The Manchurian Candidate Soundtrack (1962)

Synopsis

Staff Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is only one of seventy-seven U.S. military men who arrive back from the Korean War awarded the Medal of Honor. Raymond's controlling and ambitious mother, Mrs. Eleanor Shaw Iselin (Dame Angela Lansbury), wants to capitalize on Raymond's name in the re-election bid of her husband, Raymond's stepfather, Republican Senator John Yerkes Iselin (James Gregory), which does not sit well with Raymond, who despises both of them.

Despite John being largely seen as being a buffoon, he has garnered a modicum of political success largely due to his anti-Communist rhetoric. The Medal of Honor was the result of Raymond saving nine members of his army battalion, including his commanding officer Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra), in what was a multi-day battle behind enemy lines.

After the war, Raymond leaves the Army to start a job in New York City as the confidential assistant to well-respected political journalist Holborn Gaines (Lloyd Corrigan), who has never written a nice thing about the Iselins. Bennett Marco (now reassigned to a post in Washington, D.C.), who nominated Raymond for the award, suffers from a recurring nightmare, where he, the nine other men, plus two who never made it out of the battle, are attending what is on the surface an innocuous New Jersey women's gardening club meeting, but which he can feel has sinister undertones related to Raymond.

What makes the nightmare more disturbing is that, in reality, he is compelled to say only the nicest things about Raymond whenever asked, which he knows he doesn't truly believe. If asked in return, Raymond would corroborate that he did not get along with any of the men, including Bennett, who all disliked him. Raymond would in fact admit that he is an unlovable person, he only having loved and been loved once in his life, to Jocelyn Jordan (Leslie Parrish), the daughter of Democratic Senator Thomas Jordan (John McGiver).

It was a relationship that Eleanor Iselin forced her son to break off, as she could not tolerate Raymond being with the daughter of a man who she considered a Communist. What Bennett is unaware of, is that at least one of the other eight survivors, with whom he has not kept in contact after returning to the States, has a similar version of the same nightmare.

Bennett eventually decides that the one person who can best help him figure out the source of the nightmare is Raymond. After witnessing some unusual behavior in Raymond, Bennett Marco knows that something is not right and discovers an unprecedented conspiracy against the United States.

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