Uncle Sam (1996)

 As much as I love a lot of Larry Cohen's films, this particular script for William Lustig's Uncle Sam (1996) didn't really hit the bullseye all the way with me. There is a very distinctive message that is quite on the nose regarding Cohen's anti-war sentiment, featuring the film on and near 4th of July. I don't think Lustig had a lot of money because most of the gore is off screen where victims are found or he sets up the camera to avoid weapons used fully on screen. The resurrected soldier, Sam Harper (David Fralick), was in the Army because he loved killing, according to struggling Jed Crowley (Isaac Hayes), the only survivor of a campaign in the first Gulf War. Jed is missing a leg due to stepping on a mine. During a "friendly fire" mishap, Sam's truck was hit, leaving those inside mortally wounded. Sam, though, seems to be "undead" somehow, since he's all burned up and chopped up, still seemingly able to use a gun on an officer and that officer's commander (William Smith, in a cameo, may he RIP) before "dying". His body is returned home in a flag-draped coffin, "rejuvenated" when some local teen toughs spray paint on his tombstone and twirl a burning American flag for kicks. So Sam will leave his coffin and take aim at those he considers opposite his own beliefs. So if you are a flag burner or spray paint his tombstone, you get hung by the wire meant for the American flag, get spray painted in the face and buried alive, or decapitated with a meat hatchet. As far as the meat hatchet goes, the guy losing his head was pummeling potato sack race participants while laughing as each falls hard to the ground in pain. If you are one of those corrupt politicians looking for the next tragedy to exploit for more voters (Robert Forster, in a cameo, may he RIP), Sam will rope-tie you to a platform, plant fireworks on you, and set off quite a sparkly display leading to quite the explosion lighting up a 4th of July celebration where a township looks on in horror. If you are a teacher who once draft-dodged and opposed the Vietnam War (Timothy Bottoms; he's still with us), Sam will make sure an ax is firmly planted in your forehead in the classroom. If you are one of those decorated sergeants who seems to use the job of informing grieving widows of the loss of their husbands primarily to get laid (Bo Hopkins, in a rare role where you just want to boo him for being a shit pretending to be a sympathetic representative of the armed forces), a neck slash awaits you...and you can be the body in Sam's coffin for weight while he's off murdering. 

The film really reveals some unsettling details about Sam. This isn't a story of a good soldier rising from the grave to kill off scumbags. His sister, Sally (Leslie Neale) tells her sister-in-law, Louise (Anne Tremko) and son, Jody (Christopher Ogden) in a way that isn't explicitly detailed but still quite obvious that Sam molested her for six years as a kid. And Sam is mentioned in his civilian life as intimidating and scary. Jody, an impressionable little boy who considers Sam a hero, must come to terms with who the man he idolizes really is. And Larry Cohen's script doesn't paint war as anything to consider patriotic, as seen when Jed tells Jody that he should be anything but a soldier...Jed really gets passionate about describing the war as anything but exciting or adventurous. Hayes, I think, has some real conviction and a deep sadness very expressed in how he carries himself...he probably could be considered the actor who comes out of the film the best.

This isn't that abrasive, go-for-the-jugular, non-stop-violence slasher you might anticipate from a Lustig film...in the little town where this film is set, Lustig never quite packs a punch his NYC films did. There is a grit missing, that KAPOW, except the use of the cannon at the end when Jed waits for Jody to give him the word. A friend of Jody's, blind and facially scarred from a firecracker incident, is touched on the face by Sam during the National Anthem...it gave me the creeps, especially in how Sam talks to him in that throaty whisper. 

Sam's motivations beyond killing folks in town are to add Jody to his company...but first the kid must die. There is an epic sustained burn with a second cannon ball explosion that popped me. I love a good full human body burn and house explosion. Some of the makeup effects were actually not too bad considering Lustig had only so much of a budget to work with. 

But I have to be honest: this was on the dull side for me. None of the murders in the film were especially significant, and I even felt the big fireworks display involving Forster felt especially flat. The middle portion deals a lot with Cohen's anti-war message and how Jody must be unconverted was unexpected to me, but painting Smith at the beginning as heartless, Hopkins as scummy, and Hayes as traumatized went a long way to describe exactly Larry's feelings on the matter. There was even a scene where a peeping tom takes a peek at a naked girl through her upper floor bedroom in stilted legs, dressed as a very tall Uncle Sam. Even Jody's mom is dating a tax cheat specialist found with a little bullet in his skull while dressed as Honest Abe (the irony wasn't missed, Larry). Jody is treated as quite mature for his age if a bit naive about the reality of the Army life...he's not really a bad kid, certainly not as obnoxious or exhausting. And Jody, along with his handicapped pal and Jed, so courageous at the end, was set up at the beginning to be the one who must lead Sam to his doom. I don't know...it looks flat, it is acted flatly, and the recognizable faces are barely in the film very long. And the dearth of onscreen kills left much to be desired. When the film was over, I just felt, "Eh, that was okay." Not really that memorable besides the cannon, sustained burn, and Sam's rotted corpse makeup. 2/5

***The timing of this film was merely coincidental. How I feel about my country's catastrophic exit from a country we should have left years ago has no bearing on this film as a choice for tonight. I just movie surfed through Tubi and decided to watch it.***