What was Black Sunday?
Author Thomas Harris hit pay dirt with his creation of Hannibal Lector and the subsequent books but before all that he was a reporter for a local newspaper mostly covering crime. With the knowledge that he gained there he began writing his first novel, ‘Black Sunday’. Long before 9/11 and before that the Oklahoma bombing the first mass casualty terrorist atrocities on American soil Harris came up with his own terrorist related storyline that saw an Israeli agent attempt to avert such an event.
That Black Sunday story…
The weapon: a blimp laced with explosives and piloted by a troubled Vietnam vet driven to strike back against the nation he believes has betrayed him. The target: the Orange Bowl stadium, Miami where the Superbowl is to be held. What follows is a nail-biting race against time culminating in a spectacular aerial climax that will determine the fate of 80,000 spectators.
The stars, the director and that legendary producer!
Pitched as a disaster film it is far more of a thriller than the disaster movie it’s pitched as and an expertly crafted one at that with two great leads. Produced by the late great producer and studio head Robert Evans who was on a roll after the huge success of the first two Godfather films, Chinatown and Marathon Man he had saved the studio and was on a roll when he optioned Harris’s book.
Bruce Dern, already with a respectable back log of films with the 1970’s having seen him in a variety of roles and appearing as the lead in Hitchcock’s last film ‘Family Plot’. But Black Sunday zoned in on his air of slight derangement and was perfect for the role of Michael Lander a former soldier with a grievance against the US who he believes betrayed him and determines to kill tens of thousands of fellow Americans. Counterbalancing this would be Robert Shaw in one of his final roles and riding high on the immense success of Jaws. He was ideally cast as the Israeli agent obsessive in his quest to uncover the plan and find Lander by any means necessary regardless of whatever it took. They were two sides of the same coin and the film develops into a thrillingly shot climatic moment brilliantly orchestrated by director John Frankenheimer who was ideally suited to the material.
Having started in TV he had moved with ease into film with a string of terrific thrillers that included the underrated ‘The Train’ (an influence on director Christopher McQuarrie and his take on his Mission Impossible films), Grand Prix, and the masterful ‘The Manchurian Candidate’. His command of thrillers was rightly and highly regarded and he was ideally suited to a thriller such as ‘Black Sunday’. With the climatic scenes being shot at the years Superbowl, the producers had got the organisers to unusually to agree to filming at the actual event, got the teams onboard and persuaded Goodyear, whose blimp was a feature of such events, to agree to let their airship be portrayed as a terrorist weapon albeit changing Dern’s character from a Goodyear employee to being a freelancer. Quite how they would have got 80,000 extras is anyone’s guess but Frankenheimer quite brilliantly incorporated shooting Shaw and other actors into the real life game. The smooth integration of what he had pre-planned to shoot along with the game plus the blimp and a panicking crowd is exemplary and convincing in a pre CGI era.
It’s box office perfomance…
Test screenings were rightly positive and the studio (Paramount) were assured of a blockbuster. Released in April 1977 the film however did not perform anywhere near as well as expected earning only $16m against its $8m budget and Frankenheimer put the blame at the film being released barely six months after the similarly themed ‘Two Minute Warning’starring Charlton Heston as a cop after a sniper killing spectators also at a major football game. Of the two films Black Sunday is the better and it deserved to perform well at the box office but its chances of were steamrollered like every other film that year by the gargantuan success the following month of Star Wars.
Perhaps forgotten because of his Hannibal Lector creation Black Sunday is a terrific thriller and well worth a look with both actors and director bringing their A-game to the film that makes this one of the decades best thrillers.
Released on limited edition blu-ray this has a host of excellent bonus features that includes:
- High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
• Original restored lossless mono audio, presented for the first time on Blu-ray
• Optional restored lossless 5.1 and 2.0 stereo audio options
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Audio commentary by film scholar Josh Nelson
• It Could Be Tomorrow, a visual essay by critic Sergio Angelini, exploring the film’s adaptation and production, and its place within the pantheon of 70s terrorism thrillers
• The Directors: John Frankenheimer, an hour-long portrait of the director from 2003, including interviews with Frankenheimer, Kirk Douglas, Samuel L. Jackson, Roy Scheider, Rod Steiger and others
• Image gallery
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Peter Strain
• Collectors’ booklet featuring writing on the film by Barry Forshaw
The best of the bonus features…
With Shaw and Frankenheimer no longer with us and Dern turning 90 years of age there’s no commentary from them but the featurettes ‘It Could Be Tomorrow’ is very good as is The Directors documentary that looks at Frankenheimer’s career. Initially intending to be an actor he quickly saw that it was behind the camera where his future lay. Very much a man’s man when it came to directing he left behind him an impressive body of work that included a host of gritty and often underrated thrillers such as ‘52 Pick Up’ and ‘Ronin’ that features a car chase to rival that in The French Connection (for which he helmed the sequel) before he passed away back in 2002.
If you’ve never seem Black Sunday then you’re missing a treat and wont regret making this disc part of your collection.
related feature : The Silence of the Lambs – LIMITED EDITION 4K UHD
related feature : Nick Moran actor-director on Lock Stock, Harry Potter, Guy Ritchie plus his favourite films
Here’s the Black Sunday trailer….
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