Uncle Sam (1996, William Lustig)
(Slight SPOILERS below!)
I decided to get real patriotic this July 4th by solemnly reflecting on the Land of the Free (by exercising my right to scream "enough with the goddamn firecrackers before I shove 'em up your tight little crack!") and the Home of the Brave (by reveling in Frank Ocean's marvelous tumblr posting). Most importantly, I finally sat my ass down to watch William Lustig's (Maniac, Maniac Cop, 10,000 Maniacs Murder Natalie Merchant) holiday horror, Uncle Sam. This weird zombie-slasher hybrid was quietly released straight-to-vid back in the mid-90's genre dry spell, despite being penned by horror staple Larry Cohen (It's Alive!).
The movie opens with an army sergeant messenger (an oh-so-shitbaggy William Smith) delivering the news to Louise Harper (Anne Tremko) that her soldier husband, Sam, who has been M.I.A. in Desert Storm for the past three years, was found dead. "We'll be sending the remains," says the creeper messenger (who later exclaims that the best perk of his job is macking on grieving widows), lazily reassuring her, "you'll get over it in time." Louise seems more relieved than distraught that her husband's body was found dead, and confides to her sister that she was afraid the messenger would tell her that Sam was found alive. Eyebrow raising, eh? Instead of thinking "why is this guy such a nasty perv?" or "why is this lady so scared of her dead husband?", there are more important questions to be answered, such as "who the hell wants a corpse that has been dead for three years delivered to them?!" Not only do they receive the coffin, they put it in their living room for the wake, just so Louise can look like a proper grieving war widow.
The film's protagonist is Cody, Louise's live-in nephew, who has blind adoration toward war based on his super awesome Uncle Sam's brainwashing. When Cody remarks during a classroom show-and-tell that he'll go into the army to be just like his Uncle Sam and "do whatever the President says, because he knows best," his 'Nam draft-resisting teacher (Timothy Bottoms, aka Johnny Got His Gun--well done with the irony, casting director!) shakes his head with resignation. Cody copes back home by playing with this GI Joes and talking to a photo of his Uncle Sam, which is autographed with a notation that anyone who does not like the American Way should be killed. Pretty good Uncle!
At Sam's wake, Cody sees Isaac Hayes (playing a character who is Sam's old war buddy) and asks him why he has a prosthetic leg (it blew up during war, duh!). Hayes' character makes it a point to tell the kid that his "other parts" still function, which is something a ten year old (not to mention the audience) really needed to know. Thanks, Chef.
Later that night, Sam's rotting corpse resurrects from his coffin, and we don't really know why. That's what you get for keeping a three-year-dead corpse in your living room for four days? He takes back his show-and-tell purple heart from Cody's room and then leaves the house. Following this is one of the movie's only scary scenes. It cuts to the outside of a bi-level house at night with someone in an Uncle Sam costume on stilts. High fucking stilts. And a creepy, wrinkly old mask. Peeping in the window on a young lady changing in her room. The shot alternates between the view of the window from the room and an outside angle filmed from below, with the red, white, and blue costumed freak looming tall. It's a quick, unsettling scene in an otherwise campy and unfrightening film.
After the girl cries out when she notices the peeper, we realize it really is just some dumbass peeper who then walks away on his insanely tall stilts, and any fear we experienced is alleviated by watching this moron try to stumble over obstacles while fleeing from the house. But oh! Soon the perv is pursued by Sam, who offs him with garden shears, which he then conveniently uses to trim the pants so that he can don the entire costume. This DIYness by Zombie Uncle Sam isn't just reserved for adjusting his outfit; he also uses this skill, instead of typical warfare weaponry, to kill the perps in the movie. And who are these bad victims? Apparently, anyone who stands in opposition to the American Way--disaffected youth, war resisting teachers, criminal lawyers who have the nerve to play Honest Abe in a 4th of July parade, bogus politicians (what's up, Robert Forster!), kids who fucked-up other kids with improper firecracker execution. While I'll admit there's a certain charm to Uncle Sam (who, for the record, has Blue Curacao tongue--someone's been drinkin'!) eschewing artillery for any immediately accessible Americana death object (an axe, a BBQ smoker, a flagpole), the main flaw of the film is that almost every death scene occurs off camera. Sure, we get to see the results after the kill, but for a movie that's dedicated "to Lucio" (aka Uncle Fulci!), it's a total gore let-down.
But whatever, let me get to the best part of this movie: The July 4th Celebration. Seriously, this po-dunk town goes ALL OUT for The Fourth. Everyone's decked out in costume (so much so that the creepy Uncle Sam with green and yellow eyes and rotting flesh underneath the creepy mask is no cause for concern), patriotic bands are playing, folks are pigging out on BBQ. Everyone ain't having it, though. We have the 90s alterna-jock who starts out belting the National Anthem just like a good Backstreet Boy, only to ruin it with a screeching mockery and a flash of his bum. He'll get his comeuppance in the potato sack race!
THE POTATO SACK RACE. This has to be the longest and most ridiculous potato sack race in cinema history. First of all, half of the participants Do It Wrong. Some of them, like Cody and his pals, do the typical "hold the sack at your waist, and hop as fast as you can" routine; the rest of them have the sacks pulled up to their necks, hopping into each other like spastic idiots. The race continues into the woods, un-monitored, and that's when the kids start taking each other out in what is apparently a race for their lives. Soon, the main instigator (obviously, the Nat'l Anthem mangling assface) is trampling the other kids, trips, and violently flails down a hill littered with junkyard metal. He should be pretty messed-up at this point, but he's evidently still concerned that he's going to lose the race, so he's still frantically hopping off-course with the sack pulled up to his neck when he bumps into Uncle Sam...
The other WTF moment during the celebration occurs when PJ Soles brings her wheelchair-bound kid to the festival with the sole purpose of making the other kids (and their parents) feel bad for her little Firecracker-Accident-on-Wheels. For whatever reason, Uncle Sam feels a mutual kinship with the kid, and after salaciously stroking his burned cheek, he tells him he'll help seek revenge on the rest of the community for what they did. One can only assume that the rest of the people Sam randomly kills off are the folks responsible for the tragic firecracker accident, but who knows.
While I appreciate that this admittedly campy movie functions as a Desert Storm critique (and let's be honest here, we really didn't have much pop culture criticism of the first Gulf War), the problem is that this isn't a horror film that works beyond being a standard slasher. Most of the violence is off camera, the acting is mediocre, and the overall feel of the film is kind of polished made-for-TV. Which is to say it lacks the grit of every other film by William Lustig OR Larry Cohen. An amusing viewing experience, indeed, but not a critical horror movie, even by 90s standards.
My Rating: 5 up-to-the-neck pa-tata sacks outta 10.
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