The Manchurian Candidate

A few years ago, I saw the remake of this movie with Denzel Washington, Liev Schriber, and Meryl Streep. I liked it and thought it was a pretty good story. The original, though, blew it out of the water. I don't understand why Hollywood feels the need to remake every movie under the sun. There are plenty of original voices in the world with new stories to tell, yet so much energy is spent on remaking films that were masterpieces to begin with. It's not like someone is trying to improve on old crappy movies. anyway, as long as us suckers keep spending our money on them, They'll keep getting churned out. Now on to The Manchurian Candidate:

-Excellent performances from Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Janet Leigh, and the entire supporting cast.

-The standout performance, however, is Angela Lansbury in her Oscar nominated role as a ruthless mother that is a sort of puppetmaster to her senator husband and brainwashed war vet son. To think that I would ever see Jessica Fletcher as an incestious, dastardly, just plain evil woman is amazing. To actually believe it is even better. I wish she would have had more of a film career following this high.

-I found the violence to be crazy for it's time. It shows several characters heads getting blown off and this was released just prior to Kennedy's assassination.

-The story was very timely and I liked the use of flashback and dream sequences.

-I loved the ending. I was on edge wondering if Harvey's character was still under Lansbury's control. Very satisfying ending