20 Mind Blowing Conspiracy Movies You Must Watch

8. The Manchurian Candidate

Sinatra€™s €˜kung fu€™ moment with Henry Silva€™s assassin aside, The Manchurian Candidate doesn€™t feel like its aged at all. It€™s still as relevant and suggestive now as it was when it was first released (or €˜eventually released€™ as it were, seeing as it was momentarily shelved and attempted to be abandoned by the studios in the wake of JFK€™s assassination) and thrillingly directed by John Frankenheimer. Who€™d have thought that Ol€™ Blue Eyes himself, Mr Sinatra, and bloody Angela Lansbury would have kicked the ball out of the park and into the stratosphere with their roles in this film? The film, for those very, very few uninitiated, deals with Army Major Bennett Marco (Sinatra) who, on returning from battle, recommends Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) for the Medal of Honour, saying he was heroic and brave in the line of duty. But, despite what he actually says to people, Marco begins to suspect whether he really believes it as a bizarre, reoccurring nightmare suggests Shaw is something far more insidious and threatening to his country. Struggling to convince the Army of his suspicions, Shaw teams up with a stranger on a train (Janet Leigh) who embraces his troubling thoughts to tackle Shaw and his power-mad mother (Angela Lansbury) in a race against time. The film€™s finale is a cinematic master class in how to produce perfect on-screen tension and edge-of-the-seat thrills. What really gives the flick its extra edge though, is the ongoing suggestions relating to the relationship between Sinatra and Leigh€™s characters. The dialogue between them is stilted and bizarre and could be considered as a form of code, which in itself suggests that Marco€™s mind is being controlled and that Leigh€™s character is his handler in much the same way that Lansbury€™s character is Shaw€™s! Could it be that the Manchurian Candidate of the title is in fact the Sinatra character and NOT the Harvey one? That the aim of the entire film was for Shaw and his obsessed mother, maybe classed as a Manchurian experiment gone wrong, to be removed and Marco was the €˜operative€™ to be used? Discuss€
 
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Contributor

I'm a part-time writer, part-time stand-up comedian, full time movie geek who strongly believes Martin Brest's MIDNIGHT RUN is one of the greatest, if not THE greatest, movie ever made! (... This is the bit where you mutter "You must be some sort of friggin' comedian if you think Midnight Run is the greatest movie ever made!") I'm a massive junkie for 'revenge' and 'conspiracy' movies and I'm an even bigger fan of all things John Carpenter, Albert Brooks, Coen Brothers, Sidney Lumet, Paul Thomas Anderson, Tony Scott, Christopher Nolan, Michael Mann, Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, Joe Dante, David Fincher, Wes Anderson and Shane Meadows. I'm on Twitter at @gazzhowie if you'd like to validate my existence by following me - and my movie review archive can be found at www.gazzhowie.tumblr.com!