20 Spy Movies You Must See Before You Die

Brainwashing! Sleeper agents! Two of the most common tropes in the realms of the spy thriller, but no movie has done them better than The Manchurian Candidate.

John Frankenheimer is one of cinema's most underrated directors (a point proven by the fact that he has two movies on this list), and The Manchurian Candidate might be his greatest achievement of all. The film stars Frank Sinatra as one Major Bennett Marco, who is convinced that a man named Raymond Shaw, a POW, has been "programmed" as a secret weapon by evil communist forces.

As far as immersive plots go, The Manchurian Candidate manages to keep audiences on their toes from beginning to end, as the levels of paranoia begin to stack up to near unbearable levels. Sinatra is great as Marco, proving that he could more than hold his own as a Hollywood leading man, whilst Angela Lansbury - yes, that Angela Lansbury - delivers a tour-de-force turn as Shaw's mother.

Lots of now familiar tropes have since been taken from Frankenheimer's classic, but this is an immensely entertaining and atmospheric thriller that completely deserves its reputation as a staple of the genre (it was remade in 2004 with Denzel Washington, which is actually worth checking out if you're a fan of the original).