Reviews for The Manchurian Candidate (7 Cassettes)

The average rating for The Manchurian Candidate (7 Cassettes) based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-10-26 00:00:00 Jeffrey Schmidt A deliciously cynical and satirical pseudo thriller black comedy about McCarthyism and 50s Americana. But wait! - you say - black comedy?? is this not a psychological thriller about an American soldier who is brainwashed and hypnotized to be a sleeper cell assassin sent in to kill the president? Well, yes it is, but like Trevanian's Shibumi, there is the surface adventure story and then the much more interesting underlying allegory told with wit and humor. Condon, who also wrote Prizzi's Honor, published The Manchurian Candidate in 1959, at the end of the ugly Red Scare era in American politics. His scathing illustration of back room political machinations and our cultural passivity so long as there is food on the table and whiskey in the jar was in top form. Condon's Senator Iselin is as abrasively torpid and jingoistically demagogistic as Buzz Windrip from Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here. But the character who really steals the show is Iselin's wife and Raymond's mother Eleanor. Eleanor Iselin is as coldly domineering as Lady Macbeth and as twisted as Cruella DeVille. Condon's portrait of her would have made Larry Flynt proud. I admit that I have seen neither of the films (1962 starring Frank Sinatra and 2004 starring Denzel Washington) but I understand that the satirical nature of Condon's impressive novel was minimized in both. A very good book.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-04-11 00:00:00 Abujihed Alkabir [ Is it too late to tell you that the damn Q of d-monds has a pretty important role in the book, if you can call it a "role" if it's just played by a damn card? (hide spoiler)]