John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate was released just 13 months before President Kennedy was assassinated. The film, which was not instantly touted as a masterpiece, was yanked from theatres out of respect for Kennedy, especially since Lee Harvey Oswald was rumored to have watched Candidate before heading off to the book depository.

When it was re-released 25 years later, Candidate was widely hailed as one of the greatest political thrillers ever, as well as being head-and-shoulders better than any of the other slop out there at the time (1987 was the year Mannequin, Dirty Dancing, and Throw Momma From the Train were up for Oscars… and <shudder> the year Cher won). The American Film Institute recently placed the picture at 67 on its list of the Top 100 Greatest American Movies.

It’s easy to understand why filmgoers didn’t immediately embrace Candidate, which was one of the first films to take on McCarthyism. The US was hip-deep in the Cold War, so viewers were probably a little shaken by a film that had the audacity to be this cynical and border this close to political satire. Since Oscar loves controversy, Candidate was, for the most part, ignored at the 1963 ceremony, which was hosted by the film’s star, Frank Sinatra. Editor Ferris Webster and co-star Angela Lansbury netted the film’s only two nominations, and neither won. Of course, the competition was stiff in The Year of the Epic (Best Picture nominees included Lawrence of Arabia, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Music Man, Mutiny on the Bounty, and the Saving Private Ryan of its time, The Longest Day).

After a brief prologue that establishes a group of American soldiers fighting for freedom in 1952 Korea, Candidate quickly treats viewers to one of the greatest scenes in the history of cinema. The men, led by Bennett Marco (Sinatra), have been tricked by their translator, Chunjin (Henry Silva from Ghost Dog), and led to Manchuria, where each has been brainwashed by a Communist group called The Pavlov Institute.

The scene, which is most likely what led to Webster’s editing nomination, begins in what appears to be a ladies' garden club party in the Spring Lake Hotel in New Jersey. A sign reads “Fun With Hydrangeas” as the camera pans across the room, showing Marco and his soldiers as bored onlookers to a gardening demonstration led by a fragile old woman. As the camera works its way in a circular clockwise motion, we see a room full of elderly women dressed in pretty floral dresses. But when the camera comes full circle (it’s all done in one shot), things have drastically changed.

Although Marco’s troops remain in their seats, their surroundings are now completely different. Giant photos of Stalin and Chairman Mao hang on the wall; the elderly speaker has been replaced with a burly Asian man named Dr. Yen Lo (Khigh Dhiegh); his audience has transformed from gardening hobbyists to Chinese, Korean, and Soviet bigwigs; and the hydrangea lecture has become a demonstration of hypnotism (the soldiers only think they’re in Jersey). Dr. Lo displays the overwhelming success he has achieved with Marco’s men, choosing Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) to participate in a disturbing experiment. Lo has Shaw explain that he’s never killed a man before, but then instructs the soldier to execute two of his war buddies. Shaw does so without question.

The rest of the film takes place two years later, where Marco has been reassigned to Army Intelligence in Washington and Shaw has returned home a war hero and winner of the Congressional Medal of Honor for wiping out an entire company of Chinese infantry (or so the brainwashing story goes). He’s greeted at the airport by his mother (Lansbury) and stepfather (James Gregory, Ulysses S. Grant from Wild Wild West), a Republican Senator with his eye on the 1956 Presidential Election. Shaw’s return home is a carefully orchestrated public relations coup for Senator Iselin, although we quickly learn that his better half is, as Bob Dylan sang in “Maggie’s Farm,” the brains behind Pa.

While Marco has nightmares about the Spring Lake Hotel and the Pavlov Institute, Shaw is still a hypnotized killer who kick-starts his dark side whenever he sees a certain playing card. He’s a pawn in a political game being played by someone very close to him. Marco knows something is afoul, but will he be able to deprogram his friend before he completes his final mission? Is Marco also a brainwashed killing machine? He has a very strange conversation on a train with a character played by Janet Leigh. None of it makes any sense, which leads viewers to believe it’s all a secret subliminal code. Don’t expect answers to all of these questions because you won’t get them.

While Sinatra logs his best performance here since The Man With the Golden Arm, Lansbury steals the show as Shaw’s mother from hell. Harvey, who was nominated for Best Actor (for Room at the Top) the year before Candidate was released, does well as the slightly robotic killer. There are a ton of great smaller roles, too, like John McGiver from The Patty Duke Show, who plays a Senator who Shaw’s father accuses of being a Communist.

Frankenheimer’s direction, from the opening credits to the edge-of-your-seat Hitchcockian finale, has never been better as he peppers the film with American flags, eagles, and various images of Abraham Lincoln (no doubt foreshadowing the closing scene --- ironically, the director drove Bobby Kennedy to the California hotel where he was assassinated in 1968). There’s a terrific fight sequence between Sinatra and Silva, and an excellent scene in which the director uses a television set to portray a scene from several different angles.

Frankenheimer, who is now 71 and has recently directed both Reindeer Games and Ronin (and is, allegedly, the father of Pearl Harbor director Michael Bay), crafted one of the finest Cold War thrillers ever made. It ranks right up there with Fail Safe as films that ended up being a lot more frightening than the actual Cold War itself.

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