Dial File — Steve Bornfeld: Wham! Bam! The terror of Sam

Friday, July 2, 1999 | 10:41 a.m.

Steve Bornfeld is the Sun features editor. His television column appears Fridays. Reach him at 259-4081 or steveb@vegas.com

You could die. ... In your car. ... With your brains coating your dashboard and your date's dress.

... Tonight. ... And be a statistic tomorrow.

Such was the nightly nightmare haunting still-one-piece noggins 22 years ago in New York courtesy of a deranged dude with the mysterious moniker, Son of Sam -- and local TV news.

Spike Lee relives it all for us -- including this expatriate New Yorker -- with "Summer of Sam" (see Roger Ebert's glowing review, page 5C) his semifictional saga of a baked Big Apple sweating out a sweltering summer and savage spree in '77 by David Berkowitz, also nicknamed the ".44-caliber killer."

Yes, there's abiding affection here for the "Wild Wild West," the dippy 007-on-the-sagebrush series that inspired the new silver screen blowout (Ebert's disappointed review, same page). And abiding incredulity for "South Park" (Ebert's incredulous review, yep, same page). But "Summer of Sam" and its recollection of a riveting reality series -- pre-"Cops" and "World's Scariest Fill-in-the-Blank" -- is this week's flick that fans the most mind-boggling TV memories.

Never before had local news been so rattling -- and strangely reassuring.

Berkowitz -- who claimed his homicidal marching orders came from a mutt -- was killing young couples in cars. He was particularly fond of ventilating brunettes. Yours Truly was 20 and living in New Rochelle (barely north of the Bronx, where "Summer" is set, and barely east of Yonkers, where Berkowitz lived). And dating Julie. A brunette. We occupied cars. The news was no longer just the news. It was ... THE NEWS.

National news milestones -- the moonwalk in '69, Nixon's resignation in '74 and Elvis' demise that very summer -- were compelling but in another world, on a grand, global scale. This was in our world -- a world conceivably as small as my blue Toyota.

The sight of grim-faced Big Apple anchors Bill Beutel and Jim Jensen (glimpsed in the film) signaled pure dread: More shots. More blood. More death. More proof, somehow, that Sam was inching closer. The result: nightmares, tension, second thoughts about Saturday night dates not built around George insulting Weezy on "The Jeffersons."

Catapulting beyond what the print press -- even the scrappy, hot-blooded New York tabloids -- could create, local TV forged an odd community bond: an emotional closing of ranks in a city famed for its fractiousness. Despite its sprawling, brawling machismo, New York seemed united every night in fear and fascination, fed by TV. We sat in rapt attention around the electronic campfire, engrossed in a grisly, all-too-real ghost story. TV was the storyteller.

You'd pass a neighborhood bar or a neighbor's window and just know that the pale blue light flickering out into the night equaled a Son of Sam bulletin -- and it mattered to all of us.

Strangely, there was comfort in what, despite its latter-day freak show trappings, remains local TV's greatest virtue: It turned one of the biggest cities into one of the smallest towns. Metropolis had become Mayberry (albeit a massive, manic Mayberry).

And so it remained until the August night that Bill and Jim told us that the guy in handcuffs was Sam.

Julie and I skipped the rest of the news. Seemed like a nice night for a drive.