5/25/07: Uncle Sam (1996)Despite having just cut our operating hours, we’re probably going to be shameless enough to be closed this coming Monday. Same goes for our first anniversary on the Fourth of July. So we might as well celebrate Memorial Day with the weirdness of
Uncle Sam—which will also serve to remind everyone why we’re the little website that provokes big qualms.
Uncle Sam certainly opens like a good Leftist epic. The body of Sgt. Sam Harper is found in the Kuwaiti desert after three years of sitting in a downed helicopter. We’re quickly informed that he died from friendly fire. His body is then shipped to his hometown of Twin Rivers just in time for the Fourth of July weekend.
The coffin sits in the living room of his sister—who, like Sam’s wife, was always hoping that the soldier would never come home at all. The only person in mourning is Sam’s young nephew Jody. The kid adored Sam as a good American. Jody certainly needed some kind of role model, considering the citizens who populate Twin Rivers. His mild math teacher had fled to Canada during the Vietnam War, and his aunt dates a dishonest lawyer named Ralph who brags about ripping off the government. He also serves as Abraham Lincoln in the town’s annual Fourth of July parade.
There’s a memorial gathering for Sam at the house, and Ralph decides that’s a good time to start pontificating about Operation Desert Storm. “Shame is,” he declares, “It was all about oil. That’s the God’s honest truth. Being some Arab’s bitch. Those poor boys died for nothing.”
Jody takes an opposing viewpoint: “Why don’t you just shut up?”
That gets Jody grounded so he can’t attend the big Fourth of July picnic. That’s fine with Jody. We’d be feeling anti-social, too. He can’t even get support from one-legged Korean War vet Jed Crowley (played by Isaac Hayes). Jody mulls over which military branch he wants to join, and Jed yells at him to get those foolish notions out of his head.
Later that night, three fun-loving local boys get ready for the Fourth by going to the cemetery and desecrating gravestones with swastikas. (In an insightful touch, it seems like they’re really trying to paint swastikas within the international “No” symbol.) The idiots also burn an American flag. A spark from the flames lands on Sam’s open grave. That’s the final straw for the soldier’s corpse. His crispy remains are reanimated, and he’s out for revenge.
Conveniently enough, Sam’s first victim is a guy dressed as Uncle Sam and walking around on stilts. The jerk is peeking into windows while looking for naked women. Sam uses a pair of gardening shears to modify both the costume and the Peeping Tom’s internal organs. Then it’s off to the graveyard to bury one young punk alive, and run another one up the old flagpole.
That Uncle Sam costume comes with a mask, so Sam is free to roam around the next day’s celebrations. He’s got plenty of good victims to choose from. The draft-dodging teacher gets George Washington’s hatchet to the head, and Ralph—in his role as Honest Abe Lincoln—provides some historical re-creation once Sam gets his hands on a pistol.
There’s also that punk who got away the night before. He kicks off the festivities with a Roseanne Barr-styled take on our national anthem—to Jed’s disgust and Ralph’s smug approval. Sam finally catches up to that creep while the teen’s cheating during a sack race, and he turns the sap’s sack into a body bag. Sam keeps the head for later.
The body count also includes a corrupt Congressman who becomes part of the fireworks display, and the sleazy Army rep who brought Sam’s body home and tried to hit on the widow. (They’re played, respectively, by Robert Forster and Bo Hopkins.
Uncle Sam has a cast worth saluting.)
We’ll concede that Sam goes overboard when he barbeques the barbecutie that he sees smoking a joint. That’s the same point in the film when Jody decides that Sam’s out of control. He teams up with Jed and a blind—and psychic!—little kid whose presence in the film is best ignored. (You could say that about the entire last 15 minutes of the movie, but we have to note that the blind kid’s irritating mom is played by P.J. Soles.)
The three catch up with Sam back at the sister’s house, where Jed makes it clear that Sam’s patriotism has gone too far. “You never fought for your country,” Jed says. “You just killed for the love of killing!” In Sam’s defense, that’s putting a talent to good use. Jody also steps up to complain that Sam is killing Americans.
“Americans?” replies Sam. “These are the same people who left me to die in the desert. Now they have to face me.”
This brings us back to
our old entry on
Deathdream. In that Vietnam-era thriller, a dead soldier returns to terrorize his small town, and asks of one victim, “I died for you. Why shouldn’t you return the favor?” As noted in our earlier write-up, that’s a valid question.
Except for a nonsensical kill in the opening scene,
Uncle Sam runs for about 45 minutes before our slasher strikes. That’s no accident. The weird pacing establishes how poorly Sam is remembered by the citizens he swore to defend. The script constantly reminds us that Sam was a bad person. In fact, he was a total bastard. What’s returned from the battlefield, however, has real heart and some reasonable complaints.
Our country betrays its soldiers every single day. There’ll be all kinds of weasels using this Memorial Day as an excuse to smear our brave men and women. Some of them will be prominent Democrats. As with
Deathdream,
Uncle Sam is a reminder that it’s a miracle that we get off so easy with how we treat those who defend our freedoms.
Uncle Sam has a sad ending, with [SPOILER] Sam killed again and Jody deciding to ditch his war toys in the final scene. There’s a weird twist that’s mostly a tribute to the legendary (and then-recently deceased) horror-film director Lucio Fulci, but it gives some hope that Jody’s mind will snap back into shape.
And then the credits roll while the great character actor William Smith—killed off early in the film—recites a poem that he wrote about our American fighting forces. Here’s the complete text of Smith’s “Desert Storm,” just to show how
Uncle Sam has a lot to say right up to the end:
I am a Marine on the border of Kuwait
I am a soldier—only God knows my fate
I am a sailor in a sea where I might die
I am the pilot, breathing hell from the sky
Twenty years ago, I was born in the USA
I got sent to the Desert Storm one August day
I'm young and scared but still full of pride
I'm an American, and Right is on my side
Granddad served Old Glory in World War Number Two
And I’m still defending the red, white & blue
Not one drop of blood is worth the oil in Kuwait
I might kill a man I don't know enough to hate
Hell, I don’t even know if I'm going to win
But I still believe that freedom’s not a sin
The soldiers of Iraq are waiting there to die
Both sides are still screaming the same warrior’s cry
Why? Why? Why?
I am a Marine on the border of Kuwait
I am a soldier—only God knows my fate
I am a sailor in a sea where I might die
I am the pilot, breathing hell from the sky
Make it your own: Uncle Sam is from director William Lustig and screenwriter
Larry Cohen, who also teamed up—and went uncredited—on 1994’s
The Expert. As
discussed here, that one was about a cop who loves the death penalty so much that he breaks into a prison to kill a murderer on Death Row. They're also the creative force behind the
Maniac Cop films, which have many similar themes to
Uncle Sam. It’s a lot of fun to hear Lustig and Cohen on the commentary track of the
Uncle Sam DVD. You can get
the VHS tape for cheaper, though.
Uncle Sam is released through Lustig’s own impressive
Blue Underground imprint, which also put out
Deathdream. Fortunate foreigners could briefly purchase the two DVDs as a specially-priced “Zombie Soldiers” collection. That’s good grindhouse thinking.
