“Summer of Sam”, Original Japanese Video Release Poster 2000, B2 Size (51 × 73 cm) ZA131

This is an original Japanese B2 poster printed in 2000 to promote the Japanese home-video release of Summer of Sam, Spike Lee’s feverish ensemble drama set during the Son of Sam panic in New York. Although the film is a 1999 American production, and opened theatrically in Japan on 15 April 2000, this particular poster is the Japanese video release variant, with the design itself announcing “VIDEO 10.18 RELEASE.”

Film background
Directed by Spike Lee, Summer of Sam stars John Leguizamo, Adrien Brody, Mira Sorvino, and Jennifer Esposito. Rather than functioning as a conventional serial-killer thriller, the film uses the real 1977 Son of Sam murders as the backdrop for a volatile portrait of fear, paranoia, lust, suspicion, and social breakdown in the Bronx during one brutally hot summer. 

Poster design
This is a superb and highly unusual design. Instead of foregrounding the cast, the entire composition is built from tabloid-style newspaper front pages, echoing the media frenzy and civic hysteria surrounding the Son of Sam case. Spike Lee’s portrait appears at the top, while blood-red handwritten-style lettering and the huge SOS graphic slash across the sheet with real urgency. The result is bold, confrontational, and conceptually much stronger than a standard character poster—exactly the kind of graphic, era-specific design that makes Japanese promotional paper for late-1990s cinema so appealing.

Condition
Excellent. Please review the photos—they show the exact poster for sale. 

It is over 25 years old!

It is not a reproduction or a reprint.

Certificate of Authenticity included.