The Manchurian Candidate [Dual Format Blu-ray + DVD]

Product Description

WHY DON T YOU PASS THE TIME BY PLAYING A LITTLE SOLITAIRE?

After saving the lives of his platoon during the Korean War, Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is hailed as a bona fide American hero. This couldn t have come at a better time for his mother (Angela Lansbury) who is hell-bent on boosting the career of his stepfather, a senator straight from the McCarthyite wing of the US political spectrum with designs on the Presidency.

So far so familiar but why does Shaw s former captain (Frank Sinatra) have recurring nightmares that suggest that his distinguished comrade-in-arms might not be all that he seems?

Based on the memorably paranoid bestseller by Richard Condon (Prizzi s Honor), this is one of the greatest of all Cold War suspense thrillers, not least for its alarmingly original take on the notion of the enemy within . Angela Lansbury won multiple awards and an Oscar nomination for her performance as one of the most monstrous mothers in screen history, but perhaps the most unnerving thing about the film is the way that its political satire remains so perfectly on target more than half a century later.

SPECIAL EDITION CONTENTS:

• High Definition Blu-ray (1080p) and Standard Definition DVD presentation of the main feature, transferred from original elements by MGM
• Uncompressed 1.0 mono PCM soundtrack
• Optional English SDH subtitles
• Audio commentary by director John Frankenheimer
• The Directors: John Frankenheimer, an hour-long portrait from 2003, including interviews with Frankenheimer, Kirk Douglas, Samuel L. Jackson, Roy Scheider, Rod Steiger and many others
• Interview with John Frankenheimer, Frank Sinatra and screenwriter George Axelrod from the film s 1988 revival
• Queen of Diamonds: an interview with Angela Lansbury
• A Little Solitaire: an appreciation of the film by director William Friedkin (The Exorcist)
• Theatrical trailer
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Jay Shaw
• Collector s booklet containing new writing by Peter Knight (Conspiracy Culture) and Neil Sanders (Your Thoughts Are Not Your Own), illustrated with original production stills

From Amazon.co.uk

You will never find a more chillingly suspenseful, perversely funny, or viciously satirical political thriller than The Manchurian Candidate, based on the novel by Richard Condon (author of Winter Kills). The film, withheld from distribution by star Frank Sinatra for almost a quarter-century after President Kennedy's assassination, has lost none of its potency over time. Former infantryman Bennet Marco (Sinatra) is haunted by nightmares about his platoon having been captured and brainwashed in Korea. The indecipherable dreams seem to centre on Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), a decorated war hero but a cold fish of a man whose own mother (Angela Lansbury, in one of the all-time great dragon-lady roles) describes him as looking like his head is "always about to come to a point". Mrs Bates has nothing on Lansbury's character, the manipulative queen behind her second husband, Senator John Iselin (James Gregory), a notoriously McCarthyesque demagogue. --Jim Emerson --This text refers to the DVD edition.

See all Product Description