Uncle Sam (1997): B+

Recycling Maniac Cop’s slasher flick formula for anti-war satire, director William Lustig and screenwriter Larry Cohen unearth the grotesque underbelly of Fourth of July jingoism with Uncle Sam. The corpse of chopper pilot Sam Harper – burnt to a crisp during the first Gulf War – is returned home to small town U.S.A, where the deceased military man’s wimpy nephew Jody (Christopher Ogden) dreams of being G.I. Joe until Isaac Hayes’ one-legged vet explains to the kid that war is hell and that his beloved uncle was really a violent, misogynistic psycho. Such claims are soon confirmed by Sam himself once he rises from his casket (purple heart stuck to his blackened chest) to kill un-American idiots, a group that includes teenage punks who enjoy burning the Stars and Stripes, Timothy Bottoms’ cowardly draft-dodger, and a stilts-utilizing peeping tom decked out in an Uncle Sam costume that the undead soldier assumes as his primary disguise. The money-shot killings are, unfortunately, nothing to write home about, and though Lustig and Cohen are generous enough to take potshots at everyone along the political spectrum, one pines for a somewhat more finely tuned lampoon of the fervently flag-saluting. Still, between Cohen’s wicked sense of humor (such as his employment of a wheelchair-bound psychic kid who was crippled by Independence Day fireworks) and Lustig’s creepy widescreen portraits of Norman Rockwell-ish Middle America, Uncle Sam is the best kind of B-movie, one that reinvigorates stale horror clichés via both tongue-in-cheek social commentary and an unironic, unbridled love for blood-and-guts mayhem.

Comments

[josephgrossberg]

B+? Damn, dude. Was it really that good, or were you just pining for something dark-and-humorous after all the film noir reviews?

Were there at least some gratuitous boob shots?

[Nick]

Well, I was feeling a bit generous, it's true. But I also dug the film, in part because it's so upfront about its affection for cheesy slasher flick conventions.

No great boob shots, I'm afraid to say. Only a quick one in the peeping tom scene.

[josephgrossberg]

Yes, but that's great, because there is absolutely no other reason -- other than the obligatory nipple or two -- for the stilt-wearing Uncle Sam to be a perv.

[Aaron Hillis]

Bless you for giving this one some respeck, it's such a fun little flick. When's Larry Cohen gonna do something else besides writing telephone thrillers and directing my personal fave from Masters of Horror's first season?

FYI, thanks for the link in your margin. If you look for your buddy McCabe on my links page, you'll see I did the same. Cheers, Nick!

[Nick]

No kidding - Cohen needs to get back to making some features of his own (though I too liked his MOH episode). The cinematic world needs him!

And thanks for the link - that thing rocks!

[Dennis Cozzalio]

Nick: I recently saw Lustig's Maniac for the first time and was soundly unimpressed. But your description of Uncle Sam is intriguing. Before doing the perfunctory IMDb search, do you know if it's on DVD? I liked the Lustig/Cohen combination on the commentary track for God Told Me To, but I didn't know they'd made any movies together. This one sounds like it might be in the best tradition of B-movies rooted in social or political commentary. Thanks for the heads up. And thanks too for the link on your sidebar.

[Nick]

Dennis,

Yeah, it's on DVD (in fact, there's a relatively new special edition that's good). As for whether you'll like it or not - it's definitely more of a tongue-in-cheek satire/slasher flick than a straightforward genre pic like Maniac. Somewhat more like Joe Dante's "Homecoming" from Showtime's recent Masters of Horror series, though I prefer Lustig and Cohen's satire to Dante's. Definitely worth giving a try.

As for the sidebar link - my pleasure.