Larry Cohen's reputation as a grindhouse smuggler of the first order has been pretty well set since Q: The Winged Serpent's cheeky 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 (if anything, even more funky in ambition) has only begun to attract the same level of attention, thanks to his recent Pacific Bell diptych. Among the casualties of the auteurist wars is Uncle Sam (with William Lustig at the helm), and I don't care which side of the current cultural-political schism you choose to worship, Cohen's got your number. While not much more plotwise than a elemental replay of the director and writer's previous zombie-vigilante collaboration Maniac Cop (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.   Eric Henderson