“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.”

What a long, strange trip it’s been for Richard Condon’s 1950’s Cold War novel, The Manchurian Candidate. The late John Frankenheimer’s 1962 film of the book was nothing less than smashing, with such juicy-fruity subject matter as assassination and Chinese brainwashing (calling Art Bell!). Then it quickly disappeared. What happened? Well, this: Kennedy was shot in 1963, and, of all people, Frank Sinatra owned the rights to the picture and would not allow it to be shown for the next 15-20 years; this masterwork of art! Thanks, Frank. Old Blue Eyes was afraid it would induce other paranoiacs to attempt assassination of our leaders. A lot of good it did, as Bobby Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King were soon to follow JFK into that land from which no man returns.

In many ways the history of this film is more bizarre than the scenario itself, up to and including the remake. The original film is the only movie I can think of that became a cult film when nobody could see it! Sinatra himself starred in the old version. How on earth Old Tender Tonsils got involved in such a kinky project is a mystery for the ages. But try this on for size: for all his faults, the Chairman of the Board was an early warrior in the fight for civil rights as far back as the 30’s and 40’s when he was a young band singer. Pity the poor hotel desk clerk who wouldn’t let the black musicians have a room when Frankie boy was with them! In the new remake, Sinatra’s role has been given to a black man, one of our finest actors, Denzel Washington. In his grave (or wherever), I bet our Sinatra is as proud as a peacock!

Your reviewer has a very special affection for the old Manchurian Candidate. It was the early 60’s and I was a young nobody living in New York, and my neighborhood theater, the New Yorker on the upper west side, was running a film festival which they called “American Surrealism” which contained mostly goofball Beatnik shorts. There was much hissing and booing and walk-outs galore. But in the middle of it all was this most unusual, odd film out of the major studios, The Manchurian Candidate. It was so weird. As I left the theater I remember thinking what pure genius it was for the festival to book this magnificent piece of work under the banner of “American Surrealism,” which is exactly where it belonged!

And now, forty-years later, I feel pretty much the same about Jonathan Demme’s slick new remake updated to Iraq in the Desert Storm war of 1992.

A tank company of our own Fighting Jacks is in a furious battle with the Islamo-fascists. In command is Captain Ben Marco (Denzel Washington) and we’re taking a pounding at close range. Captain Marco is wounded and two men have been killed. But out of the eerie desert night-light, Sergeant Raymond Shaw (Liev Schreiber) saves the day, mowing down the I-Rackie foes with multiple bursts from his state-of-the-art Tommy gun, thus rescuing the entire company. This is medal-of-honor heroism, and Sergeant Shaw returns home to the USA a bonafide war hero, with all due fanfare – and by and by becomes a young, promising United States congressman being groomed for the White House.

But Raymond Shaw has even more going for him than this. His extra suction is that his dear old mom is a powerful United States senator who’s pushing hard for the VP spot on the presidential ticket for her baby boy Raymond. And who else but Dame Meryl Streep could step into this delicious role, which in the original film was played to a tee by Angela Lansbury. In this old version she was a communist agent who used her son as a sock puppet to do murderous deeds by deadening his brainwashed mind with a deck of cards featuring the red queen. In the remake we now have a much more sinister and terrifying enemy who makes the poor old commies look like teddy bears. Our new enemies are what have become known as THE NEW WORLD ORDER – as exposed by the dean of all vampire chasers, the indefatigable investigative journalist Victor Thorn, whose book (The New World Order Exposed, Sisyphus Press, $12.99) has blown the roof off the myth of the left-right paradigm, much in the same way as Noam Chomsky and the excitable but brilliant broadcast commentator, Michael Savage.

For those of you who have been asleep for the last ten years or so, “The New World Order” is just this: humungous corporate entities and one-worlders who have no respect for the sanctity of national borders or the sovereignty of nations, and who outsource your job to Katmandu.

Such a conglomerate mega-corporation is “Manchurian Global” with whom Lady Senator Eleanor Shaw has been in bed with for many years, and together they have an insatiable appetite for power and money in a world where cash is king. And to be sure, when anybody sees this razor box coming, they move out of the way post-haste. As a minority of one at a party think-tank, she bullies every political big-shot in the room to pick her son Raymond for the second spot on the presidential ticket. This woman could open clams with her tongue! Which reminds us of FDR saying, “I hate war, Eleanor hates war, and I hate Eleanor!”

There’s just one little glitch in all of this, and that is: Raymond despises his mother and her infernal nagging. Also, he’s a liberal and she’s a closet conservative civil liberties hater.

But not to worry. Raymond’s mom has a secret playing-chip, and that chip is lodged in Raymond’s head. Raymond’s mind has been brainwashed and sent out to be dry-cleaned by the evil doctor Atticus Noyle (Simon McBurney) and his band of face-painted Berka-babes of the Islamo-fascist persuasion in the employ of Manchurian Global. And Mother Eleanor can make Raymond do anything she wants, not with the old red queen, but by saying his name three times, like this: “Sergeant Shaw? Sergeant Raymond Shaw? Sergeant Raymond Prentis Shaw?” … thus making his brain explode!

So all is going well for Manchurian Global and the New World Order (boo … hiss …) except for one thing. Remember Captain Marco? Captain Benjamin Marco? Captain Benjamin Ezekiel Marco? Denzel Washington? He’s not been well, not well at all since his combat duty in Iraq. It seems he’s been having these strange dreams which have been driving him to the pill bottle and the electric shock table for years. These dreams are telling him that Sergeant Shaw’s Desert Storm heroics never happened at all! (Does this remind you of a certain senator who is now running for president?) Instead, his dreams tell him that their whole company was captured by the Islamo-fascists who ingeniously brainwashed them all into believing Sergeant Shaw was the hero of the day. In gruesome detail we see them shooting and strangling and murdering each other in preparation for the murderous mischief they will carry out back in the States on behalf of Manchurian Global and the bloodsuckers of the New World Order! We see Raymond close-up and personal having holes bored into his head with oogie-looking devices which appear to have been purchased at Home Depot’s tool department. (At least the Chinese did their brainwashing Freudian style!)

At first Captain Marco (now Major Marco) accepts that he’s just another Agent-Oranged vet. But one day in the shower he finds a computer chip buried beneath his skin and realizes that the nightmares and Greek chorus in his head are indeed not a Fig Newton of his imagination, and he begins a frantic search to solve the mystery by scouring the library, Army records, and even the daily dog-poop Internet. And throughout this sequence we watch a pure tour de force performance of the fine actor who is Denzel Washington. Many times we watch his full-face talking directly into the camera. And his face is the soul of fear and paranoia. He’s being watched by the authorities – which in an odd kind of way is we-the-audience. On several occasions he finds the opportunity to confront Raymond Shaw, but is bullied away by the congressman’s bodyguard goons, until finally he shouts through a crowd, “I’m not crazy, Shaw!”

Though “not a lovable guy” for his part, Shaw is a decent man, and he knows deep inside that Denzel is right – and something is wrong. But he can’t remember what, for maintenance is kept up on his destroyed mind. Sympathy for the devil!

In total desperation, Major Denzel goes to the military authorities with his stack of hastily gathered evidence to try to prove the trouble ahead. But the high-ranking jar-heads diss him insultingly up and down the conference table, telling him he better keep his pie-hole shut. One of them even gets in his face and says, “Come on, psycho; why don’t you hit me?” And shockingly Denzel smashes him in the face – with the theme music of Twilight Zone playing on the soundtrack. This has to be the best scene in the movie.

Meanwhile, Manchurian Global and his mean mom have robotic Raymond murdering people left and right – whoever stands in their greedy way.

But Denzel/Major Marco persists and comes to a final face-off with Congressman Shaw, Marco pleading with Raymond to go to the authorities and unload the whole conspiracy. But as they speak, Raymond’s cell phone rings, and his mom, the senator, says the magic words that turn him into a killing machine. Raymond then hands the phone to Marco and tells him, “My mother wants to talk to you.” Marco listens, and she repeats the same three-name mantra (“Benjamin-Ezekiel Marco”). The two men stare into each other’s eyes and their brains explode, finally realizing and remembering that they are both murderers and puppets on a string. By remote control one of them will assassinate the presidential candidate, and the “Manchurian Candidate,” Raymond Shaw, would slide into the puppet presidency.

Thus the plot proceeds, not without another twist and turn or two.

It’s widely known that director Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) changed the ending of the film after negative responses from the audience in test screenings. Too bad for us, because the result comes close to ruining an otherwise four-star masterpiece of a remake – the last scene taking place on a tacky looking gay set-designer’s tiny desert island somewhere in Islamo-ville.

But despite this disastrous artistic mistake, The Manchurian Candidate is a must-see movie in this year of filthy presidential politics.