Twilight's Last Gleaming

Twilight's Last Gleaming
Directed byRobert Aldrich
Screenplay byRonald M. Cohen
Edward Huebsch
Based onViper Three
1971 novel
by Walter Wager
Produced byMerv Adelson
StarringBurt Lancaster
Roscoe Lee Browne
Joseph Cotten
Melvyn Douglas
Charles Durning
Richard Jaeckel
William Marshall
Gerald S. O'Loughlin
Richard Widmark
Paul Winfield
Burt Young
CinematographyRobert B. Hauser
Edited byMichael Luciano
William Martin
Maury Winetrobe
Music byJerry Goldsmith
Production
company
Distributed byAllied Artists
Release date
  • February 9, 1977 (1977-02-09)
Running time
145 minutes
CountriesUnited States
West Germany
LanguageEnglish
Budget$6.2 million[1]
Box office$4.5 million[2]

Twilight's Last Gleaming is a 1977 American thriller film directed by Robert Aldrich and starring Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark. The film was a West German/American 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 United States Air Force general who escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo in 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:

O say can you see, by the dawn's early light, / What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
  1. ^ Alain Silver and James Ursini, Whatever Happened to Robert Aldrich?, Limelight, 1995 p 300
  2. ^ Alain Silver and James Ursini, Whatever Happened to Robert Aldrich?, Limelight, 1995 p 42