Democracy 'n' Action: 25 Powerful Political Thrillers

THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE (1962)
The mother of all paranoid political thrillers (featuring the mother of all villainous mothers in Angela Lansbury), this well-crafted Cold War conspiracy tale seemed deliriously over-the-top until John F. Kennedy's assassination a year later made it seem uncomfortably prescient — so much so that director John Frankenheimer pulled the film out of circulation for the next 25 years.