In honor of Super Bowl Sunday and the Chinese surveillance balloons that flew across the country for several days two weeks ago, I decided to revisit John Frankenheimer's 1977 "Black Sunday," a thriller about terrorists who commandeer the Goodyear blimp with a plan to murder 80,000 spectators at the 1976 Super Bowl in Miami, Florida. The film stars Bruce Dern in his typical over-the-edge hair-flying wildly acting mode as an ex-Vietnam War POW who wants to wreak revenge on the American public for his mistreatment after seven years of imprisonment in North Vietnam; after he was brainwashed by the Viet Cong into making a filmed apology for the war, he was returned to the states and court-martialed. He now is a Goodyear blimp pilot for CBS News. Guiding him in this endeavor is Marthe Keller, a member of Black September, a Palestinian militant group that was responsible for the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Hot on their trail is Robert Shaw as an Israeli counter-terrorist Mossad agent.
Letter From LA: Super Bowl Issue
Letter From LA: Super Bowl Issue
Letter From LA: Super Bowl Issue
In honor of Super Bowl Sunday and the Chinese surveillance balloons that flew across the country for several days two weeks ago, I decided to revisit John Frankenheimer's 1977 "Black Sunday," a thriller about terrorists who commandeer the Goodyear blimp with a plan to murder 80,000 spectators at the 1976 Super Bowl in Miami, Florida. The film stars Bruce Dern in his typical over-the-edge hair-flying wildly acting mode as an ex-Vietnam War POW who wants to wreak revenge on the American public for his mistreatment after seven years of imprisonment in North Vietnam; after he was brainwashed by the Viet Cong into making a filmed apology for the war, he was returned to the states and court-martialed. He now is a Goodyear blimp pilot for CBS News. Guiding him in this endeavor is Marthe Keller, a member of Black September, a Palestinian militant group that was responsible for the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. Hot on their trail is Robert Shaw as an Israeli counter-terrorist Mossad agent.