have ever witnessed. So at the 80 minute mark, I was thinking that maybe this wasn't a 5-star movie. At the 2 hour mark, I realized how very wrong I was. This is one of the best suspense movies ever made. -
MCT:August 21, 2008
As highly regarded as this film is, I gotta say, it's pretty overrated. Either that, or I just don't know what I'm talking about. I wanted to really like this more than I did. It's a tad overlong, unevenly paced, and a bit boring at times (poor execution here and there). Maybe I'm nitpicking, maybe I'm not, but I really had a hard time getting into this. The performances are really good though (but I think Janet's Leigh's role was pointless). I really liked the concept and story, but as I said, it was hard for me to find really engaging. I will say this though, Angela Lansbury was a real surprise. She's a great villain, and the incest angle adds some real balls.
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MCT:June 1, 2008
What a great thriller! The Manchurian Candidate does not disappoint. The cast is marvelous, the plot is great, and so is the suspense. There really isn't much else to say except it's a great film.
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MCT:May 10, 2008
Brainwashing and the red scare combine for this mind twisting and gripping thriller about Raymond Shaw and his shady memories. Frank Sinatra gives his best film performance and Laurence Harvey is well cast as Raymond. Angela Lansbury steals the show though with her evil personified performance as Raymond?s power hungry mother. It is worth a watch for the card sequence alone.
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MCT:May 3, 2008THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
directed by John Frankenheimer
starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Angela LansburyThe plot of this film is quite confusing but its definately clever so I wont bother trying to explain it, you might have seen the Denzel Washington version of it. You get to understand everything in the end though. Its also very interesting cause it shows American paranoia during the cold war with communism and such things.Politics is obivously a major theme here as the film tries to carry a message about the Russians not necessarly being always the bad guys cause in the end its an American who ordered all the killings involved in the film.
Frank Sinatra gives a pretty laid back performance so he is fairly good. Laurence Harvey is a bit too robotic most of the times, trying to hide any emotions making it laughable when he does seem to feel something. Janet Leigh is beautiful but she has an almost useless part and almost no screen time. Angela Landsbury in the other hand is delightfully evil and every minutes of her performance are enjoyable.
The Manchurian Candidate is obviously better than its remake, its shot in a classical way with once in a while a surprisingly clever shot or a cool camera move. Its worth seeing since it is a classic. Good film.
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MCT:April 27, 2008
So much better than the remake. Why don't studios, when they get the urge to remake a perfectly good movie just hype up the original and have a re-release at the theaters? It would be a lot cheaper than remaking the whole thing.
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MCT:April 27, 2008contrived plot...the best happens in the first 10 and last 10 minutes. Attempts to become Hitchcock-esque near the end, but falls short. Too many obvious plot holes to be of too much enjoyment
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MCT:April 13, 2008There are so many things to love about this movie. It is well written, acted, directed, and shot. If you thought Angela Lansbury was only a tv mystery star, check out her mesmerizing performance in this film. Considering when it was made, it's no wonder it was pulled from distribution for as long as it was. It is still a very edgy subject.
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MCT:April 8, 2008
The foremost thing I have to say about The Manchurian Candidate is that it is, at times, a surreal film. This is meant, however, on multiple levels. While there are parts of the film (the dream sequences, particularly) where cross-cutting and juxtaposition create an uneven and jarring reality completely intentionally, it is the moments of lucidity that I often found most bizarre (particularly the ones involving Janet Leigh). Apart from this, however, the Manchurian Candidate is an intriguing, if overly long, political thriller that, while it takes far too much time to explain its premise and is often overly blunt in its portrayals, still manages to involve the viewer right up until the emotional and thought-provoking ending. In the film, Frank Sinatra is Korean vet Ben Marco, who is having nightmares about the days he and his platoon went M.I.A. While he claims to remember that a fellow soldier, Raymond Shaw, fought off an enemy troops and saved the surviving men, his dreams are telling him that they were captured and brainwashed, and that Shaw had been programmed to kill two of his own men. Desperate to discover what happened to him and his platoon, Ben tries to get in contact with Shaw to see what may have been done to him... and to try to discover who is behind the whole cover-up. Frank Sinatra as Ben Marco doesn't give a bad performance, exactly... it just wasn't all that great. We see Marco as a military man, whose whole life revolves around being in the service, but beyond that nugget of information, we've got nothin' on him (well, he is a smoker, but then again, wasn't everybody in the sixties?). Sinatra makes the role believable- as in, you don't say "Wow, that guy is a lousy actor" during the film- but he never really pops as a character of his own; he's just... a guy. We get exactly the opposite problem with Raymond Shaw, as played by Lawrence Harvey: at first, Shaw comes off as a stereotypical snobby asshole, complete with a British accent that is never explained, and for the first half of the film, it is hard to feel much but disdain for the guy. However, halfway through the movie, the character actually starts to develop, as we see that Raymond isn't a jerk entirely by choice- he's been forced to give up everything he loves by his controlling mother, and it's his lack of freedom that turned him into the man he is. As the film goes on, his character garners more and more pathos, until, at the climax of the film, we truly feel deeply for Raymond and the tragedy that his life was forced into becoming. Though Raymond is molded into the shape of a monster by the evil Communists (and what a mustache-twirling bunch they are), we soon see that the real monster of the story is Mrs. Iselin (played by Angela Lansbury), the wife of (and brains behind) the oafish Senator Iselin and ruthlessly domineering mother of Raymond. This woman has to be the most despicable character I've yet seen on film (at least, she was to me)- we see that through her insatiable political ambition and her manipulative force of will, she had broken down Raymond's will long before the Commies ever got their hands on him. The irony and hypocrisy of the character just makes her loathsome to my tastes, and it doesn't help that Lansbury gives a dead-on portrayal of a shark in mother's clothing. Also in this film is Janet Leigh as Eugenie Rose Chaney, a character that serves NO PURPOSE WHATSOEVER save as a sounding board for Sinatra. Literally, there is ONE SCENE in which the two meet and have a conversation, which ends with her giving him her ADDRESS and PHONE NUMBER, and then after that, she's an expositional tool, nothing more. THAT, my friends, is just sloppy writing. In fact, quite a few moments struck me as being poorly written, whether it was because the dialogue just didn't sound natural, or because there was too much of a reliance on coincidence to move the plot forward (the bartender says the EXACT WORDS that start Raymond's trance? Jocelyn Jordan just HAPPENS to wear a red queen costume to the Iselin party?), but at the same time, there are some good, solidly written moments, too- which leads me to believe that the book is much, much better, and the movie just applied some standard Hollywood conventions to shorten the narrative to feature length. The shot compositions are great, I will say, and the lighting, as well; there's a dark, shadowy tone to certain parts of the film that really jumped out at me. The editing was phenomenal, particularly during the climax, and also in the aforementioned dream sequences, which jump between hallucination and reality so quickly sometimes that it's hard to sort out which is which, while at the same time presenting a cohesive, comprehensible scene. While it has a few problems on the scripting side of things, the Manchurian Candidate is nevertheless an intricate, suspenseful thriller that gets more and more arresting as it goes on, culminating in a fantastic conclusion that will leave you thinking about it long after it's over. Sure, the Communist themes are now dated and somewhat antiquated, there's real power in its message about the loss of freedom, the manipulation of the masses, and the theft of one man's soul.
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MCT:March 15, 2008
With this film Frank Sinatra gives a pretty laid back performance so he is fairly good. Laurence Harvey is a bit too robotic most of the times, trying to hide any emotions making it laughable when he does seem to feel something. Janet Leigh is beautiful but she has an almost useless part and almost no screen time. Angela Landsbury in the other hand is delightfully evil and every minutes of her performance are enjoyable.
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MCT:March 10, 2008
Frankenheimer's masterpiece, and one of Sinatra's best acting jobs. Even after it's over and you think it makes sense, there are some questions...
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MCT:February 25, 2008
It's great and memorable. The story is ridiculous, and the script and acting, while decent, aren't exactly brilliant, which kept this out of the top tier for me.
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MCT:February 18, 2008
Mrs. Iselin: Why don't you pass the time with a game of solitaire?
A political thriller, set during the 50s involving an assassin who is trained to forget what he is doing, serving as a pawn for communists.
A group of soldiers in Korea are suddenly kidnapped by a mysterious group. Things suddenly switch gears, as this group then turns up a few days later having returned home, with one of the men Raymond Shaw, played by Lawrence Harvey, being celebrated as a war hero, being given the medal of honor.
This is all well and good, but something does not sit right with Maj. Ben Marco, played by Frank Sinatra. He keeps having a reoccurring dream involving him and his men stuck in some facility, witnessing a calm Shaw murder two of his fellow men with no remorse.
It is in fact a true dream. All of these men have been brainwashed, with Shaw serving as a political assassin, who should be suspected by no one and is triggered by a certain playing card when the time is right.
To make matters worse, Shaw's mother, played by Angela Lansbury, is a cold, calculating monster, who dictates to her senator husband exactly what is to be done in order to serve her own mysterious purposes.
Eventually Marco becomes tasked with finding out the truth of the matters, and hopefully stopping whatever it is that is going on.
Janet Leigh, looking very good, also shows up as a companion for Marco, and while the movie doesn't explicitly go into it, she too, may have an ulterior motive.
The movie was directed by John Frankenheimer, who knows a thing or two about making thrillers. This is a very well made movie that works well due to the sustained atmosphere containing both a subtle espionage aspect and an ironic sense of humor throughout.
The performers are also very game to make this work. Sinatra is a cool guy, who you don't want to see become so distressed. Lansbury is just plain evil. And Harvey, playing my favorite character in this film is tricky enough by having to go in and out of his killer trans.
The score is also somewhat haunting and fitting with the rest of the film.
This is a very good movie, one of the best political thrillers I have seen.
Dr. Yen Lo: His brain has not only been washed, as they say... It has been dry cleaned. -
MCT:February 16, 2008
Not bad, a propaganda/thriller flick that has served as the blueprint of every lazy "OH NOES, THEYRE GOING TO KILL DA PREZIDENT" shit of a movie that has come out ever since. Silly plot but with some nicely done sequences. Angela Lansbury is ruthless (yes, you read that well) in her role.
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MCT:February 5, 2008
This movie is basically the shit. It must have been a great year for film for this to have only picked up two Oscar nominations, though they were certainly deserved ones - Best Supporting Actress for the amazing Angela Lansbury and Best Editing.
The Manchurian Candidate is by far one of the most intense movies of its time period, and still an astonishingly water-tight thriller today. I knew absolutely nothing about the movie before watching it and some of the plot developments (I hesitate to call them "twists" because that just brings to mind the cheap shit that awful movies try to redeem themselves with) knocked me for a loop. How awesome was that dream sequence at the beginning? There are so many innovative plot elements woven in that you'd never have seen in an early 60s film. Frank Sinatra was bad, proving that even the pop stars of four decades past shouldn't have been in movies, but who cares? Angela Lansbury should have played all the parts. I bet she'd do it, too. Bitch is hardcore. I'm seriously in love with her Mrs. Iselin; even though her character is already fascinating enough, Lansbury adds infinite charisma to this Dragon Lady politico, creating a magnetizing presence.
This has aged remarkably; it still remains a political thriller of the highest form. I really want to see the remake now, I hear it's not bad either. -
MCT:January 6, 2008
A thriller with Frank Sinatra and Lawrence Harvey, about brainwashing of American soldiers during the Korean War. Soldiers of one unit are all having the same nightmare that may or may not be connected to their service time. Angela Landsbury is chilling as the power-hungry mother of Lawrence Harvey (in reality only 3 years older than him) who will stop at nothing to get her husband in the White House. A scary, thought-provoking view of political power. This couldn't really happen though...right?
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MCT:November 13, 2007This was on TV this past weekend, and I forgot to watch it. I'd definitely like to watch this one...
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MCT:November 7, 2007
Much better than the original, and just an all around great film. You don't have to be interested in a political thriller to enjoy this.
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MCT:October 28, 2007
One of the best taut, twisted thrillers you ever did see. Anyhow, Harvey plays a war hero of a senator and his wife(played excellently by Angela L herself)who gets caught up in a web so tight that it will have you twisted. Frank Sinatra plays the officer who tries to help. Very interesting flick.
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MCT:October 22, 2007
So. Good. I usually don't enjoy political thrillers, or singer-turned-actor vehicles, but both the plot and Sinatra are intense and engaging. Also, Angela Lansbury could kill a man just by delivering that icy stare.
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Comments
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itbegins2005posted 190 days ago -
HEINZ KETCHUP?!? The number of commies comes from Heinz ketchup?
This is so surreal... I was just involved in the Heinz commercial contest, and I saw a lot of entries- and that's EXACTLY the kind of stupid joke I would expect to have found in the competing videos.
Personal note: it is IMPOSSIBLE to make a good, enticing, funny (without being cute or idiotic) commercial for a product like ketchup. It's a f%$#ing condiment. It has no potential entertainment value whatsoever. And if I EVER hear another "ketch up!" pun in my life, I swear to GOD I'll slit my own wrists.posted 190 days ago
