Twilight's Last Gleaming

Twilight's Last Gleaming
Directed by	Robert Aldrich
Screenplay by	Ronald M. Cohen Edward Huebsch
Based on	Viper Three 1971 novel by Walter Wager
Produced by	Merv Adelson
Starring	Burt Lancaster Roscoe Lee Browne Joseph Cotten Melvyn Douglas Charles Durning Richard Jaeckel William Marshall Gerald S. O'Loughlin Richard Widmark Paul Winfield Burt Young
Cinematography	Robert B. Hauser
Edited by	Michael Luciano William Martin Maury Winetrobe
Music by	Jerry Goldsmith
Production company	Lorimar Productions
Distributed by	Allied Artists
Release date	February 9, 1977 (1977-02-09)
Running time	145 minutes
Countries	United States West Germany
Language	English
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?