There are two kinds of people who go to football games: those who care about the sport and those who are just there for the hot dogs and beer. Two-Minute Warning (1976) is for neither of them. Instead, it’s a film for the guy in the cheap seats clutching binoculars, swearing he “saw something weird up there.” It’s also for anyone who enjoys Charlton Heston barking orders at people, John Cassavetes looking vaguely annoyed, and the sight of 91,000 panicked fans proving that stadium security in the ’70s was basically “hope for the best.” This was the decade when disaster films ruled the box office, and Two-Minute Warning took the genre straight to the gridiron, swapping earthquakes and burning skyscrapers for a deranged sniper picking off football fans like a kid playing Duck Hunt.
Guns, Gimmicks, and the NFL’s Cold Shoulder
Back in the 1970s, disaster movies were Hollywood’s equivalent of a buffet—just pile on more mayhem and let the audience sort it out. Universal Studios, high on the fumes of Airport, Earthquake, and The Towering Inferno, decided the only thing missing from their cash-grab lineup was a mass panic at a football game. The source material? A novel by George LaFountaine, whose biggest claim to fame was this movie getting made at all. The idea was simple: take America’s two favorite pastimes—football and senseless violence—and mash them together into a sweaty-palmed thriller.
Of course, this pitch didn’t sit well with the NFL. When Universal approached the league about featuring real teams and logos, the higher-ups responded with a firm, “Yeah, no thanks.” Even in the freewheeling ‘70s, the idea of snipers taking potshots at a Super Bowl crowd wasn’t exactly brand-friendly. The NFL’s rejection forced the film to invent “Championship X,” a vaguely important but legally distinct football game between the also-vaguely-named Baltimore and Los Angeles teams. But hey, at least the stadium was real—the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, fresh off a college game between Stanford and USC, which provided most of the crowd shots.
All-Star Cast, B-Movie Mayhem
Charlton Heston, Hollywood’s go-to guy for “authoritative man shouting under pressure,” took the lead as Captain Peter Holly, a police officer tasked with stopping the sniper before he turned the biggest game of the year into the worst halftime show ever. He was joined by John Cassavetes as the perpetually irritated SWAT commander, Martin Balsam as the stadium manager wondering if he left the stove on, and Gena Rowlands and David Janssen as a married couple who bicker their way through the chaos. Jack Klugman also popped in as a degenerate gambler because it wouldn’t be a ’70s movie without at least one character who owes money to the wrong people.
The film itself is a slow-burn—literally. The sniper spends most of the movie doing his best “creepy guy in the rafters” impression while the police bumble around, unsure of whether to act or wait until the final whistle. The final act? Pure pandemonium. When the SWAT team finally moves in, our nameless sniper (Warren Miller, whose entire personality is “owns a gun”) decides to go out in a blaze of random carnage, opening fire on the crowd and triggering one of the wildest stadium stampedes ever put on film. The chaos is masterfully shot, proving that people in the ’70s ran like their ankles were made of Jell-O.
A Bloody Mess (But a Fun One)
Critics, never ones to enjoy a little mass hysteria with their popcorn, mostly skewered Two-Minute Warning. Roger Ebert dismissed it as “a cheerfully unashamed exploitation of two of our great national preoccupations, pro football and guns,” which is another way of saying, “This movie gets America.” The New York Times griped that the sniper’s motives were never explained, as if we needed a detailed psychological profile to understand why a guy with a rifle in a stadium might be up to no good.
Despite the critical beatdown, the film found its audience—especially among disaster movie fans who just wanted to see a packed stadium go full anarchy mode. It even scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Editing, though it lost to Rocky, a movie with way fewer people getting trampled to death.
Things got weirder when NBC decided Two-Minute Warning was too violent for network television. Instead of just cutting a few scenes, they rewrote the whole thing. Enter the “art heist” subplot, where the sniper was now a decoy in a grand robbery scheme. They even shot 40 minutes of new footage, while hacking out nearly half of the original movie. Charlton Heston even came back to film some new scenes—except his hair was a different color, making it look like Captain Holly had discovered hair dye mid-investigation. The director, Larry Peerce, was so disgusted with this new version that he had his name removed, and the film was credited to some poor editor who probably regretted answering his phone that day.
A Disaster Movie That Deserves a Replay
Is Two-Minute Warning a great film? Not exactly. But it’s a damn entertaining one. It’s the kind of ’70s thriller that hits all the right beats: a sweaty-palmed premise, a stacked cast, and a final act that plays like someone yelled “every man for himself” on set. Sure, it’s messy. Sure, the sniper is about as developed as a cardboard cutout with a rifle. But if you’re in the mood for a disaster movie with a side of nihilistic sports commentary, this one still scores.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to make sure my stadium seats are nowhere near the upper decks.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)
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