© 2008 William Ahearn
It seems anybody in Hollywood can take a killer on the roam and insert him into a situation that ends with the killer being killed and the lucky couple who met as a result smooching off into the sunset. Most of the films in the “Sea Of Love and . . .” section fulfill this tired formula.
Spike Lee’s 1999 film “Summer of Sam” is nothing if not ambitious. It deals more with the effects that David Berkowitz’s twisted killing campaign had on a community than on the murders or the depraved mind that spawned them. Written by Victor Colicchio, Michael Imperioli (who are better known as actors and both appear in the film) and Spike Lee, the film centers on the residents of a South Bronx community in the summer of 1977.
For background on David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam,” go here, here or here. Of course, you could also go to the “official” David Berkowitz website. That website may be one of the most disturbing links of this serial killer series.
One thing that “Summer of Sam” accomplishes is to show how terror filters down from the headlines and into the streets and how lives are changed by fear and the seemingly endless anxiety of waiting for the next victim to be found.
Cutting episodes of Berkowitz’s tormented mind – and the scene with the talking dog is a bizarre touch – with the stories of characters in a community slowly unhinging, the film also plays with the culture of a New York City neighborhood in the late 1970s. Set as a period piece with disco and punk – there are scenes at CBGB, Studio 54 and Plato’s Retreat, a sex club that was in the Ansonia Hotel – this isn’t a typical serial killer movie.
David Berkowitz taunted the press and the police with his letters. He loved the publicity. Detectives and profilers worked around the clock to find out who he was and to stop him. What eventually nailed the Son of Sam wasn’t fingerprints, DNA, profilers, snitches, witnesses or psychics. It was rudimentary police work.
David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam, was captured because of a parking ticket.