The Manchurian Candidate (1959), by Richard Condon, is a political thriller novel about the son of a prominent US political family who is brainwashed into being an unwitting assassin for the Communist Party.

The Manchurian Candidate has been adapted twice into a feature film by the same title. The first film, released in 1962, is considered a classic of the political thriller genre. It was directed by John Frankenheimer and starred Laurence Harvey as Shaw, Frank Sinatra as Marco, and Angela Lansbury as Eleanor in an Academy Award-nominated performance.

The second film, released in 2004, was directed by Jonathan Demme, and starred Liev Schreiber as Shaw, Denzel Washington as Marco, and Meryl Streep as Eleanor. It was well-received by critics, and moderately successful at the box office. The 2004 film updated the conflict to the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and made the setting a dystopian near future America. An American corporation is the perpetrator of the brainwashing and conspiracy instead of foreign Communist governments, and the Johnny Iselin character is dropped in favor of making both Shaw and his mother elected politicians.