Black Sunday

***Black Sunday*** is a 1977 American action thriller film directed by John Frankenheimer. It was theatrically released in the United States on April 1, 1977.

## Plot

Michael Lander is a pilot who flies the Goodyear Blimp over National Football League games to film them for network television. Secretly deranged by years of torture as a POW in the Vietnam War, he had a bitter court martial on his return and a failed marriage. He longs to kill himself and to take with him as many as possible of the cheerful, carefree civilians he sees from his blimp each weekend.

Lander is desperately in love with Dahlia Iyad, an operative from the Palestinian terrorist group Black September, who controls and manipulates him. They conspire together to launch a suicide attack using a bomb composed of plastique and a quarter-million steel flechettes. They plan to mount the bomb on the underside of the gondola of the Goodyear blimp which traditionally flies over the Super Bowl football game, and detonate it over the Miami Orange Bowl during Super Bowl X, in order to call attention to the plight of the Palestinians and to punish the United States for supporting Israel.

During a raid on a Black September safehouse in Beirut, the Israeli counter-terrorist Mossad agent David Kabakov surprises Iyad while she is showering. His mission was to kill everyone in the unit; however, seeing her unarmed and naked, he spares her life and turns his attention to clearing the rest of the safehouse, and she escapes. When the raid is complete, Kabakov finds a recorded message which Iyad had planned to publish after the terrorist attack. The recording explains the motive for the terrorism, but does not include any specific information about the attack plan itself.

Collaborating with FBI agent Sam Corley, Kabakov and his partner Robert Moshevsky try to learn the details of the plan. Meanwhile, Black September bribes freighter captain Tekiaki Ogawa to transport the plastic explosives, disguised as statuettes. Ogawa puts the explosives aboard Iyad and Lander's motorboat, but the two terrorists are discovered by the Coast Guard and forced to flee.

Ogawa is interrogated by Kabakov and Moshevsky, only for a bomb Lander had secretly planted to explode, killing Ogawa and hospitalizing Kabakov. Iyad disguises herself as a nun to infiltrate the hospital and assassinate Kabakov, only for Moshevsky to discover her before she kills him and escapes.

Kabakov uses a contact in the Egyptian government named Riaf to discover her identity, and Corley tracks Iyad and her superior Mohammed Fasil to a hotel in Miami. They attempt to capture them, but Iyad escapes, while Fasil is killed.

After searching Iyad's room, Kabakov realizes that they are targeting the Super Bowl. Corley and Kabakov form a security detail to search the crowd for any sign of suspicious activity. During the Super Bowl game, Kabakov figures out that Iyad and Lander have mounted the bomb on the Goodyear blimp. He and Corley commandeer a helicopter and set out in pursuit of the blimp, accompanied by a police helicopter.

Loaded with the bomb, the blimp approaches the stadium. Lander pilots the blimp while Iyad exchanges deadly gunfire with policemen in the pursuing helicopters. From his place in one helicopter, Kabakov sees Iyad's face, and recognizes her as the Black September agent whose life he had previously spared. This time he does not hesitate; he shoots and kills her. Lander is mortally wounded, but he lasts long enough to succeed in flying the blimp straight into the Super Bowl, causing mass chaos and destruction in the stadium. Just before dying, Lander lights the fuse of the weapon.

Just minutes away from detonation, Kabakov lowers himself from the helicopter to the blimp, and hooks it up with a cable to the helicopter, which hauls it out of the panicked stadium and over the ocean. Kabakov unhooks the cable from the blimp, and clings to the cable as the helicopter moves away to a safe distance. A few seconds later, the bomb detonates, firing the flechettes harmlessly into the water.

## Cast

**Robert Shaw** as Major David Kabakov

**Bruce Dern** as Michael Lander

**Marthe Keller** as Dahlia Iyad

**Fritz Weaver** as Sam Corley

**Bekim Fehmiu** as Mohammed Fasil