At the time, basketball was played by more Australians than any other sport—an oddity because in those days it was non-existent as a spectator sport. When required—for the Olympics or other international championships—Australian teams were drawn up from scratch, there was no interstate competition, and no major league to speak of. The reason for this disparity is obvious. All you needed was four friends with running shoes and you had a team and, although there are certain skills to be learned, the game can be participated in with minimum training.
    As such it seemed like the perfect aversion to the real problem, a release for unused energies and aggressions, but of course we all know now that such repression can lead to all manner of perversity and deviance.

The Manchurian Candidate, John Frankenheimer’s startling movie based on a rather blandly written but nevertheless fascinating book by Richard Condon, was censored and banned in many places. These days it would be routine. The suggestion that assassins (like Oswald) might be brainwashed was too unpalatable for many Americans at the time, and despite its stars, it was a flop,  but is now regarded as a classic. Perhaps it was just too soon after the Kennedy killing for such speculations. I read the book at the time it was published but the film came and went so quickly and was shown so rarely afterwards that it was twenty years before I finally caught up with it. By then it was difficult to understand what all the fuss was about. But it is a fine film, and a rare instance of a story told by the victim (Sunset Boulevarde being the most notable).
    Amongst the prisoners of the Communists in the Korean War are Marco (Frank Sinatra) and Shaw (Laurence Harvey) who are subjected to a cruel experiment in brainwashing techniques. At the end of it, Shaw, in response to the “trigger” words, ruthlessly shoots two of his own comrades without either guilt nor memory of the incident. And Marco, who is there at the time, is trained into failing to witness what happens right in front of him. This scene was actually cut from the original film (and restored decades later) which meant that what followed made a whole lot less sense than it should have.
    Years later, Marco is deeply troubled by nightmares as a result of Manchuria and decides to visit Shaw and see if anything similar is happening to him. On the train he suffers an attack of nerves and is comforted by Rosie (Janet Leigh). Arriving at Shaw’s apartment, he is attacked by a Chinese houseboy (in fact an agent planted in the Shaw household) and prevails after a brutal fight.He is arrested for assault but Rosie bails him out.
    Shaw is unhelpful (he has no reason to suspect he is a tool of the Communists) but Marco learns of another member of the patrol suffering similar nightmares and presents his case to his commanding officers. In turn he is put in charge of investigating Shaw and the others.
    Marco, having been briefed on brainwashing techniques, sticks close to Shaw and eventually figures out that the Queen of Diamonds triggers him to the Communists’ will.
    Meanwhile, Shaw has married, on compulsion, Jocie Jordan, daughter of a prominent liberal senator, after she appeared at a fancy-dress party dressed as the Queen of Diamonds.
    It emerges that it is Shaw’s mother (Angela Landsbury) who controls him, along with Red-baiting Senator John Iselin (James Gregory) and they trigger him to kill Senator Jordan and Jocie. The motive is to test Shaw for a bigger killing, which will be blamed on the Reds thus cementing anti-comminist sentiment which will propel Iselin to the White House.
    Just before a big political rally, Marco tries to convince Shaw of what has happened to him.
    Shaw turns up at the rally, bent on shooting the Presidential nomination, and Marco hunts for him. But Marco’s words are working against the trigger and Shaw battles mightily with himself.
    In the end, when Marco arrives just too late, Shaw shoots his mother and Iselin, and then turns the gun upon himself.