- Directed by William Lustig
- Written by Larry Cohen
- Starring
- Christopher Ogden
- Isaac Hayes
- David Shark Fralick
- Leslie Neale
- Anne Tremko
- Produced by George G. Braunstein
You know who’s really intolerant? Zombies. Especially in the years since Romero first burst onto the scene, the living dead have never gotten behind that whole “live and let live (or approximate living)” thing. No room for diversity, for nuance. So when Larry Cohen wanted to write a script about the intolerance of all things right-wing and patriotic, it was natural that he turned to a zombie to make his point for him. Because what horror movie isn’t enhanced by colorful political symbols used ironically?
It’s been three years since Master Sergeant Sam Harper was lost and presumed dead in Kuwait, a victim of friendly fire. Back home in smalltown Twin Rivers, USA, his pubescent nephew Jody (Christopher Ogden) idolizes the memory of his Uncle Sam (get it? get it?) as a “real hero,” despite guarded looks exchanged by his single mom Sally (Leslie Neale) and Sam’s presumptive widow Louise (Anne Tremko). Everyone’s gotten used to the idea that Sam’s not around, and Louise has even been spending some guarded time with a single sheriff’s deputy when an Army sergeant (an unrecognizable Bo Hopkins) shows up on her doorstep at the end of June to report that Sam’s body has been found and will be shipped back for burial with full military honors.
“Wow! A real photon torpedo casing?”
Jody’s the only one who honestly grieves for the fallen “hero”; everyone else mixes their mourning with relief that he’s not coming home alive, even old Jed (the late, lamented Isaac Hayes), a one-legged Korean war vet whose idealized stories of his war had been instrumental in getting Sam to enlist. Thanks to his hero worship, Jody runs afoul of just about everybody, from his draft-dodging but nonjudgmental schoolteacher Mr. Crandall (Timothy Bottoms) to his mother’s erstwhile boyfriend Ralph (Tim Grimm), a tax attorney who exults in putting on over on the IRS. There just isn’t enough patriotism around here, gosh-darn it!
And then there’s the body. Louise doesn’t have enough room at her place, so Jody’s mom volunteers their house for the body to lie in state – closed coffin, obviously. But it wouldn’t be much of a zombie movie if the dead weren’t restless. So late in the night of July 3rd, the coffin opens from inside… and a dessicated figure in an immaculate dress uniform shambles forth… goes upstairs to Jody’s bedroom to retrieve the ammo box of medals that Sam had previously given to Jody… and out into the night…
See, this is why you should always take moisturizer to a desert zone.
The next scene is probably the tops for cleverness. Sure, it’s a couple of never-see-them-again characters, and relies on the idea that a hot blonde fresh from the shower will groom herself in front of an unshuttered window, but still: the window is on the second floor, and the peeper is in a full Uncle Sam costume, including mask, and gargantuan stilts. When discovered, he lopes away and into the park, where he fatally meets Sam, who then takes possession of the suit (minus the stilts).
All of which leads up to the whole raison d’etre of the movie: an undead soldier hidden in an Uncle Sam suit, prowling the community’s Fourth of July celebrations and killing those who are insufficiently patriotic. What’s odd, and a little bit disappointing, about this sequence is that many of the characters so dispatched were established at great length earlier, and then killed perfunctorily, or even off-screen: the draft-dodging teacher, the old sergeant who informed Louise of the recovery of Sam’s body, the tax attorney, some teens who previously burnt a flag in the cemetery and who today make a mockery of the national anthem, a sleazy congressman fighting for reelection, the deputy who’s trying to date Louise… The ease and speed with which they’re all slaughtered makes me wonder why we spent so much time getting to know them in the first place if their deaths were going to be so quick and by-the-numbers. It’s as if Larry Cohen looked at his page count when the Fourth of July celebration started and said, “Whoa! I’ve got a lot of people to kill in the next twenty pages!”
USA! USA!
All the more puzzling, then, is that there’s a character added in the third act, Barry (Zachary McLemore), a kid left blinded, wheelchair-bound, and covered with Freddy Krueger scars after a fireworks accident last year. There’s a hastily-established subplot of Sam acting as Barry’s avatar to take revenge on those responsible, even more hastily jettisoned when Barry turns out a lot less interested in revenge than Sam is. But hey, blind kids are always psychic (you knew that, right?), so Barry turns out useful in the showdown as Jody and old Jed try to stop Sam.
That’s right, Jody is working against Sam by the end, thanks to a scene which doesn’t have nearly the power it should: Sally and Louise explain to Jody that Sam wasn’t a hero, he was a sadistic sumbitch at home who joined the Army solely for the chance to kill people. Maybe it’s because Christopher Ogden as Jody really isn’t that good, and so the scene was restructured from the script so that a big dramatic climax wouldn’t rest on the weakest link. But whatever the reason, the real crux of the movie – Jody’s epiphany that all of his juvenile hero worship has been misplaced – just isn’t there. And that’s a pity; that one scene, handled well, would raise this movie in most viewers’ estimation by at least one letter grade.
Sack Race — of DOOM!!
Now. I started this review talking about politics, so I’d better cash that check. Obviously, the story concept demands a political angle: it’s a movie called Uncle Sam about a zombie soldier killing people on Independence Day, for crying out loud. And that’s exactly what we get, a political angle. A political angle. One. I think I could go out on a limb and guess who screenwriter Larry Cohen and director William Lustig (best known for the Maniac Cop trilogy) voted for in the last five Presidential elections. It’s not hard to guess; everyone and everything in the story which is even passingly pro-American, pro-military, patriotic, conservative, or in any other way flyover-countryesque is shown to be corrupted and hypocritical. Sam is a sadistic scumbag who joined the Army to hurt people. Sam was killed not by an enemy force, but by friendly fire. The sergeant who brought Sam’s body home only volunteers for that detail because he often scores with the widows. The Congressman is vapid, corrupt, and close to being recalled by the voters. Jed is crippled by guilt at being the only member of his unit to come home from Korea, and in contrast to his claim that he filled Sam’s head full of tales of military derring-do, warns Jody that enlistment is senseless at best and evil at worst. Ralph the lawyer, who dresses as Honest Abe Lincoln in the parade, exults in cheating the IRS and smirks that “The Star-Spangled Banner” is a stupid song. The stiltwalker in the Uncle Sam costume is a peeping Tom. Practically the only reasonable, well-tempered person in the whole movie is Mr. Crandall, the teacher who dodged the draft.
I’m not saying that war isn’t hell, and that it shouldn’t be avoided whenever possible. But Messrs. Cohen and Lustig don’t seem to want to entertain the possibility that someone can believe in patriotism or American exceptionalism or the sacrifice of military service for reasons of good conscience, without any venal ulterior motive.
More movies should have ended with Isaac Hayes and a cannon.
In other words, Cohen and Lustig strongly imply that they’re exactly the kind of people that Uncle Sam would label “unpatriotic cowards” and kill on principle.
Some Notable Totables:
- body count: 14
- breasts: 2
- explosions: 9 (plus a whole bunch of fireworks)
- dream sequences: 1
- ominous thunderstorms: 0
- actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 3
- Leslie Neale (Jody’s mother) played “Ensign Nagel” in the TNG episode “Peak Performance”
- Mark Chadwick (the Uncle Sam on stilts) played “Male Tarkalean” in the Enterprise episode “Regeneration” and performed stunts in Nemesis and 2009′s Star Trek
- Chris Durand (“Sergeant”) performed stunts in Generations
And although you won’t say this, I will: some of us might be inclined to take zombie Uncle Sam’s side on this one. As with Invisible Maniac, the killer may not be very sympathetic either; but hey, his victims just gave us plenty of reason not to miss them very much–especially if they happen to include Cohen and Lustig.
When I saw this in the video store I assumed it was a right-wing revenge fantasy.
I don’t think that was the point Nathan was making. Certainly the world is full of bad people just as portrayed in this movie.
It’s the fact that Lustig and Cohen attempt to brow beat us with a brick bat that patriotism is somehow bad.
I’m not ashamed of my country or the people who serve in it’s defense.
My daughter is one.
I don’t see patriotism as something repugnant.
The final scene of the movie (spoiler alert!) is Jody burning all of his “war toys” in the trash barrel in the back yard. That’s supposed to be our take-away message. Because “my uncle was a sadistic SOB” equals “military defense is evil,” I guess.
That’s not a spoiler that’s just you hopping on the grenade to save the rest of us.
I salute you sir and your constant efforts to protect your fellow movie lovers from the ravages of visual idiocy.
I’ve heard of this piece of crap before, and even seen a few minutes of it. But what fills me with sadness at this moment is that it sprung from the pen/word processor/personal computer/laptop of Larry Cohen. That’s just terribly disappointing…
:::pauses:::
Excuse me. That was God. He just told me to go do something.
(joke!)
Cohen is good, but he’s got several sticks up his butt over hot-button issues (religion, politics, consumerism), and he sometimes lets them get out of hand.
Speaking of zombies, by the way, the number of these annual “Month of the Living Dead” binges is now up to 10? Wow. If you keep this up, by 2012 you’ll be able to merge all these into a “Year of the Living Dead” binge.
My mind, it is blown!
@Inyarear:
But isn’t 2012 going to be the Year of the Living Dead in real life?
@James: I have it on good authority that the zombie uprising will actually take place in 2046. On March 31. At 2:03 pm.
Still unclear on the time zone, but I’ve been assuming GMT.
Fortunately, by then the alien apocalypse will have already decimated human life, so the dead won’t really bother anybody.
The fact that Sam was killed by friendly fire might be one the shining endorsements for the military in this case. Nobody likes a wife-beater.
My biggest issue with the movie is just how obvious everybody is. There is no nuance to any of the characters and instead of enhancing the political message it almost entirely misses it.
I’ve always been a fan of Larry Cohen, but there are few things worse than when he gets ham fisted.
Another thing I just realized: Isaac Hayes? Dude.
Alternate caption for the picture:
Hey, everybody, have you seen my balls?
They’re big and salty and brown!
Had I rented this movie, I would have gone into it expecting deliberately campy schlock a la Jack Frost (the 1997 horror/comedy, not the 1998 Michael Keaton drama/fantasy).
When I was 12 or 13 there was this TV series called Sledge Hammer! I was too young to care about politics, so I didn’t get that it was making fun of a certain type of conservative by exaggerating its main character’s beliefs. Fortunately, the show had a lot more going for it than just that bit of political satire, and it could also be enjoyed at face value.
When I see the show now I realize I must have been really oblivious to not notice that part of the show. Well, that, and it was the 1980s, so the character’s attitudes weren’t too different from any other action hero’s.
If you want to see the potato sack race backwards, it’s on my YouTube account: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DOYOJhvycY
P.S. The phrase “an undead soldier” in the review above made me think of Universal Soldier. In a way, that movie was zombiepunk.
I wonder if I can bend my own rules far enough to include the Universal Soldier movies in a future Month of the Living Dead? This bears further thought…
But they’re not the undead. I don’t remember Kurt Russel’s character being re-animated. Just taken as a child and forced to watch Albert Pyun and Uwe Boll movies (and possibly movies by that guy that made “Killers in the Woods”) until he was became the finely honed killing machine we see in the movie.
No, you’re thinking of Soldier (reviewed here). Universal Soldier is the Lundgren/Van Damme franchise.
I stand humbly corrected. And I’m praying Kurt Russel doesn’t come kick my arse for lumping him in with Dolph Lundgren and Van Damme.
When I watch this movie the 1st time, I was shocked out of my wits ! Could this be a movie made by Americans ?
Truly this is a generation that curses its Fatherland and whose eyes mocks its fathers and despises its mothers; whose end will be according to GOD’S Law : their eyes shall be eaten by ravens and eagles.
(Proverbs xxx : 11-17)
Close as bosombuddies to this piece of treasonous trash
is 1984″Tank”, an obscene piece of Confederate-bashing as vile as the former. Shame on James Gardner !
Yes, I hate it when people bash the Confederates. You try and set up a slave empire and some people won’t shut up about it.
It’s nice to know that I’m still to the left of someone out there.
The Confederacy was not a “slave empire”.
The slave trade was run by Africans and Arabs.
The transport of slaves was inhuman, true.
But once in America it was the beginning of a new life for the Africans: they were no longer in danger of being eaten, or killed in tribal wars or sold in slavery to less lenient masters. They were well sheltered and fed, and not worked to death.
If the Emancipation of slaves was the cause for The Civil War, then it would have broken out much earlier upon the
founding of Liberia, Land of The Freed African Slaves, who didn’t care much for their African countries of origin, where the PolPotentates who sold their fathers into slavery were still kicking.
Liberia was for more than a century a success story.
During WW2, the Liberian merchant ships transported
Allied freight on the seven seas, and the economy prospered greatly. What happened later is the Africans’
own doing. Like Rwanda, Congo, Somalia.
It was a White man, William Wilberforce(1759-1833)who
led the struggle to abolish slavery.
But of curse for people like Malcolm X, Liberians are
Whites in Black skin, and crime of B/B is all Bush’s & Whitey’s fault.
Back to the movie “Tank”,
for all its pseudo-sophistication is even more vile than “Uncle Sam” which didn’t even try to appear intellectual.
Slave: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States
Empire: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Circle_(proposed_country)
James: Interesting. American history isn’t my strong suit; I hadn’t heard of the Golden Circle before. And the mention of the Federal Republic of Central America puts it on my list of “Things I Wish Harry Turtledove Would Write.”
Skulldiggerin: You lost me (really, really lost me) at “They were well sheltered and fed, and not worked to death.” Except when they were, of course.
There’s really no way to support a position that begins, “The transport of slaves was inhuman, true. But…”
You know, I just had another interesting thought on this movie: arguably, isn’t zombie Sam kind of a moral improvement over his original self? I mean, originally, he was just killing people because he liked killing, but now he’s killing people for what he perceives as the terrible crime of dishonoring his country. The former Sam is just a psycho, but the new and improved zombie Sam is (arguably) an anti-hero!
This is kind of like the reinterpretation of Easy Rider that lets you think of it as having a happy ending.