Black Sunday

John Frankenheimer's terrorism thriller, and its subject is a Super Bowl. A member of a Palestinian organisation and an American blimp pilot, broken by captivity after Vietnam, build a plan: to fire thousands of steel darts into the crowd from the advertising airship above the stadium during the game. Against them is an Israeli intelligence officer who has picked up the plot. The source is Thomas Harris's first novel; he would go on to write Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs. The most striking thing about the production is the real footage. The unit worked during the actual 1976 Super Bowl, in the real crowd, using the Goodyear blimp, and that material was combined with staged scenes. Robert Shaw plays the Israeli officer, Bruce Dern the pilot and Marthe Keller the operative. It did not take the box office expected, opening in the same period as Star Wars. A solid choice for anyone who likes 1970s thrillers and large-scale sequences shot for real. Seen now its portrayal of the Middle East is one-dimensional, and it is long; the first hour is all setup.