It is such a great plot. Sadly, halfway through the movie it gets so slow and boring that it made me lose all interest.

Incredibly prescient not only for the 60's and also for the present MAGA movement. Slow at times but the suspense holds up and the ending will shock you. Chilling considering Russian operatives may have infiltrated this nation's highest office in 2025.

Excellent dark thriller

Murder She Rote

A classic political thriller, definitely is one of the best movies ever made.

Man, Angela Lansbury!

I am talking about the second movie version of the Manchurian Candidate with Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep. The acting was brilliant. The plot was very engaging though I thought it could have had a stronger ending. The reason that I only gave it three stars was because I was looking for a movie which was true to the book instead of basically a made-up version where an American Corporation and American mother were the villains instead of the Chinese and Russians. Therefore, I downgraded my rating because this movie was hardly true to the book and an alternate version wasn't what I was looking for. Disappointed me. I'll go watch the earlier version now.

Yes the 2004 version was a masterpiece with Meryl Streep, Denzel, Liev as well and a great cast. Astounding to watch wow class

An interesting premise. I found it took a while to get going. My interest was really waning half way through, especially with all the aimless dream sequences. But it finished well.

Few movie directors have devoted as much time to putting conspiracies on screen as John Frankenheimer, whose career peaked in the 1960s. Frankenheimer's films often involve an individual or small group of people desperately seeking to take on a faceless organisation that is more powerful than they are. The chances of defeating the conspiracy seem overwhelming, and any victory that is attained is hard-won and at great cost. In The Manchurian Candidate, Frankenheimer's best work, it is the armies who are the heroes, and the politicians who are to be feared. John Frankenheimer was able to take advantage of a newfound hostility and suspicion towards government that was beginning to spread through nations across the world, and which has remained to this day. The Manchurian candidate is John Iselin (James Gregory), a weak and buffoonish politician with a drink problem and a sinister, controlling wife (Angela Lansbury). The Iselins have a hatred for communism that is just as irrational as that of the McCarthyites, and probably more dangerous since their veiled intention is use the communist scare to instigate a fascist takeover of the White House. This makes Isselin's bid for power even scarier. This mixture of buffoonery and dangerous demagoguery is one that has become familiar in our own time, and the idea that an idiot like Johnny Iselin might one day become President of the United States no longer looks far-fetched. The movie opens with a pre-credits sequence set during America's intervention in North Korea. A platoon of soldiers including Major Bennet Marco (Frank Sinatra) and Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) are captured by the enemy and their bodies are taken and flown out of the country. The situation has abruptly changed after the opening credits. Now the soldiers have made it home. The men escaped with only the loss of two of their number, and the hero is Raymond Shaw. He is receiving a Medal of Honor, and two of his colleagues describe him in eerily identical words: "Raymond Shaw is the bravest, kindest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known". All this in spite of the fact that the men seemed to despise ‘Saint Raymond' in the pre-credit sequence. What is going on? Raymond Shaw is not brave, kind or warm. He is a repellent man, sarcastic and cynical, and with a slavish attitude towards authority figures. When Marco expresses his real opinion of Raymond, it is very different: "It isn't as if Raymond's hard to like. He's impossible to like! In fact, he's probably one of the most repulsive human beings I've ever known in my whole…life." By the end of the movie Marco will relent a little and feel sorry for "Poor friendless Raymond." All is not as it seems, and soon some of the men who returned from the platoon begin to have bizarre nightmares, including Marco. In Marco's dream, he and the soldiers are sitting in a Lady's Garden Club listening to demure ladies discussing flowers. The camera rotates woozily around the room. As it turns the respectable old dears are replaced by sinister men in military uniforms and dark glasses. The hotel lobby turns into a lecture theatre with pictures of dictators around the walls. In fact Raymond has become an unconscious sleeper agent for the communists. Due to being unaware of his actions, he can kill people without guilt or fear because he has no memory. While under their influence, he is a willing automaton, unemotionally polite , even to the victims he kills. The trigger for his control is the card game, solitaire. Raymond must play the game when requested, and the Queen of Hearts is the card that puts him totally under the spell of his masters. Needless to say, the Queen of Hearts is a symbol for his terrible mother. As brainwashing plays an important part in his movie, John Frankenheimer uses a number of camera effects to give the movie a disorienting feel. People speak in the foreground while other actions take place behind them. Some of the shots are taken with hand-held cameras. Other shots are tilted or filmed at odd angles. Some of the other visuals in the movie may be serendipitous accidents – the shot of Major Marco slightly out of focus when he seeks to de-programme Raymond, or the perspiration on the two leading actors' brows in the later parts of the movie. The Manchurian Candidate would seem to be targeting both sides of the political spectrum. Where then does the movie stand? Is it attacking the right wing or the left wing? The answer is both and neither. The real enemy in the story is not moderate conservatives such as Holborn Gaines or kind liberals such as Thomas Jordan. It is those on left or right who seek total control over others and perform appalling deeds in order to gain domination. In that sense, there is a meeting place between the malevolent communists and the hateful Iselins who wish to exercise the same despotic powers. The Manchurian Candidate is a superior political thriller and one of the best espionage stories ever made. It provided a barometer for growing cynicism about the establishment, and did what all the best movies should do – capture something of the hopes and fears of the age in which it was made. I wrote a longer appreciation (with spoilers) on my blog page if you would like to read more: https://themoviescreenscene.wordpress.com/2018/06/30/the-manchurian-candidate-1962/

This is my goto movie when I'm having trouble falling asleep, the half drugged acting really helps on those sleepless nights. Murder she wrote steals every scene, Heinz 57=57 communists congress members. 😀

Well acted, great story, and keeps you on your toes throughout the whole movie.

Terrifying suspense story with great directing by Frankenheimer and riveting acting by Harvey, Lansbury, and Sinatra.

Got a great and intriguing setup but loses almost all of its steam in the middle. Has a very good final sequence and ending.

A gripping Cold War tale that has you on the edge of your seat throughout. Harvey is great and Sinatra excellent, but you simply cannot miss the late Angela Lansbury's breathtaking performance. Never has such a chilling personality been portrayed in an understated and believable manner. She won the Golden Globe for it but somehow missed out on an Oscar. Were the judges blind? I think this is one of the best films ever made.

"One of your mother's traits is to call anyone she disagrees with a Communist." Times don't change. Movies from 1962 get a pass in a couple of areas: Language (the Russian, Chinese, and Korean commies wouldn't be speaking English) and fight scenes, which tend to be extra kapow-y. A platoon of American soldiers is captured during the Korean War and the soldiers are brainwashed, with one, Raymond Shaw (Lawrence Harvey), being turned into an unwitting assassin. The best moment of the film comes early with the reveal of the brainwashing operation — what the captured soldiers see as talk of a flower-enthusiast group, is actually a showcase of the brainwashing operation given to the Soviet-CCP top brass. Marco (Frank Sinatra), a brainwashed soldier himself — although not an assassin (why not make all of them assassins?) — over time, uncovers the trigger for Shaw's programming and the plot at large. Harvey is great as the calm, proper, cold man who finds love. Angela Landsbury as the diabolical Eleanor Iselin — Raymond Shaw's mother — and her stooge, Mcarthyite husband, John (James Gregory), are fantastic as the mirror-image of the ruthless commies. The movie (which was first a book) has been parodied and manipulated for the past 60 years, but there's nothing quite like the original.

One of the greatest of that era, especially (and maybe in spite of) having the big names. Amazing how relevant it remains to this day. The late Angela Lansbury is superb - what range she had!

I admit to say I slept a bit in the middle part, but I regard this is ones of the great political conspiracy thriller. Excellent climax.

I wasn't sure what to expect going into this. The track record for musicians as lead roles on screen is very checkered even today. And Laurence Harvey's character had me worried at first for how monotone his performance was at first along with a very farfetched plot at first. Boy if there was ever a reason to always give a film a chance to get better and better....this is it. A complex and riveting story unfolds fille with Cynicism, Patriotism, & Deception. The acting while nothing special the first 15 minutes skyrockets in quality (which I feel was done on purpose) and had me captivated. The choice to shoot this in black and white I questioned at first but fell in love with as time went on. The editing and pacing is perfect and really makes you appreciate the first few minutes why it is structured the way it is. The cinematography is rich and full of symbolism and making everything feel surreal. This is a Tour de France of Camera work. And I truly did not see the ending coming. Such a Powerful Movie and one I will watch again. An All Time Classic Political Thriller and one of the best movies I have ever seen.

This movie took a while to get off the ground, and the psychological mood of paranoia and confusion is kind of imparted on to the viewer with some of the storytelling techniques which are not straightforward or conventional, but once it gets going there is a pretty exciting political assassination-type thriller plot with an exciting climax.