10 Best Spy Films That AREN'T James Bond

When it comes to spies and the big screen, no figure stands taller than James Bond. Ian Fleming's iconic MI6 agent defined the espionage flick in the 1960s with a potent formula comprised of sex appeal, cold violence, cool gadgets, and elaborate schemes masterminded by increasingly more eccentric villains. Said formula has been refined over the years, ensuring that Bond has dominated the genre no matter who dons the tuxedo and Walther pistol.

But 007 doesn't hold a monopoly on the spy film. Both before and since the premiere of Dr. No in 1962, dozens of seminal films rooted within that genre have graced the silver screen, presenting a markedly different vision of espionage than audiences have grown accustomed to with Bond. In some cases, spy films have emerged as a direct response to Bond, contradicting the flamboyance and extravagance of the franchise with a more realistic approach - sometimes adapted from stories written by those who, like Fleming, had direct experience in secret intelligence.

Granted, this is not always the case, and plenty of non-Bond spy films have set out to be even more elaborate and gonzo in their own way, developing in the process their own franchise identity and formula to reach comparable heights of acclaim and popularity.

007 might still be the king of the spy movie (even with that dreaded Amazon acquisition now complete), but these non-Bond highlights prove there's plenty more to the genre than shaken martinis and a freshly-pressed tuxedo...

The legendary John Frankenheimer's 1962 film, The Manchurian Candidate, is definitive Cold War paranoia - an outrageous conspiracy thriller that took Red Scare anxieties to new extremes and prophetically foreshadowed a decade that would come to be defined by assassination, suspicion, and paranoia.

Based on the Richard Condon novel of the same name, The Manchurian Candidate took inspiration from real-life musings and theories regarding communist brainwashing attempts and sleeper agents following the conclusion of the Korean War, focusing on a communist plot to use a captured U.S. serviceman, Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) to assassinate a presidential candidate and send the United States into political turmoil.

At times, The Manchurian Candidate feels like a proto-seventies conspiracy thriller, with Frankenheimer fusing noir influences with psychedelia to impart the kind of paranoid atmosphere Alan J. Pakula would perfect with his films Klute and the similarly assassination-minded The Parallax View, which were released in 1971 and 1974 respectively. (Frankenheimer would again return to the same subject matter with 1964's Seven Days in May, which dwelled heavily on the assassination of JFK.) It also features a fierce, against-type performance from Angela Lansbury, who plays Shaw's mother, Eleanor.

While not Frankenheimer's greatest film (nor his best spy movie), The Manchurian Candidate remains a touchstone of sixties cinema and exemplifies why he was one of the decade's most exciting newcomers.