Twilight's Last Gleaming (1977)

Twilight's Last Gleaming is a 1977 film directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark. The film was a West German/US co-production, shot mainly at the Bavaria studios.

Loosely based on a 1971 novel, Viper Three by Walter Wager, it tells the story of Lawrence Dell, a renegade USAF general, who escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo near Montana, threatening to launch the missiles and start World War III unless the President reveals a top secret document to the American people about the Vietnam War.

A split screen technique is used at several points in the movie to give the audience insight into the simultaneously occurring strands of the storyline. The film's title, which functions on several levels, is taken from The Star-Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the United States of America:


O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light / what so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming.

Synopsis

After escaping from a military prison, rogue Air Force General Lawrence Dell (Burt Lancaster) and accomplices Powell (Paul Winfield) and Garvas (Burt Young) infiltrate an ICBM complex and gain launch control over its nine nuclear missiles. They then make direct contact with the US government (avoiding any media attention) and make their demands: $10 million ransom, and that the President (Charles Durning) go on national television and make public the contents of a top-secret document.

Actors