Before author Thomas Harris imagined his signature character Hannibal Lecter, he wrote a novel about an act of terrorism occurring at the one of the biggest spectacles in America, the Super Bowl.  The resulting movie of the same name is Black Sunday (1977).

Robert Shaw stars as an Israeli intelligence agent hot on the trail of a group that wishes to persuade the United States to stop supporting Israel by slaughtering thousands of people at the Super Bowl.  The Black September terrorists have recruited a blimp pilot (Bruce Dern) who is willing to attack America because it has “forgotten” about him after his service in Vietnam.  He is controlled by a cunning and seductive woman (Marthe Keller) who will stop at nothing to achieve the group’s goal.

Black Sunday is, like The Day of the Jackal, intricate and complex, smart and sinister, literate and pulse-pounding.  Director John Frankenheimer emphasizes character over plot, yet doesn’t skimp on the action.  Most everyone who has seen it remembers the image of the Goodyear Blimp gliding into the Super Bowl stadium, low and relentless like some gigantic, deadly puffin, all the more frightening because its advance is almost in slow motion.  Yet my favorite scene is when Dern uses an abandoned airplane hangar to test the explosive that will send steel darts flinging into the crowd.  The scene is almost comic in tone, yet the result — a wooden structure utterly riddled with holes — is visually stunning and expressively ominous.

Frankenheimer’s movie starts with a bang in Lebanon and ends with a thrilling climax at the Super Bowl.  In between, we see how terrorists plan actions against America and how international agencies work together to prevent their fruition.  Black Sunday is an exciting, literate work with strong performances by an international cast.  The film is as relevant now as ever and stands as one of the best thrillers of the 1970s.  My rating:  ☆ ☆ ☆ ½.  (9:1).