Dahlia Iyad (Marthe Keller) is a terrorist and coldblooded killer from the 1977 movie Black Sunday.
She also is a zealot and volunteers to be a 'doomed spy'* for her cause. She is a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Black September.
Dahlia is being chased by an Israeli counter-terrorist Mossad agent named Major David Kabakov (Robert Shaw) who had a chance to kill her early in the story when he and a team of agents raided the house in which she and the rest of her terrorist cell were staying. He caught her nude and vulnerable in the shower and decided not to kill her with his Uzi as she was clearly unarmed. This was a mistake that he would learn to regret.
After the raid and massacre of the Black September terrorist cell Major Kabakov and his team find out that the next target is the Super Bowl but do not know the how or when.
Kabakov now teams up with the FBI and attempts to stop the attack. They attempt to cancel the Super Bowl but the NFL (National Football League) owners refuse to comply, saying that it would be easier to cancel Christmas.
Mean while Dahlia has met Michael Lander (Bruce Dern) who is a pilot of one of the Goodyear Blimps. He is also crazy bomb maker who was tortured in Vietnam and badly treated by the government and divorced by his wife. Dahlia seduces Lander and together they plan an attack on the Super Bowl.
They build a bomb that looks like a small rowboat but is really made from plastic explosives laced with metal ball barring to act as shrapnel.
The Blimp appears over the Super Bowl.
Dahlia and Lander test a smaller bomb which was shaped like an old fashion tripod mounted camera on an unsuspecting famer. The famer is murdered buy a thousand pieces of shrapnel and the side of his barn is riddled with holes, showing just how devastation the full size bomb will be.
Lander hijacks the Goodyear Blimp killing the pilot on duty. He then flies the blimp to an open field where Lander is waiting with the rowboat shaped bomb in a boat trailer. Lander brings the blimp down and the blimp support crew are talked into helpping to attach the bomb to the bottom of the blimp’s gondola. Dahlia then boards the blimp and pushes out the television cameras. The blimp support crew rush the gondola to stop her and she machine guns them down in cold blood.
Lander then pilot the blimp towards the Miami Stadium where the Super Bowl is being held.
Major Kabakov sees the blimp and realizes that it may be used as a weapon, as it is the one thing that has been overlooked. Kavakov gets in a helicopter and from the chopper he spots Dahlia from a distance. Dahlia opens fire and wounds Major Kabakov's FBI contact. The chopper pilot flies up out of view of the gondola. Kabakov then takes the door possition. Kabakov cocks his submachine gun as the chopper pilot dives back into ranges of the gondola.
Dahlia makes eye contact with Major Kabakov one last time.
Kabakov makes eye contact one last time as she lifts her Madsen M50 machine gun to open fire but this time he does not spare her and guns down down Dahlia in a hail of bullets. Her body is riddled with bullets. Kabakov then turns his machine gun on Lander, who is wounded but still alive. Before dying Lander lights the fuse to the frangment bomb.
The unpiloted blimp is still heading for the stadium as the football fans run for their lives. The blimp knocks over a light tower and the fans panic and are hurt trying to get out of the way.
Kabakov has the chopper pilot fly him over the top of the Goodyear blimp. He then is lowered down on a cable and hook and mounts the top of the airship. After some difficulty he attaches the hook. The helicopter is able to tow the blimp away so it can explode safely over the sea.
TRIVA:
* A "Doomed spy" is espiaonage jargon for an agent or asset that is sent to their death as part of a mission.
Black Sunday was based on Thomas Harris' 1975 novel of the same name.
The inspiration of the story came from the Munich massacre, perpetrated by the Black September organization against Israeli athletes at the 1972 Summer Olympics, giving both the novel and film its title.
The film was produced by Robert Evans, and stars Robert Shaw, Bruce Dern, and Marthe Keller.
The screenplay was written by Ernest Lehman, Kenneth Ross, and Ivan Moffat.
The movie was directed by John Frankenheimer.
The blimp stopped with a skyhook.
The movie was made in 1977, which was the same year that the first Star Wars movie came out. One look at the rear projected Goodyear blimp sequence in Black Sunday shows you just how ahead of their time the special effects in Star Wars truly were.
Scenes for Black Sunday were filmed during Super Bowl X which took place at Orange Bowl stadium in Miami, Florida 18 January 1976. The commentators covering the event mentioned the filming of the movie during the live broadcast. And they showed from a distance the film cameras filming actors running around on the sidelines during the game.
Super Bowl X was between National Football Conference (NFC) champion Dallas Cowboys and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Pittsburgh Steelers. The Steelers defeated the Cowboys by the score of 21–17.
Amazing stunt work by Major David Kabakov is lowered from a helicopter to the blimp.
The Goodyear Blimp is destroyed over the ocean.
The Goodyear blimp falling out of the sky onto the stadium was filmed after the Super Bowl was over with a group of extras taking the place of the fans.
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