Cinema: Waiting for the Blimp

BLACK SUNDAY

Directed by JOHN FRANKENHEIMER

Screenplay by ERNEST LEHMAN, KENNETH ROSS and IVAN MOFFAT

As images go, you can't beat it: the Goodyear blimp suddenly looming large and low—much too low—over the Orange Bowl. To turn that benign and stately symbol of the country in a holiday mood into an instrument of unpredictable menace is a stroke of Pop-cult genius. If the blimp can run amuck, even in fantasy, what is there left that we can rely on?

Very little—as one horrid event after another has proved in the past two decades—except possibly Director...