If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

I'm okay with the anger and the violence brought about by it. We are in a time of terror, some forty years after the making of this film. We have had 9/11 and have been fighting one of the longest wars in our history. This is a great motivation for the plot here. There have been other movies made about these people and those that heroically oppose them. But you can take any situation, no matter how interesting, and utterly ruin the movie by making a rescue that is so beyond belief that human being could never carry it out. Bouncing around through the sky on a blimp, rigging things up, shooting things, cliffhanger exploits are too much. The contrivances are all over the place. The point that should have been made is lost in superfluous exploits of superhuman characters that are not believable.

This thriller begins slowly but builds up to a brilliant conclusion. Marthe Keller is brilliant as the Palestinian female terrorist who manipulates her boyfriend, a Vietnamese POW, brilliantly played by Bruce Dern. The relationship between Dahlia and Michael is quite believable. Dahlia is the brains and perhaps the only female in the film and she holds her own. Keller's performance is rare and exceptional. Her Dahlia could have been a caricature but she delivers a complex performance as an activist turned terrorist and killer in slow progression. The moment in their hotel before the Super Bowl displayed both their terror and fears about the diabolical plot. The Super Bowl is America's biggest event of the year. Filmed on one Super Bowl, you can't recreate it. The final scene ends too short. What happened after? Still a great film to watch repeatedly.

In a post 9/11 world, a movie such as this will never get made in fear of copycats or giving terrorists ideas. Even if it did, with all the political correctness and fear of Muslim threats, it would be a tough task to get it produce. The whole movie would be neutered to death. Pre-9/11 controversial movies such as this could be made. The film was created in 1976 no less than 4 years after the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympics, where 11 members of the Israeli Olympic team were taken hostage and eventually killed, along with a German police officer, by the Palestinian group Black September. For a movie to come out just a few years later after such a tragedy, using similars to that event, it was very surprising that this was even made. Well, in the 1970s movies had more freedom to being made since the majority of the film back then was focus on gloom and violence. Before the Star Wars blockbuster, gloom movies such as this was popular. Today is Super Bowl Sunday, and I thought why not, let's talk about Black Sunday. Let's toss the pigskin around for a bit. Black Sunday was first a novel by Thomas Harris whom would later be known as the man who scare us all in a different way with Hannibal Lector in the book 'Silence of the Lambs'. The book was pick up and made by John Frankenheimer. The director was known for his works in political thriller such as 'The Manchurian Candidate' and 'Seven Days in May' and 'Black Sunday' was no different. Black Sunday is the story of a Black September terrorist group attempting to blow up a Goodyear blimp hovering over the Super Bowl stadium with 80,000 people and the President of the United States in attendance. David Kabakov (Robert Shaw) is an Israeli commando working for the Mossad hunting down members of the Black September terrorist group. Robert Shaw was great. Sort of a humorless Israeli James Bond who doesn't chase women. He is bad ass, but his character was kinda out there. I love the way he pulls no punches in his actions. He takes his actions to extreme. He discovers the Super Bowl plot, masterminded by Dahlia Iyad (Marthe Keller), a brutal female killer assassin. The assassination attempt scene where Dahlia dress as nurse was later pay homage in films like Kill Bill, and Dark Knight with Daryl Hanah and the Joker, by the way. It's clear that Dahlia Iyad is getting help from a deranged Vietnam veteran Michael Lander (Bruce Dern) who captain the blimps during the weekends. Bruce Dern is great at being chilling. The way he longs for suicide, and how he wants to kill the cheerful, carefree American civilians that he sees from his blimp each weekend is dark. In some scenes, even dark horse Dahlia is scare of him. Bruce Dern was everyone's favorite psychopath in the '70s. It's also great to see how author Thomas Harris has Michael Lander and David Kabakov perfectly opposed of each other, but so similar to each other: both men are dark for different reasons. David wants to revenge for Munich against all the Black September terrorists and willing to kill anybody to stop them. Michael is willing to kill others as well as himself just because of his unhappiness. It's nice to see director John Frankenheimer creates a chilling portrait of people obsessed with a cause for which they will die. In an incredible finale, Dern and Keller navigate the lethal airship into the terror-stricken stadium, pursued by Shaw in a helicopter, climaxing one of the most exciting and unusual chases in movie history. While the movie is interesting, it's the same old story between the two psychopaths. Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, girl finds boy, boy remembers girl, boy and girl try to kill people with blimp. Goodyear? No, probably their worst. I like how the movie was able to get real NFL logos and teams and the Goodyear just to makes it much more realistic. If they made this today, they'd probably use fake teams and blimp company. Luckily, Frankenheimer had a good relationship with the heads of Goodyear as a result of working with them on his earlier film Grand Prix. While Goodyear allowed the use of their airship fleet, they did not allow the Goodyear Wingfoot logo (prominently featured on the side of the blimp) to be used in the advertising or the poster of the film. Thus, the words "Super Bowl" are featured in place of the logo on the blimp in the advertising collateral. Frankenheimer was even able to secure the unprecedented cooperation of the NFL and the production was allowed to film at Super Bowl X no less. So the game was really the Super Bowl, not staged. The final attack on the stadium was filmed later, using a mock-up of the forward section of the blimp and 10,000 extras. One of the biggest faults of the movie is that the movie suffered the death of "1000 cuts" in this long-awaited climactic scene. It still gives me a headache to watch this one-take figurative and literal screen disaster with deplorable special effects. Oh well, it's not like they had any real competition that year, just that "Star Wars" flick, so no problem. The score John Williams gives in the film add tension and thriller to already action-packed film. The fight scene along with the blimp with the music gave me goosebumps. The movie didn't do any good PR for Goodyear by the way, and thus Goodyear started using the blue and yellow markings after the film was made to save itself. While the movie is a great flick, it's suffers from post-911 fears. After all, it doesn't seem so far-fetched today. If you want to watch a thriller. It's worth trying.

Not to be confused with Roger Corman's cult classic 1961 doppleganger, this always topical terrorism fare with Palestinian militants the villains on this occasion, procuring the services of slightly unhinged Vietnam veteran Bruce Dern (a truly manic performance) to hijack a Good Year blimp an detonate a bomb on-board over the Superbowl. Principal terrorist Marthe Keller is Israeli commando Robert Shaw's nemesis after he fails to neutralise her during a midnight raid on the Black September terrorist group headquarters. He subsequently teams up with CIA agent Fritz Weaver in a desperate effort to learn the details of the terror plot, before it can be executed.Taut, gripping Thomas Harris ("Red Dragon") penned thriller with a great supporting cast (Steven Keats, Michael Gazzo, Walter Brooke) and some memorable action sequences. The sub-plot involving feared terrorist Faisal (Bekim Fehmiu) being hunted on the streets of Miami, gunning down bystanders while the FBI descend upon him, is an absolute heart-stopper, not to mention a totally unexpected bloodbath. The climax too is tense and bloody, featuring some impressive stunt work.Aside from Shaw whose character is something of a battle weary patriot, both Marthe Keller as the ultimate black widow and Bruce Dern excel. Dern in particular as the hyper anxious ex-serviceman with a serious axe to grind, has rarely been better cast in a role custom built for his offbeat talents. While it's by no means perforated, if you look for plot holes, you'll find some, but insofar as terrorist movies go, it's a definite success and worth a look.