A movie like Uncle Sam resides during that strange period in the 1990s where slasher flicks were relocated from independent movie theaters to a certain section of the video rental shops and aired on Showtime while the network was still trying to find its footing as the next HBO but couldn’t break away from the Skinemax image.
I remember seeing more soft-core movies on Showtimes than I’d like to image. Even if they were those foreign movies, they still looked like schlock and before Millennials/Gen Zers were misled by Kangaroo Jack, I stayed up late on Labor Day weekend 1992 to watch Emanuelle: Queen of the Desert, only to watch a Macaroni Combat flick that had been poorly re-edited it’d only appeal to Quentin Tarantino.
Speaking of QT, Robert Forster, who plays a shady Congressman in Uncle Sam probably spent the last 20 years of his life grateful that Q-Man told Robert DeNiro “No” when the two-time Oscar winner wanted to play Max Cherry in Jackie Brown. Tarantino held firm that he wanted Forster, who hadn’t appeared in a mainstream movie in years, for the role. Forster got rave reviews and an Oscar nomination.
And he enjoyed the autumn of his years as a more respectable actor. That being said, Forster and the rest of the cast of this movie which is made like a conservative American’s fantasy revenge flick can be glad it is mostly forgotten. Forster joins Isaac Hayes, Bo Hopkins, Timothy Bottoms and P.J. Soles as actors who used to appear in big movies directed by big-name directors.
But as of this posting, even the director William Lustig, famous for those Maniac Cop movies, hasn’t directed a movie since this went straight to video. The script is written by Larry Cohen, the filmmaker who had his mixture of mainstream movies and schlock. My guess is Cohen wrote this back in the early 1990s and threw it in a drawer. When he need to make a few bucks, he dusted it off and handed it to Lustig to direct.
Released in 1996, it involves Master Sgt. Sam Harper (David Fralick) who is killed in an helicopter crash in Kuwait during the Persian Gulf War which ended a good five years earlier. His body badly burned, Sam is sent back back to his home town of Twin Rivers. But Sam is actually an angry murdering zombie brought back to life to kill all the people who don’t show good American spirit and patriotism.
Or maybe he just enjoys killing people regardless of their sociopolitical beliefs. He does killed a local law enforcement which foreshadows how the MAGA people really DGAF about law enforcement until they beat up and kill non-whites people. And he does it all while wearing an Uncle Sam costume. The victims are rowdy “disrespectful” teenagers, who look more like college graduates, a teacher (Bottoms) who protested the Vietnam War, and other people who do bad things being a peeping tom and smoke a cannabis joint.
Most slasher movies portray victims as jerks who deserve their punishments, but these seem to be the types Stephen Miller, Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer as well as Fox News, OAN and Newsmax suggest deporting or executing. I’m sure they’d watch this with the manic glee that that crazy sumbitch Fred Phelps did when he watch Tom Hanks slowly die of AIDS in Philadelphia.
I can’t really tell if this is supposed to be a comedy or thriller. It doesn’t have the campy feel as Jack Frost, which was released during the same time. t’s not near as outrageously over the top as the Sleepaway Camp sequels. I also question why Sam would use an American flag pole to kill a character. Isn’t he disrespecting the flag code? Maybe it’s to show that some pro-America people really don’t practice what they preach.
Also, the protagonist, a tween named Jody Baker (Christopher Ogden) acts like such a dork you don’t know who to support. For what it’s worth, Forster does seem to have a great time in his few scenes as a shady politician.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 