Black Sunday, 1977.
Directed by John Frankenheimer.
Starring Robert Shaw, Bruce Dern, Marthe Keller, Fritz Weaver, and Bekim Fehmiu.
SYNOPSIS:
Black Sunday ended up settling toward the bottom of the pile of disaster films that were released in the 1970s, but it’s still worth revisiting, thanks to solid direction by John Frankenheimer, the presence of stars Bruce Dern and Robert Shaw, and a script adapted from the novel by Thomas Harris, who is best known for The Silence of the Lambs.
Remember when disaster movies were a thing during the 1970s? Plenty of them are well-remembered, including The Poseidon Adventure, the Airport films, The Towering Inferno, and others, but Black Sunday is one that seems to have slipped out of many minds since its release in 1977.
To be fair, it’s a mediocre film, and it, along with many other 1977 releases, was overshadowed by a worldwide hit called Star Wars. Even still, I thought it was worth checking out when Arrow made a review copy of the film on Bluray available, since it stars Robert Shaw (best known as Quint in Jaws) and Bruce Dern and it’s based on a novel by Thomas Harris, who went on to much greater fame with his Hannibal Lector books, including The Silence of the Lambs.
The story is an amalgamation of a few newsworthy subjects of the time period. Shaw portrays Major David Kabakov, an Israeli agent pursuing the Black September terrorist group, which in real life was behind the horrific massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Dern is Michael Lander, a career military man who spent six years as a POW in Vietnam and was mistreated by the authorities and divorced by his wife when he returned to the United States; he now pilots a Goodyear blimp that provides aerial views of sporting events.
The “black Sunday” referred to in the title is the upcoming National Football League Super Bowl planned for Miami in January; the 70s saw the NFL propelled to even greater popularity. The story begins a couple months before that day, as Kabakov and others take out a Black September hideout in Beirut. However, two members get away: a German-Arab woman named Dahlia Iyad (Marthe Keller), who Kabakov could have killed but didn’t, and a man named Mohammad Fasil (Bekim Fehmiu).
Dahlia is in a relationship with Michael, whose ex-wife won’t let him see his children, and the two are planning a major terrorist attack in January. They’re targeting the Super Bowl, but Kabakov and the American and Israeli agents he’s working with aren’t aware of that at first. When they do learn about the plot, and meet resistance when they try to cancel or postpone the game, they attempt to do whatever they can to secure the stadium, not realizing that Michael is part of the scheme and will be using a Goodyear blimp.
Frankenheimer managed to secure the cooperation of not only Goodyear but the NFL too, with the Super Bowl footage coming courtesy of the real championship between the Dallas Cowboys and Pittsburgh Steelers played in January 1976. Obviously, the climactic moments were filmed later.
A few things hold Black Sunday back from making the leap from “good” to “great.” First, the special effects work is bland: there are many shots of Dern in the blimp’s cockpit that clearly use rear screen projection, and there are a couple explosions that cut to flashes of red and orange across the screen. I realize that, for example, they couldn’t blow up a real helicopter, but I’m sure they could have built a decent model.
The characters are a bit flat, without much in the way of clear arcs. Kabakov is the only one with some kind of arc, but it’s not one that pays off in a clearly dramatic way. In addition, Shaw’s accent changes here and there; sometimes he sounds like he’s trying to create an Israeli accent, and sometimes he sounds like a more mellow version of Quint.
All that said, Black Sunday is worth a watch if the cast and the subject matter interest you. If nothing else, NFL fans will appreciate watching footage from an actual Super Bowl, one that turned out to be a classic championship game.
And if you’re a fan of the film, you’ll likely want to snap this one up for the improved image quality. I don’t have a previous home video edition of Black Sunday to make a comparison, but Arrow says they put work into restoring this one, and it certainly looks like a 70s film with a refreshed image.
Arrow also provided a handful of bonus features. I don’t know if any of them are new, but here’s the rundown:
• Audio commentary: Film historian Josh Nelson provides a chat that some might consider more interesting than the movie itself. As I mentioned earlier, Black Sunday features a confluence of several topics that were on people’s minds at the time, and Nelson digs into those details here. Of course, he also gets into the film’s origin as a novel, the adaptation effort, the production, and so forth.
• It Could be Tomorrow (29.5 minutes): Film critic Sergio Angelini delivers what’s typically called a “video essay,” featuring him talking over clips and images from the movie. It would be fair to ask what separates this from a commentary track, and my answer is: Not a lot, aside from length. There is some overlap between what Angelini and Nelson say, although Angelini tends to keep his focus on the movie, as opposed to some of the geopolitical things happening at the time, so he still has some unique information to impart.
• The Directors (58.5 minutes): Released in 2003, a year after Frankenheimer’s death, this is an in-depth look at the storied director’s lengthy career. In addition to comments from him, it also features his widow, Evans, as well as producers and actors he worked with, including Samuel L. Jackson, Kirk Douglas, Roy Scheider, Frank Sinatra, and many others.
An image gallery rounds out the disc. In keeping with its trend of recent years, Arrow also included a Criterion-style booklet, but since I only received a pre-production check disc for this review, I can’t comment on it. I’m sure it’s well-done, though, and it likely adds value to this edition, especially if you’re a fan of the film.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Brad Cook
