DVD/150: THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (John Frankenheimer, 1962)

Nearly 60 years old, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is frighteningly relevent to today's right-wing politics, a film as icy as it's main character.

A US platoon are captured in Korea by Chinese communists, and during a group brainwashing session, Raymond Shaw is selected to be a 'sleeper' assassin, dispassionately killing two of the other soldiers.

Two years later, they are released and Shaw is decorated as a hero when his colleague Major Bennett Marco - who has been hypnotized - reports that Shaw saved lives during their capture.

But Marco has recurring nightmares of Shaw's killings and when he learns another of the platoon has the same dreams, he starts to investigate.

Shaw's fame is exploited by his mother Eleanor to win her husband John Iselin - a dangerously populist Senator dominated by his ambitious wife - the nomination for Vice-President.

Shaw is 'triggered' to start killing but who is his deadly controller?

Shelf or charity shop?  Living in the plastic storage box limbo, THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE is kept for Frankenheimer's marvellous direction and George Axelrod's darkly satirical take on Richard Condon's novel.  Laurence Harvey's cold persona was the perfect match for Raymond Shaw, Sinatra was never better and Angela Lansbury delivers a performance of pure ice-cold malevolence - her Eleanor Iselin is as great a political villainess as I CLAUDIUS' Livia or Lady Macbeth; at the time of filming she was only three years older than 'son' Laurence Harvey! Sadly Janet Leigh is totally wasted in an unispiring role of Sinatra's girlfriend, a role so vacant that it's speculated that maybe she is a spy too.