The Manchurian Candidate
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 movie with a far-fetched plot [1] about a Communist conspiracy to drug and hypnotize an American POW into assassinating a candidate for President of the United States. Frank Sinatra portrayed an army officer who uncovers the plot.
A key premise of the movie was that it was possible to brainwash an unsuspecting prisoner into committing murder:
- ... a tall, bald Communist Chinese/Korean doctor-spylord Yen Lo ... introduces the captured, passive and impotent men, all drugged and hypnotized [for] a public demonstration of the powers of hypnotism [1]
The movie featured a riveting performance by Angela Lansbury[2] as the brilliant, controlling mother who manipulated both her husband and her son to realize her dream of a communist takeover of the United States. Her husband was a parody of Senator Joseph McCarthy, who brandishes a list of 57 card carrying communists.
The movie was remade with Denzel Washington in the Sinatra role and Liev Schreiber as a the assassin controlled by a microchip brain implant. The bad guys in the remake are not communists, but simply people with a political agenda.[3]
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Although the film initially failed at the box-office and its plot was considered far-fetched, it anticipated the American obsession with conspiracy theories in the early to mid-60s." [1] Actually, the movie only "failed at the box-office" because it was withdrawn shortly after its release due to an unexpected event that had some similarities with the movie: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by someone who had traveled to communist countries.
- ↑ IMDB website
- ↑ 'Rotten Tomatoes' Plot Summary