Uncle Sam Wants Us Dead

I'm fairly certain everyone saw this box when they went to the video store (remember those?):

I know I do. I still remember where it was situated in the store. Back wall, about a third of the way in (going left to right), just below eye level. It had a holographic cover that changed from regular Uncle Sam to evil Uncle Sam, (not unlike the Jack Frost box). The tag line always struck me as amusing (because I'm a sucker for those things), but everything else about the movie looked terrible. How perspectives change once one gains a little more knowledge...

For instance, did you know that the film was written by Larry Cohen? Even though Special Effects was terrible, the man tries to make horror movies with something to say. All right, Uncle Sam. I'm listening. Also, did you know that William Lustig directed it? The man is responsible for one of the more unsettling horror movies I've ever seen: Maniac. Additionally, Uncle Sam has a cast featuring appearances by Robert Forster, P.J. Soles (*sigh*), Timothy Bottoms, and Isaac Hayes. OK, Uncle Sam. Let's do this.

Sam Harper returns form Operation Desert Storm in a coffin, killed by friendly fire. He spent his living years preaching patriotism to his young nephew who exalts his Uncle Sam as a hero (see, it's a clever title because Uncle Sam is the name of the character AND the icon) even though most know him as something other than that. But, for some reason, Sam returns from the dead (shades of Deathdream?) to punish the unpatriotic. In a way, it's the perfect movie for our current political environment and it was released in 1997. Doesn't it feel like there's a growing sense of "kill the unpatriotic" in this country, what with the whole, "let people without health insurance die" crowd. Uncle Sam works pretty well as a satire about blind patriotism. With the young nephew as the protagonist, it helps the film drive home the point that blind patriotism isn't just ridiculous, but it's a childlike and naive view of the world.

Cohen and Lustig don't do much to hide their distain for modern warfare. Isaac Hayes' character yells at the nephew to keep out of the army (the nephew still has about eight years to go) and that there are no heroes, only crazy people lucky enough not to get killed being crazy, get medals, then are told to go home and not be crazy anymore. There are lines that hint at the complexities of Vietnam and why draft-dodging wasn't necessarily cowardice and more lines about how war used to be about fighting something tangible. And the obvious, having your uber-patriotic soldier come back to life and kill people at an Independence Day celebration because they are less than perfect Americans.

I spoke of the difference between movies made in the '90s versus those made earlier and Uncle Sam is a decent example of that. Not so much in the aesthetic, but in the way the violence is portrayed. Through the '80s, horror filmmakers were getting away with all sorts of bloody mayhem even with many of the films getting severe cuts from censors. Into the '90s, though, horror movies pulled back and the violence largely happens off-screen with the end result being shown. Instead of having Tom Savini (for example) make a prosthetic body to shove a spike through, they cut away only to show someone with a bloody spike in them. Given that Lustig is responsible for one of the greatest head explosions in cinema history (supplied by Savini, of course), it's a little disappointing that Uncle Sam doesn't deliver the goods (this trend starts in the late-80s and is readily apparent in both Sleepaway Camp sequels which could really use some good gore because Bruce Springsteen's sister only gets a movie so far...).

Uncle Sam falls apart a bit in the third act, but considering what I was expecting, I'm more than happy with the experience. Even though it cuts short on some gore, it's nice to see someone actually lit on fire (as opposed to someone pretending and having a shitty CG fire added after) and the satire is pretty good. Netflix lists Uncle Sam as a comedy, which baffles me because there really isn't much that's funny in the film and I don't think the filmmakers intended it to be funny. I get the feeling that, much like my gut reaction above, the fine people at Netflix didn't watch the film but just assumed it was going to be in the "so-bad-it's-good" category. No. It's just good (but not great).

Making Movies with Doppelgangers: Special Effects

Doppelganger's are a major part of horror/thriller history. Vertigo, The Other, Femme Fatale, Dead Ringers, Sisters, even Dracula. It's to the point that when I watch a movie and one character sees another that they've supposedly never met, I assume it's because of an identical lost love (I was worried this was the case with Bloody Pit of Horror). The trope is well played out and I'm not sure when it hit its breaking point, so I hesitate being too hard on 1984's Special Effects. I probably just came to it after too much exposure. Anymore, it just feels like a lazy way to move a plot along.



Special Effects follows a wannabe actress but actual nude model, Mary Jean/Andrea (Zoe Lund) who has run away from her husband and child to chase her dream. Her husband, unfortunately named Keefe (Brad Rijn), tracks her down and wants to take her home but she runs away to filmmaker Chris Neville (Eric Bogosian) even though she's never met him and his career is spiraling downward. Andrea showing up at his door and he letting her in the the first "wha?!" moment of the movie. There seems to be a trend in this stream of horror movies I'm watching that the more you think about stuff, the less it makes sense.

Chris and Andrea's meeting is filled with silly movie talk like, "maybe we should slow dissolve to the bedroom" and, "I'll call you when it's time for your entrance." The movie talk is milked throughout Special Effects and it makes directors seem like they are insufferable to be around (maybe there are...). Chris kills Andrea when she won't put out and starts insulting him, but he's a creep and was recording their sexual encounter so he caught the crime on film. Instead of destroying the evidence (which he tried so hard to get rid of by washing the body and cleaning out underneath the fingernails) he decides to make a movie out of it (wha?!). I'm not sure what his plan was to begin with, but he ropes the accused and out on bail (via Chris) Keefe to star in it. Did he just know he'd find the dead girls exact double? How was he going to cut it into the film? It doesn't matter. For some reason, he's obsessed with whether or not people can tell reality from fiction out of context (with Lee Harvey Oswald's murder as his example). The plot isn't unlike Frenzy in that the guilty and accused party work closely together with the guilty trying to build evidence against the accused. There's even multiple strangulations.

I want to like Larry Cohen's movies more than I do. He tries to imbue his movies with a bit of social commentary that many horror films are more than happy to ignore for cheap scares. I still have plenty to see (most notably Bone and The Stuff), but while I respect the man, his good ideas never really pan out. With Special Effects, it feels like he wants to make some sort of indictment around the culture of filmmaking. those who want to get in it, and tabloid journalism. Everyone Chris Neville meets nose the details of his failures. The detective keeps trying to get more prestige out of his screen credit for his consulting help and offers rewrites for scenes (and infers during the conclusion that he's talented enough to finish Neville's movie). The doppelganger, Elaine (also, unsurprisingly, Lund, who has the most inconsistent accent as both characters that I've ever heard), freely goes along with pretty much everything ever and gets wrapped up wholly in her role (she doesn't even have am moment's qualm of getting naked on film). Unfortunately, Special Effects doesn't really hold up as a movie and that hurts any points Cohen is trying to make.

Special Effects isn't all bad, though. There are some very nice shots, notably the sea of headshots strewn across the floor and the shot from within the freight elevator. Bogosian does a pretty good job in an early role often reminding me of Elliott Gould. There's funny little moments such as the reveal of Dustin Hoffman's Tootsie headshot. And I was deeply unsettled by the implications of Elaine so freely going along with so much stuff willingly, especially the ending. It's not a very good film, but if you're into Larry Cohen's films, you should definitely check it out.