Posted on 09/06/2020 2:04:34 PM PDT by Twotone
Our star movie columnist Kathy Shaidle is off this week, so your humble host has to fill in. Among the casualties of this lost summer is the summer blockbuster: for the first time since the mid-seventies, when Steven Spielberg and George Lucas seized the season for sharks and space aliens, the season has passed blockbuster-free. On the other hand, summer-in-the-city-wise, we seem back to the Seventies of Death Wish, of looting and random violence, and no law and order to be found. It isn't really a return to Death Wish New York, of course: the wholesale demographic transformation of American cities means the Paul Kersey types are long fled to red states, and the old ethnic solidarities are long gone; yell "Yo, Vinny!" in any ancient Italian-American neighborhood and get a thousand baffled Somalis and Uzbeks staring back at you.
Still, I find myself in the mood for a film of urban summer, in which you can feel the temperature rising, and the tensions too. In Billy Wilder's Seven Year Itch, Marilyn Monroe beats the New York heat by keeping her underwear in the freezer. In Spike Lee's 1999 film Summer of Sam, despite Mira Sorvino & Co taking turns ducking into a restaurant freezer, there's no way to beat the heat, and everyone's underwear is steaming: Summer of Sam is heavy on summer, and light on Sam - the Son of Sam, that is, the big serial killer of the city's 1977 record heat wave. By the end of Lee's long hot movie about that long hot summer, as the sun fries the brains and frazzles the nerves, the Son of Sam's craziness is merely a matter of degree.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Will listen to you Mark on Tuesday and Wednesday when you sub for El Rushbo.
Will listen to you Mark on Tuesday and Wednesday when you sub for El Rushbo.
There was a great mini-series about that Summer, which I lived through and which really was a terrifying time. It’s called “The Bronx is Burning” it will bring you right back to those days.
I was there that summer and lived in Queens.
I, being young and stupid, did not want to take the bus down Woodhaven Blvd from Queens Blvd one night in the summer so I hitched.
Two men picked me up. As soon as the car drove down the blvd the man upfront in the passenger seat turned, told me I should not be hitching. Did I not know there was a killer shooting women in Queens and held up the police sketch of the killer (later identified to be the Son of Sam).
At the time he was called the 44 caliber killer.
The men giving me a ride were detectives and read me the riot act about hitching.
Another thing that happened to me that summer before he was caught was I went to a disco, with a friend (girl) and as we walked in a man all the way across the dance floor at the bar turned, pointed to me and in a loud voice yelled he was ‘going to get me’. I never saw the guy before.
He then proceeded to yell he was the one they were looking for, the 44 caliber killer.
I have no idea what happened next in the disco because I turned and ran out the door I just came in. I never went back to that disco.
Btw, it was in Brooklyn.
Wasn’t it that summer we had the blackout, too? 1977. I’ll look for that mini series.
Seinfeld’s van or Son of Sam? You decide.
I declare “Summer of George”
Time to bite into a block of cheese
Yes. I lived in a completely white neighborhood, Middle Village. It happened while I was in the local bar with my friends. When the lights went out I guess the bartender fig it wouldn’t last long and he lit candles down the row of the bar. But as we still sat talking we eventually heard smashing noises outside on the street. I remember we opened the door and looked out and I saw storefront windows next to us on the same street being smashed out with objects thrown through them. This was on Woodhaven Blvd. There were cars pulled up on the street and parked and people after smashing the windows were climbing in to the stores and looting them. Only blacks were the perpetrators, mostly men but there were also some women.
The liquor store was emptied I found out the next day. Friend of mine worked there. The A&P was looted heavily as well. My friends and I hid in the bar during the whole thing. The bar luckily had no windows it was a brick building and the bartender locked the door for our safety. It was very frightening. I remember it got pretty warm in there but we were afraid to leave till the melee was over.
Yes, I think so! It’s really great there’s a lot about the Yankees too, iirc. In fact the Son if Sam part wraps up well before the end. I remember my dad waking me up by saying: they caught him. Totally knew exactly what he was talking about!
Son of Sam. The worst mass murderer the post office ever produced.
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