Summer of Sam

Take two popular subjects of the moment: the seventies and serial killers. Recent screenings about disturbed murderers include The Silence of the Lambs, Seven, Natural Born Killers and a large list of really good films.

As the first subject we have Boogie Nights both the movie and the ent, and Austin Powers is an a go-go revival of a style that a quarter of a century after is as hip as ever. A couple of hairdos around campus walk by as evidence.

Summer of Sam unites these two subjects in the usual Spike Lee joint about the members of a community messing with each other and facing the conflicts that thus rise.

The 102 oF of one of the hottest summers ever was nothing compared with the histerical heat wave produced by Summer of Sam, a killer that attacked brunetts at night with a .44 caliber back in 77.

The music of the time flows powerfully through the scenes, making some of them more of a rock video, and even two clubs that shaped the decade, the punk CBGB and the posh Studio 54, are portrayed as sources of this excellent soundtrack, that beats on as the vigilantes headed by the mobsters, the copper that try to trace the killer, Micky Mantle, the punk that comes back home and goes into porn, the stylist that professionally sleeps around but refuses to have the lights on with her wife, all zoom in at a crescendo ending that finishes a moment before the heat turns into meltdown.

Gonzalo Soltero