Dan Bailey, a successful English executive living in Chicago starts to have severe nightmares about committing murder and about a terrible childhood in a prison camp. Gradually he finds he is a "Manchurian Candidate," a Russian believing his current life and all his childhood memories of l;ive in England are real, but he is under the control of somebody else who is using him for his personal gain. To escape, he must risk crippling mental damage and the fear of other controllers who might appear.