A lot of critics do not care much for The Manchurian Candidate.  When it was first released in 1962, Bosley Crowther of the New York Times began his review of the movie as follows:

With the air full of international tension, the film “The Manchurian Candidate” pops up with a rash supposition that could serve to scare some viewers half to death—that is, if they should be dupes enough to believe it, which we solemnly trust they won’t.

But if critics like Crowther did not like this movie, neither, it would seem, did the public.  In 1988, Aljean Harmetz, also writing for the New York Times, refers to it in his review as an “old failure,” and is surprised that so many people seemed to be lining up to see it when it was rereleased.  “Although the film was based on Richard Condon’s best-selling 1959 novel,” he goes on to say, “it failed to live up to expectations at the box office and was written off as unprofitable by the studio.”  In addition, Harmetz disposes of one of the stories often heard about this movie:

There is a common misperception that “The Manchurian Candidate” was withdrawn because of the assassination of President Kennedy. But the President was killed a year after the movie failed to make a dent at the box office.

He quotes Peter Rainer, chief film critic of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, as saying the movie is “a black comedy that mixed melodrama and slapstick.”  Slapstick.  Well, I’ve never experienced it that way.  I saw it as a teenager in 1962, and I found it grim and suspenseful, as I do to this day.

That is not to say that the movie does not have its moments of comic relief.  In fact, Dr. Yen Lo (Khigh Dhiegh), of the Pavlov Institute, is quite witty at times. It was he who conceived of the idea of putting a Soviet agent into the White House as president.  The movie begins in 1952 in Korea, where a platoon of American soldiers is led into a trap.  They are taken north into Manchuria, a region that has at times belonged, at least in part, to Russia, and at times belonged, at least in part, to China, a fitting place for the initiation of a plan that is a joint operation of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.

Though Dr. Yen is himself a member of the Communist Party, yet his character is completely different from that of the stereotypical communist, as promoted on television and in the movies in the 1950s.  That is to say, the communist was typically portrayed as utterly mirthless, so serious about his devotion to the cause of world communism as to preclude a sense of humor.  It is an indication of just how high-ranking Dr. Yen must be in the Communist Party that he can get away with ironic observations and wry comments, whereas someone further down in the Party would probably have been executed for being insufficiently dedicated to the ideals of communism.

For example, later in the movie, when Comrade Zilkov takes pride in the fact that his rest-home, which is just a front, is one of the few Soviet operations in America that “showed a profit at the end of the last fiscal year,” Dr. Yen admonishes him:  “Profit? Fiscal year?  Beware, my dear Zilkov. The virus of capitalism is highly infectious.  Soon, you’ll be lending money out at interest!”

When Zilkov looks fearful at the thought that he will be reported to his superiors in Moscow for not being faithful to the cause of communism, Dr. Yen smiles, saying, “You must try, Comrade Zilkov, to cultivate a sense of humor.  There’s nothing like a good laugh now and then to lighten the burdens of the day.”

He subsequently remarks that he would like to spend the afternoon at Macy’s, saying, “Madam Yen has given me the most appalling list,” even though he knows full well that communists are supposed regard American consumerism with disdain.

Frank Sinatra, on the other hand, in the role of Major Bennet Marco, is always serious.  And yet, there is something amusing about his role as an intellectual. When the movie opens, then Captain Marco is riding in a truck driven by Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey).  They stop at a nightclub/whorehouse to pick up the rest of the platoon to go on a combat mission.  While Raymond goes in to get the men, Marco continues reading a book.  Later in the movie, after Marco is on the verge of a mental collapse, owing to the nightmare he has been having repeatedly about what happened in Korea, a friend of his has been sending him books of various sorts to help him keep his mind on other things, books that he has actually been reading. One of them is James Joyce’s Ulysses.  Whew!  Finally, when Raymond starts talking about what a terrible woman his mother (Angela Lansbury) is, he apologizes for going on about her. Marco replies that he is interested.  He is interested, of course, because by this time he realizes that Raymond is critical to understanding his nightmare.  To encourage him to keep talking, he says, “It’s rather like listening to Orestes gripe about Clytemnestra.”

“Who?” Raymond asks.

“Greeks.  A couple of Greeks in a play,” Marco responds dryly. Being a bookworm is totally at odds with Sinatra’s screen persona, but he manages to pull it off.

The nightmare that Marco has been having begins with his platoon sitting in the lobby of a small hotel in New Jersey, waiting out a storm.  In that lobby, a woman is lecturing a lot of other women about hydrangeas.  But suddenly, the women turn into Russian and Chinese men, listening to Dr. Yen tell how he has “conditioned” the American soldiers.  “Or brainwashed them,” he adds, “which I understand is the new American word.”  Presumably, he is speaking English as the second language common to both Russians and Chinese.

Practical joker that he is, Dr. Yen is letting the American soldiers smoke cigarettes made out of yak dung. “Tastes good, like a cigarette should,” he says, citing a well-known line used back when television commercials for cigarettes were still permitted.  He laughs heartily at his own joke, while the Russian and Chinese men in his audience sit there in cold silence.

The soldiers have been hypnotized, and Dr. Yen dismisses as nonsense the “old wives’ tale” that a hypnotized subject cannot be forced to do that which is repellent to his moral nature, “whatever that is,” he adds, showing contempt for such a notion.  Since communists were atheists, they were believed by most Americans to be completely amoral, since without the fear of God, there would be nothing to restrain their behavior.

As we later learn, the hypnosis is more than the kind usually seen in a movie, where someone lets a watch swing back and forth while saying, you are getting sleepy, very sleepy.  Instead, it involved the use of light and drugs to deepen the level of the hypnotic state.  That is why Dr. Yen says, “His brain has not only been washed, as they say, it has been dry-cleaned.”

To prove the point, he orders Raymond to strangle one of his fellow soldiers. As he does so, the other men appear bored.  Marco is so bored that he is even seen opening his mouth to yawn, when suddenly that open mouth emits a scream as he is jolted out of his nightmare.

At another point in the movie, a different soldier also starts having the same dream.  Of course, the dream cannot be exactly the same, and to underscore that point, the soldier in question is Corporal Allen Melvin, played by James Edwards.  Since he is black, the women in his dream are likewise black. But he later sees the same Russian and Chinese men, which helps verify Marco’s story, which no one believed at first. Melvin’s dream picks up after the strangulation and ends with Raymond using a pistol to shoot a baby-faced soldier in the head, his blood and brains splattering onto a large picture of Joseph Stalin hanging on the wall.

Basically, Raymond Shaw has been conditioned to be a cold-blooded killer, and the murder of two of his fellow soldiers is evidence of that.  He and the remaining soldiers are made to believe that Raymond saved the platoon through his heroic actions, getting him the Medal of Honor.  The soldiers have been programmed to say, when asked, “Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known.”

But as Raymond himself was the first to admit later on, the men hated him, and he hated them.  In that first scene in the movie, when Raymond gets out of the truck, Marco shakes his head, as if to say, that guy is really uptight, before returning to his book.  Inside the nightclub/whorehouse, the remarks of the other soldiers reveal that they have complete contempt for Sergeant Shaw, as being something of a prude.

The point of having Raymond be awarded the Medal of Honor is to help his stepfather, Senator Johnny Iselin (James Gregory), secure the nomination for vice-president at the national convention. Then, after Raymond assassinates the presidential candidate at the convention, Iselin is supposed to hold the dead body while delivering a rousing speech.  It is a speech that has been worked on here in the United States and in Moscow off and on for eight years, intended to propel Iselin into the White House as president by an hysterical electorate, “with powers that will make martial law seem like anarchy.”  In short, Iselin is the Manchurian candidate.

Iselin is based on the character of Joseph McCarthy.  McCarthy claimed that the State Department was full of communists, but in the movie, it is the Defense Department that Iselin says has communists working there.  How ironic it would be, therefore, if a Soviet agent could become president by pretending to be fiercely anti-communist.

But Mrs. Iselin, Raymond’s mother, or simply “Mother,” is the brains of the operation and will be the one who is really in charge, far exceeding Dr. Yen as the villain of the piece.  She never wanted her son Raymond to be the assassin she needed, but those communists in Russia just didn’t understand such things as a mother’s love.  But that’s all right.  She uses Raymond for the purpose anyway, giving him a wet, warm, open-mouthed kiss on the lips just before sending her hypnotized son off to his final mission.

A mother’s love is not the only emotion that communists did not understand. In the 1950s they were portrayed as affectless, driven only by an ideal of world communism.  Dr. Yen, when speaking of Raymond in his capacity as a killer while under hypnotic command, says that he will not remember killing anyone. As a result, Dr. Yen says, “Having been relieved of those uniquely American symptoms, guilt and fear, he cannot possibly give himself away.”

That guilt and fear should be “uniquely American symptoms” is, of course, preposterous.  Not only are they natural human emotions, but even a dog can experience fear, and some say guilt as well, as when we see a dog’s ears lay back, and its tail go between its legs, after having pooped on the carpet.  But communists were thought to be so lacking in emotion that they could easily suppose that guilt and fear were unnatural, an idiosyncratic result of American capitalism.

While under hypnosis, Raymond is given the command to kill several people in the course of this movie.  In each case, he has no emotion while doing so, driven only by an order to kill.  This is just an extreme example of how communists were thought to behave back then, driven by the goal of having communism dominate the world, but experiencing no emotions while trying to achieve that end.

I was only nine years old when I saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). In that movie, the people whose bodies have been replaced by plant-like, pod substitutes have no emotions, driven only by the goal of replacing everyone on the planet in the same way.  I had already seen several television dramas, showing us what communists were supposed to be like, warning us to be on guard against such people.  In those dramas, the communists seemed to be without any human feeling.  So, when I watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I immediately saw the connection.  I did not, of course, say to myself, “Why, these pod people are just like communists,” but I sensed the resemblance.

Because communists were thought to be amoral and without feeling, it was believed that they could kill one another without a qualm, should it be expedient to do so.  When Zilkov insists that Raymond needs to be tested by killing someone, since it has been over two years since he killed those two fellow soldiers in Manchuria, Dr. Yen thinks that is unnecessary.  But Zilkov is adamant.  Dr. Yen shrugs and tells Zilkov to have him kill one of his own people that work in his rest-home.  Zilkov says he would do so gladly, but he is understaffed as it is.  When it appears that Dr. Yen has agreed to have Raymond kill some nonproductive person, Zilkov asks, “Whom do you think he should kill?”

Dr. Yen slowly turns his head, looking straight as Zilkov.  Zilkov shows fear at the idea that he might be sacrificed to that end.  “With humor, my dear Zilkov!” Dr. Yen says, now smiling.  “Always with a little humor.”  Instead, he suggests that Holborn Gaines be the one who is killed, possibly allowing Raymond to be promoted at the newspaper to take his place.

When Raymond first returned from Korea, he told Mother that he intended to go to work for a newspaper as a research assistant to Holborn Gaines. “Holborn Gaines?” she said with horror. “That communist?!”

“He’s not a communist, Mother,” Raymond replied.  “As a matter of fact, he’s a Republican.”

That this was supposed to reassure Mother implies that she and Senator Iselin are themselves Republicans, which would go with their anti-communist pretense.

Mother’s greatest political foe is Senator Thomas Jordan (John McGiver).  She once referred to Jordan as a communist on a radio program, so he successfully sued her for defamation of character and slander.  He then donated the money to the American Civil Liberties Union, just to spite her.  Republicans regard this organization as being so far to the left as to be almost communist.  George H.W. Bush once referred to Michael Dukakis as a “card-carrying member of the ACLU,” which brought to mind the phrase “card-carrying member of the Communist Party,” used by Josephy McCarthy, and also used by Iselin in the movie.

At a costume party held at the Iselin’s residence, Mother tells Jordan that she is hoping her husband can be nominated for vice-president at the convention, and she asks if Jordan will try to block him, which he could do only if he too were of the same party.  In other words, though Jordan and Gaines are both Republicans, yet they are insufficiently anti-communist as far as Mother is concerned.  As for Democrats, don’t even get her started on them.

Jordan says, “I think if John Iselin were a paid Soviet agent, he could not do more harm to this country than he’s doing now,” little realizing the irony in his supposition.  He says he will do everything he can to keep Iselin from getting that nomination.  So, this looks like another job for Raymond.  Prior to all this, Raymond had fallen in love with Jordan’s daughter, Jocelyn.  Mother convinced Raymond that Jocelyn was just a communist tart and got him to break off their engagement.  However, at the party where Mother tries to get Jordan not to block Iselin for the nomination, Jocelyn shows up and manages to make Raymond fall in love with her all over again.

You see, Dr. Yen programmed Raymond with a key sentence:  “Why don’t you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?”  Upon hearing this, Raymond would pick up a deck of cards and start playing.  As soon as he turned up the queen of diamonds, he would stop and wait for orders.  Dr. Yen said that the queen of diamonds had been selected as the card that would induce a hypnotic trance because it was “reminiscent in many ways of Raymond’s dearly loved and hated mother.”

In other words, the fact that Raymond would be looking at the card that was symbolic of Mother would further instill his obedience.  It is said that during World War II, soldiers were told that they were fighting for “Mom and apple pie,” so having Mother be the one who is behind the plot to have a Soviet agent become president of the United States is a slap in the face to that notion.

It is at the costume party that we find out that Mother is Raymond’s American operator when she gets him alone in a room and has him play a little solitaire.  They are interrupted, and she has to leave for a little while, so she picks up the queen of diamonds and takes it with her to prevent mischief.  But when Jocelyn shows up at the at the costume party and finds Raymond in that room, she just happens to be dressed as a great, big queen of diamonds, an image of that card covering her torso. Raymond does a doubletake.  The woman he has always loved has become fused with the idea of Mother, and right while he is in a hypnotic trance.  Needless to say, Jocelyn has no trouble getting Raymond to marry her.

Dr. Yen said on a previous occasion that whenever Raymond is assigned to kill someone, he must also be told to kill whoever else happens to be there at the time.  So, when Mother sends Raymond off to kill Jordan, he is under that additional command.  Using a pistol with a silencer, which always makes a killing seem more cold-blooded, he shoots his now father-in-law right through the carton of milk he was holding and into his chest, the milk pouring out much in the way we imagine his blood doing the same.  As Raymond puts a second bullet into Jordan, who is now lying on the kitchen floor, Jocelyn comes running in to stop him.  In what is the most chilling scene in the movie, he turns and shoots her without hesitation.  Then, as he leaves, he steps over her body as one would a pile of laundry that happened to be lying on the floor.

Prior to all this, however, Marco has been having a hard time of it.  His superiors think he is suffering from combat fatigue.  He shows up to visit Raymond.  Raymond is not at home, but his servant opens the door, the very guide that led them into the trap in North Korea, Chunjin (Henry Silva). Marco remembers him from his nightmare.  He punches him hard, and they begin fighting.  It is refreshing to see men in a movie employ the martial arts in a way that is realistic.

Anyway, that proves to be a turning point in the movie.  Once Marco has been supported by Corporal Melvin, the Army believes his story and assigns him to find out what Raymond has been programmed to do. Marco gets himself a deck of cards with nothing but queens of diamonds and does what he can to deprogram Raymond.  At the national convention, however, it appears that, from the vantage point of a spotlight booth, Raymond will still assassinate the nominee for president, as ordered to do so by Mother. But at the last second, he assassinates Senator Iselin and Mother.  Then he puts on his Medal of Honor. Marco comes into the booth just as Raymond does so.  Raymond says it was the only way to stop them. He then turns the rifle around and shoots himself.

In the final scene, Marco is with a woman who has helped him through his difficulties, Eugenie Rose (Janet Leigh), and whom he plans to marry.  He reads out loud from a book citing the heroism of other men that have been awarded the Medal of Honor.  Then he closes the book and says what will be written in the future:

Made to commit acts too unspeakable to be cited here by an enemy who had captured his mind and his soul, he freed himself at last, and in the end, heroically and unhesitatingly, gave his life to save his country.  Raymond Shaw.

Of course, the fact that the acts are too unspeakable to be mentioned in a book of citations like the one Marco is reading from does not mean they cannot be vividly depicted in a movie.  And that’s a good thing too, since this movie is one of my favorites.  And yet, the American Film Institute did not include it in their list of the 100 Greatest American Films of All Time.  Nor did IMDb (Internet Movie Database) include it in their list of the Top 250 Movies of all time.  And in Guide for the Film Fanatic, published in 1986, where Danny Peary reviewed “1600 must see” movies, The Manchurian Candidate was not one of them.  Were Bosley Crowther alive today, he would be pleased to see that plenty of people have not been duped into liking this movie.