Larry Cohen’s reputation as a grindhouse smuggler of the first order was pretty well cemented since Q: The Winged Serpent’s cheeky Ray-Harryhausen-over-SoHo vibe generated surprisingly brisk box office lucre. But while The Stuff, It’s Alive, and God Told Me To are justly recognized as simultaneously sleazy and elegant milestones, Cohen’s screenwriting work—which, if anything, is even more funky in ambition—only began to attract the same level of attention thanks to the Pacific Bell diptych of Phone Booth and Cellular.
Among the casualties of the auteurist wars is William Lustig’s Uncle Sam, and I don’t care which side of the cultural-political schism you choose to worship, Cohen’s got your number. While not much more plotwise than a replay of Lustig and Cohen’s prior zombie-vigilante collaboration, Maniac Cop—and from the looks of it, at half the price—Cohen’s vicious portrait of wartime America as the land of opportunism, lip service, and raging (albeit spineless) jingoism skewers the hypocrisy of hawks and doves alike.
When the charred body of the titular Sam comes back from Iraq during Bush Sr.’s Gulf War, felled by friendly fire, the denizens of his small hometown—in the midst of their Independence Day festivities—all make a game attempt at putting a stiff-upper-lipped display of respect and allegiance for the benefit of the soldier’s nephew, Jody (Christopher Ogden). Interestingly, the little twig constantly lisps, “When I grow up, I’m going to be a soldier just like my uncle Sam,” despite the obvious impending “don’t tell” barriers lying ahead of him.
Only the sage Sergeant Jed Crowley (Isaac Hayes) seems to be willing to tell the boy the harsh truth: that Sam was something of a xenophobic, misogynistic, bloodthirsty asshole who probably deserved to get fragged. “There are no heroes, only crazy men who lose their mind in the middle of a battle,” Crowley growls. “And if by some miracle he doesn’t die, they pin a ribbon on him, send him home and tell him never to be crazy again.”
Sure enough, Sam’s Red, White, & BBQ corpse comes back to life and pins his Purple Heart directly onto his still cracklin’ chest to carry out a posthumous mission: to execute all the Americans unworthy of his warped sense of heroism, from draft dodgers to photo-op politicians to floppy-haired teenage punks who don’t sing the national anthem with the proper reverence to…well, actually everyone who isn’t a Muslim killing machine.
Complementing Cohen’s note-perfect string of nationalistic platitudes, Lustig’s surprisingly evocative widescreen compositions are peppered with an absurd parade of Americana: fireworks, potato-sack races, even a morose, wheelchair-bound young boy as a ludicrous representation of the stereotypical Vietnam vet. And almost all of it becomes the instruments of death to an amassed populace that feels no qualms about celebrating its own legacy of militaristic vengeance but draws the line if it threatens to soil their bubble of blithe privilege. Oh, and the film features a gliding, dreamlike chase scene on stilts that, no doubt to Sam’s chagrin, momentarily thrusts the video cheapie straight into the realm of swooning Euro-horror. Otherwise, it’s Lars von Trier’s Dogville through the eyes of a pit bull.
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