Black Sunday (1977 film)

This article is about the 1977 US film. For the 1960 Italian film, see Black Sunday (1960 film). For other meanings see Black Sunday.

Black Sunday is a 1977 American thriller film based on the novel by Thomas Harris. The film was nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Motion Picture in 1978. The inspiration of the story came from the PLO attacks on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic games.

Plot

Michael Lander (Dern) is an American blimp pilot deranged by years of torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, a failed marriage, and a bitter court martial. He longs to commit suicide and take as many people as possible with him, so he conspires with an operative (Keller) from a Palestinian terrorist group known as Black September to launch a massive suicide bombing on American soil. Lander plans to detonate a flechette-based bomb, housed on the underside of a blimp, over a football stadium during the Super Bowl. American and Israeli intelligence agencies, led by Mossad agent David Kabakov (Shaw) and FBI agent Sam Corley (Weaver), race to prevent the catastrophe. To add further intrigue and a pall of doom, the President of the United States attends the Super Bowl despite the pleas of Kabakov and Corley. The film was a commercial hit when it was released in 1977. Although director John Frankenheimer lamented serious shortcomings in the visual effects of the climax (due to time and budgetary shortfalls), many critics trumpeted the final scene featuring a helicopter/blimp chase over the Orange Bowl as one of the more riveting and unusual in movie history. Black Sunday also features a film score from John Williams. A significant portion of the filming was done during actual Super Bowl X at the Orange Bowl in Miami, Florida, on January 18, 1976. In the movie, Kabakov discusses the security arrangements for the game with Miami Dolphins owner Joe Robbie, who plays himself.

Blimps

The Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company granted use of all three of its U.S.-based blimps for Black Sunday. The landing and hijacking scenes were photographed at the Goodyear airship base in Carson, California with Columbia (N3A); a short in the Spring, Texas, base with the America (N10A), and the Miami, Florida-Super Bowl scenes with the Mayflower (N1A), which then was based in Watson Island across the Port of Miami.

Differences between the novel and the film

• In the novel, the Aldrich Rubber Company owns the blimp. In the film, the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company permitted its blimp to be used. A Goodyear representative noted that it is impossible for two people, alone, to launch the blimp.
• In the novel, the Super Bowl occurs in New Orleans before completion of the Superdome football stadium; in the film occurs in Miami at the Orange Bowl Stadium.
• In the novel, Mochevsky (Kabakov's assistant) survives to the end of the story, but Kabakov, the helicopter pilot, and the FBI Agent Corley are killed in the blimp explosion over the Mississippi River. In the film, Mochevsky is killed; Kabakov is not.
• In the novel, Muhammad Fasil, a Palestinian terrorist who assisted Lander survives and is repatriated to Israel (by Mochevsky) to be tried; in the film, Kabakov shoots and kills him during a gun fight in Miami, during which he kills bystanders and policemen.
• In the novel, Kabakov has a girlfriend.

Trivia

Trivia sections are discouraged under Wikipedia guidelines. The article could be improved by integrating relevant items and removing inappropriate ones.

• In the actual NFL football game used in the film the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Dallas Cowboys 21–17. On January 21, 1979, NBC broadcast Black Sunday immediately before Super Bowl XIII, in which Pittsburgh defeated Dallas, 35–31 in the Orange Bowl.
• The tagline for the poster read: "For 100,000 people, Monday may never come."

External links

Black Sunday at Rotten Tomatoes