28 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED | SI.COM
to casting—disaster-movie staple Charlton Heston is the
topliner, joined by a veritable Love Boat of supporting
players, including Jack Klugman, John Cassavetes, Beau
Bridges, Martin Balsam, Gena Rowlands, David Janssen
and Walter Pidgeon—the film is a by-the-numbers,
Whitman’s Sampler of mini-melodramas that collide at
the Big Game when hell breaks loose. The sniper’s moti-
vation is never clear, not enough attention is placed on
the game and the film’s idea of an A-list football cameo
is retired NFL quarterback Joe Kapp, who looks as if he’s
on the shady side of 50. We never even find out who was
winning the game before its 90,000 fans scramble onto
the field screaming their heads off while ducking bullets.
Far better is 1977’s Black Sunday, which feels as suspense-
ful as a game clock during a tight fourth quarter. Based on
a novel by Thomas Harris (who would go on to write The
Silence of the Lambs), this slice of red-meat action follows
a former POW (Bruce Dern) who, after being manipulated
by a terrorist operative, pilots the Goodyear blimp (yes,
Goodyear agreed to this product placement) into Miami’s
Orange Bowl, intent on detonating a shower of lethal darts
into the crowd. Thanks to solid performances from Dern
as well as Marthe Keller (as his German terrorist handler)
and Robert Shaw (as a Mossad agent), Black Sunday is
actually one of the better entries in the ’70s disaster cycle.
It’s a sweaty procedural with excellent taste when it comes
to product placement—the thing that tips Shaw off to the
terrorists’ target is a copy of Sports Illustr ated.
For football lovers it also doesn’t hurt that the champion-
ship game looks and feels real...because it is. Producer
Robert Evans sweet-talked the NFL and Dolphins ownerJoe Robbie into giving the project their blessing. As a
result, legendarily crusty director John Frankenheimer and
his crew were able to shoot footage from the Orange Bowl’s
sidelines during Super Bowl X, between the Steelers and
the Cowboys. During one tense sequence, as Dern and
his would-be deadly blimp nosedive into the roaring sta-
dium, we get a nice, extended glimpse of Terry Bradshaw
throwing a touchdown to Lynn Swann. And if you’re deft
with the pause button, you can also spy Franco Harris,
Roger Staubach and the dapper coaches, Tom Landry
and Chuck Noll. Dern is riddled with bullets before he
can execute his deadly plan, and the movie version of
game spirals into chaos, but at least anyone can look up
the actual outcome: Steelers 21, Cowboys 17.H
OLLYWOOD’S FASCINATION WITH the Super Bowl
hasn’t just been limited to fictional snipers and killer
blimps. The game has served as both a setting and plot
point in a handful of non-disaster movies over the years.
Which isn’t to say that the movies weren’t disasters in their
own right. In 1980’s Where the Buffalo Roam, Bill Murray
dons aviator sunglasses and ingests several vials of illicit
substances as gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson.
Several episodes from Thompson’s lysergic reporting careerFR
OM(^) LE
FT:
(^) UN
IVE
RS
AL
/GE
TT
Y (^) I
MA
GE
S;
LM
PC
/G
ET
TY
(^) IM
AG
ES
; (^) (M
ICH
AE
L (^) O
CH
S (^) A
RC
HIV
ES
/GE
TT
Y (^) IM
AG
ES
RECIPES FOR DISASTER
With Two-Minute Warning (above) and
Black Sunday (right), the Big Game became a
serviceable setting for silver-screen suspense.
H
O
LL
Y
W
O
O
D
A
N
D
T
H
E
B
IG
G
A
M
E