Soviet/Communist/Isel in plot was crazy + wouldn't have worked
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — The Manchurian Candidate
Altho73 — 17 years ago(January 05, 2009 02:52 PM)
The Soviet/communist/Iselin plot was crazy and wouldn't have worked even if the brainwashed medal of honor winner, Raymond Shaw had succeeded in assassinating the President of the United States.
The intention of the C.B's (including Raymond's nutjob mother) was that once the President had been assassinated, right wing Republican Vice Presidential candidate (and nutjob) John Iselin would step forward make a rousing speech about how the C.B's and the Soviet Union had been responsible and whip up a frenzy of right wing patriotism that would sweep the right wing Iselin into an overwhelming victory as President.
But look at what happened in real life - a year after this movie was released the President of the United States WAS assassinated and by a 'commie with links to the Soviet Union as well'!!!!!!!!! The public DID NOT then overwhelmingly vote in the very conservative, right wing, anti-communist Barry Goldwater. Quite the opposite, Democrat Lyndon Johnson (with his socialist 'Great Society') was elected President with an overwhelming majority (486 - 52)
Going back to the movie - the American public would have listened to the John Iselin candidate for about 30 seconds, then the vast majority would have thought,
'Who the hell is this nutjob??? Let's vote for Lyndon Johnson instead'
Then they would have gone to the polling booths and cast their votes for 'Landslide Lyndon'. -
LightningLad — 17 years ago(January 08, 2009 10:09 AM)
Yes, it is quite a flaw that the movie didn't predict the future with 100% accuracy. I'm never going to watch it again.
But seriously, key is that the presidential candidate here was right wing, and JFK was left wing. As you said, the democrats were re-elected, which suggests that sympathy will lie with the party whose leader has been assassinated. Which actually does make the plot workable.
And if the plot really wouldn't have worked? Well, the Iselins still needed their skulls aired out. -
Altho73 — 17 years ago(January 08, 2009 02:32 PM)
The public re-elected Lyndon Johnson in 1964 because he appeared to be the level headed candidate, the voice of calm and reason,
('I will not send American boys 8 or 10,000 miles away to fight a war that Asian boys ought to be fightin' for themselves')
Goldwater on the other hand sounded like a hawk (but he wasn't a nutjob like Iselin), the public reckoned that if elected he's bomb North Vietnam and send hundreds of thousands of US troops to fight in South Vietnam.
So they voted in Lyndon Johnson who then bombed North Vietnam and sent hundreds of thousands of US troops into South Vietnam. -
sourpussc — 17 years ago(February 27, 2009 11:18 PM)
they weren't running against each other to be president, they were members of the same party, running for the nomination to be the presidential candidatethe plan probably would have worked to that end (if the party was already favoured to win)
what if the hokey pokey really IS what it's all about? -
mattaki — 15 years ago(July 28, 2010 04:48 PM)
kennedy was left wing? left wing about what? facing the commies down in berlin and cuba? just because he didn't let the lunatic curtis le may talk him into invading cuba and starting world war iii doesn't mean he's left wing - it just means he had a brain.
speaking of which, since the fall of the berlin wall, it came out that not only had the soviets put nukes on missiles on the island, but the soviet units protecting the cuban beachheads were armed with tactical nukes as well. the american invasion force would've gone up in a puff of radioactive smoke, as would've the eastern seaboard and eastern europe. way to go, cowboy! -
wolfsblood66210 — 16 years ago(February 10, 2010 05:31 PM)
Also can you imagine if this had happened in real life how the conspiracy theorists would have had a field day studying the films of the convention prior to the assassination? The lip readers who would have been able to make out Mrs. Iselin's comment to her obviously worried husband "Don't worry, he's never missed a shot in his life."? I don't think they'd have gotten away with it for long.
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GuyOnTheLeft — 12 years ago(April 30, 2013 08:44 AM)
First, Johnson tried to dampen the anti-Soviet furor that could have come about after JFK's assassination, rather than fanning the flames. Second, Johnson was a hard-core anti-Communist who prosecuted a bloody war in Vietnam on a level we can't even comprehend today.,just to contain communism.
See a list of my favourite films here: http://www.flickchart.com/slackerinc -
AndrewGS — 10 years ago(January 12, 2016 08:23 PM)
It's interesting how the apparently more moderate presidential nominee's key phrase ("my life before my liberty") seems like anticipatory criticism of Goldwater's controversial key phrase in his 1964 convention speech ("Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice"). Frankenheimer seemed to be consistently criticizing the anti-Communist right but also warning more generally that the public can be and too easily is swept away by spectacle and rhetoric regardless of its purpose or direction.
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CovertThunder — 10 years ago(March 20, 2016 05:44 PM)
The plot by the Communists in
The Manchurian Candidate
wasn't really all that crazy. During the Korean War, there was a genuine concern that some of the UN POW's being returned had been subjected to indoctrination and brainwashing.
The U.S. government even issued a few investigations into the Reds' methods, to see if A.) the Communists had a magical hypnotism machine and B.) if they didn't, how did they brainwash people. In both cases, the U.S. wanted to know that if either A. or B. proved true then how they could either make their own machine or develop better methods, leading to all kinds of research like Project Artichoke, Project Bluebird and the infamous Project MKUltra.
The Soviets did have sleeper cells in the U.S., except it was the illegals program and not necessarily brainwashed assassins. I forget which directorate of the KGB, but they were basically citizens who weren't allowed to speak Russian once they left the USSR and lived their entire lives in their target countries. The TV show
The Americans
portrays this, and does an extremely good job.
Ever heard of Project Stargate, the U.S. program to train psychic spies? Turns out the Soviets were involved in that research before we were, it was them taking it seriously that made the U.S. even interested in it. In 1970, the Soviets were spending sixty-million rubles on psychic research (which they called "psychotronics"), and by 1975 they were spending three-hundred-million rubles. Whether the program was successful and what they wanted to do with it is debatable but the fact is the Soviets were willing to invest in such an outlandish idea shows that the Cold War opened up both sides to borderline insane projects, trying to get an edge on over the other.
If you think that's weird, Stalin even wanted to analyze Mao Zedong's feces:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35427926
As for
The Manchurian Candidate
, maybe it isn't possible in the real world to brainwash and program people so effectively but it's a movie. The motives and idea behind the plot, I can totally buy.
Can't be too careful with all those weirdos running around. -
movieghoul — 10 years ago(March 31, 2016 10:28 AM)
One problem that just occurred to me is that Johnny would lilely not have gotten to deliver the speech as planned. Following the shooting of the presidential candidate, the Secret Service would have bodily removed him from the stage if necessary.
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Eric-62-2 — 9 years ago(October 03, 2016 03:42 PM)
Here's another thing no one's stopped to consider and which is one of the biggest flaws of the film's script. People often forget just how dead-end the job of Vice-President was considered to be in that era. From a tactical standpoint, Senator Jordan would have wanted to see Iselin get the VP nomination just to get him out of the Senate and have less of a platform to use (much in the way that LBJ lost a lot of power giving up the position of Senate Majority Leader to become Vice-President). Yes, that would have risked putting him one heartbeat from the Presidency but I think a lot of anti-Iselin people might have been willing to take that risk. With the end result being that once the nominee Ben Arthur is killed, everyone then going to Iselin would not be an automatic given.
Actually, he was a nut job who drove the Secret Service crazy.