Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.5
Overall		3.5

Black Sunday Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 1, 2023

Commentator Josh Nelson mentions that at the time of the releases of first the original novel and then the film adaptation of Black Sunday, the plot seemed preposterous to the point of being absolutely ludicrous, but that now, given the "20/20 hindsight" afforded by intervening decades, it may seem at least a little prophetic. Trivia fans may know that Black Sunday was the first book by Thomas Harris, who would go on to a certain literary immortality courtesy of his series which includes (links are to the film versions, of course) Hannibal Rising, Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. Harris has been a somewhat reclusive character, perhaps not to J.D. Salinger levels, but close, and so some may not know that he actually began his writing career as a true crime reporter for the Associated Press, which is where he evidently got the idea to tie then "current events", or at least relatively recent occurrences like the hostage crisis during the 1972 Olympics (which kind of ironically later became fodder for such films as Munich), into a story about large scale terrorism on the United States' own home soil. Harris' book wasn't initially a huge success, though it did make the New York Times vaunted bestseller list, but Paramount's legendary Robert Evans, always a prescient diviner of the cultural zeitgeist, decided it would make a great film if certain agreements could be forged, considering the book went into almost clinical detail about both a Super Bowl football championship as well as a certain flying dirigible whose branding is permanently ensconced in the American Marketing Hall of Fame (if there is such a thing).

One of the absolutely amazing things about Black Sunday, whatever its perceived flaws, is the frankly unbelievable cooperation that John Frankenheimer was able to elicit from Goodyear (that aforementioned blimp owner with the legendary brand name) and the National Football League, which allowed Frankenheimer to cover the proceedings of Super Bowl X in January of 1976. One of the interesting supplements included on this release, an American Film Institute documentary devoted to Frankenheimer, delves into the director's career and points out how there had already been a quasi-vérité aspect to at least some of Frankenheimer's previous work, notably Grand Prix, and as some of the other supplements included on this disc get into, there is an undeniable virtuosity to the way Frankenheimer blends the "real life" footage of that game with the fictional narrative playing out as part of the plot. One notable shot in particular sees a terrorist named Dahlia Iyad (Marthe Keller) towing a boat full of explosives down a Miami street which then has an seamless aerial pan over to the stadium where the game is just getting underway, and then ending in a zoom close-up of another central character. (Frankenheimer may have "cheated" just a bit with some pickup shots back in the stadium some time after the game had "wrapped", to use a cinematic term of art.)

In what might be a bit of black humor, a supplement on the disc mentions how detailed and stuffed with "how to" information Harris' original novel was, as if he were the terrorist organization profiling counterpart to Arthur Hailey, and how attempts to whittle down his narrative to something cinematically manageable may have led to the film's series of screenplay contributors. That said, one of the film's arguable downfalls is its overlength (nearly two and half hours) and often wandering narrative, though there's a clear through line that identifies Dahlia as a determined if misguided Black September operative out to teach the United States a lesson for its unwavering support of Israel. Dahlia has used her wiles to "recruit" a Vietnam vet named Michael Lander (Bruce Dern), who is obviously suffering from post traumatic stress disorder, and whose "issues" Dahlia has used toward her own nefarious ends, though Michael is, as they say, a "piece of work" himself whose own emotional imbalances might have not needed that much "nudging", so to speak.

Suffice it to say that a patently mad plot is hatched that is aided and abetted by Michael's employment as the pilot of the Goodyear blimp. Interestingly, in terms of both the film's overall structure and perhaps its perceived over length, Michael isn't even really introduced until later in the story, after a Mossad agent named David Kabakov (Robert Shaw) has been working on an Adolf Eichmann-like black ops strategy to take out a Black September cell, where he actually "meets cute" (if a meeting between Mossad and Black September can be so described) when in taking out that cell, he barges in on Dahlia naked in the shower. He decides to spare her, which of course comes back to haunt him later in the story. Dahlia has already been seen being more or less "assigned" to Lander as her eventual patsy in a mad scheme of supposed sociopolitical vengeance. There's a cat and mouse game that eventually ensues involving Kabakov, Dahlia and Lander which has a sidebar FBI agent named Sam Corley (Fritz Weaver) also included, as if to indicate that an American law presence was paying attention to a possible threat.

Black Sunday is not a traditional thriller in a number of ways, which may have led to its misperception or lack of "blockbuster" status when it was released. This is a film full of wounded characters, all of them zealots in their own way, who collide in a frankly ridiculous climax which is nonetheless so over the top (literally and figuratively) that you kind of can't help but be slightly amazed someone thought it up. Frankenheimer was a filmmaker who could ping pong between films with overt messages like The Manchurian Candidate and Seconds (to cite only two of several possible titles in Frankenheimer's filmography) to more large scale and ostensibly "accessible" fare like Grand Prix, and Black Sunday might be faulted for trying to deliver too much on both counts in an often overstuffed screenplay. You can feel Frankenheimer aiming for the same potent combo of political underpinning and what might be termed more Hitchcockian suspense elements as he did in Seven Days in May, and there are some nicely tense moments here, albeit arguably not enough to sustain the film's running time.

Black Sunday Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Black Sunday is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following information on the transfer:

Black Sunday is presented in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1 wit 1.0 mono, 2.0 stereo and 5.1 sound. The high definition master was supplied by Paramount, with additional color grading and picture restoration completed by Arrow Films and R3Store Studios.

Judging solely by screenshot comparisons, this looks very similar if not absolutely identical to the Austrailian Blu-ray release from Imprint that Svet reviewed some time ago. The overall palette strikes me as just a bit more suffused looking also a bit warmer than the Imprint release, while detail levels and grain structure are more interchangeable. There are definitely variations in color temperature throughout the presentation, and some of the interior scenes in particular can look a little brown, drab and dowdy. Outdoor material pops with considerable authority and also perhaps understandably offers better clarity and fine detail. As is discussed in some of the supplements, the old style composited special effects can be rather effective at times, and then kind of laughably inept at others, and the increased resolution of the Blu-ray can certainly make some of the "seams" like on traveling mattes more noticeable. The supplements get into Frankenheimer's use of split diopter lenses, something that allows for some penetrating deep focus even in scenes like the nighttime boat sequence fairly early in the film, and some of that work is especially notable for consistent detail levels.

Black Sunday Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Black Sunday features LPCM Mono, LPCM 2.0 and DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 options. There's an almost comical upgrade from the mono to the stereo track, with a much wider and better accounting of ambient environmental effects and John Williams' pulsating score in particular, so much so that the next "jump up" to DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 might not be instantly as noticeable. That said, the surround track definitely provides a wider soundstage once the film really gets into its gonzo hyperbolic mode in the last act, and the game footage in particular provides near nonstop engagement of the side and rear channels. Kind of ironically, one of the supplements compares Black Sunday to the "disaster genre" popularized by Irwin Allen, and Williams' score for this film is very much in keeping with his kind of bombastic, brass and percussion laden, scores for many of Allen's classic sixties science fiction television series. Optional English subtitles are available.

Black Sunday Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by Josh Nelson


• It Could Be Tomorrow (HD; 29:30) is an interesting visual essay by Sergio Angelini about the film.


• The Directors: John Frankenheimer (HD; 58:35) is an archival piece from 2003 evidently done for the AFI. This has a good overview of his work and some nice interviews with both Frankenheimer and many of his collaborators.


• Image Gallery (HD)

Arrow sent a check disc for purposes of this review, but also kindly provided a PDF copy of what looks to be another nicely appointed insert booklet, with a good essay by Barry Forshaw and the usual technical blurb along with cast and crew information. Our database shows that packaging features a slipcover.

Black Sunday Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I think Frankenheimer frankly might have had another classic on his hands had he simply pared down this unwieldy narrative even more than the three writers who worked on it evidently attempted to do. There are some standout sequences in this film, and the intercutting of the real Super Bowl with the dramatized events is actually kind of spectacularly effortless, but the film is probably inarguably too long and overly convoluted to sustain its ultimately absurd conceit. Technical merits are solid and the supplements very enjoyable. With caveats noted, Recommended.