The Manchurian Candidate

A Cold War thriller tells of an assassin hypnotized by the Chinese to kill a presidential candidate. A special brand of American movie emerged during the Cold War that I call the “paranoid thriller.” It started in the ‘50s as Hollywood’s way of exploiting the “Red Scare,” the fear and hatred of communism at home and abroad. As political events became more chaotic and disturbing in the ‘60s and ‘70s, these films began to reflect popular suspicion of U.S. government covert actions and conspiracies. Produced right on the cusp of these two phases was an amazing suspense film, from 1962: The…