The holiday horror theme moves into the patriotic realm of the 4th of July with one of the rare holiday themed horror films that isn’t Halloween or Christmas based. I knew all about this one going in but it was still a neat experience to watch it. This came out just before Scream was released and was arguably one of the last slasher type films of its kind before being almost entirely replaced with the meta heavy, witty teen slashers that would follow in its wake.

Our killer corpse is Sam Harper, a soldier whose helicopter was shot down in Kuwait from friendly fire. The main focus, however, is Sam’s nephew Jody. That way we can get the whole Uncle Sam angle. Jody idolizes the idea of his uncle and has a child’s perception of what it means to be a hero and what it means to fight in a war. He doesn’t realize that his uncle was actually an abusive, violent piece of shit that was in the army mostly as an excuse to kill people. When his uncle’s remains get sent back for a funeral just before the 4th of July, his hero worship reaches critical mass. Uncle Sam rises from the dead for some reason, possibly because of Jody wishing for it or maybe because some punk teens were burning a flag near where his grave would be. Anyway, he gets out of the coffin and it’s patriotic murder time.

For being a horror movie about a zombie solider that kills people on Independence Day, Uncle Sam ends up having a very interesting way of presenting the whole war and soldier worship aspect. We start immediately with his death being friendly fire. Isaac Hayes plays an old Korean War vet, Jed, that had told Sam his war stories and inspired him to become a soldier. This fills Jed with regret and when Jody says he wants to be a soldier some day too, he has to tell him the ugly truth about war and that nobody is a hero in war. It’s not just in the dialogue, though. We also see the kills that Sam does at first seem like he’s being righteous or patriotic. He kills a peeping tom, flag burners, a crooked lawyer, and so on. But eventually he just starts killing people that are in the way or one girl in particular for no reason. It shows there is always a veneer of justice that can be put on killing but in the end, murder is still murder.

All that is well and good but it should also be said that the acting and pacing in this is pretty much what you would expect from a low budget slasher in the mid 90’s. Bless Isaac Hayes but he is not a good actor and his line delivery in this is as wooden as his character’s leg. It’s also always a risk having a kid be your main character and Jody is not the most charismatic or interesting character to hang a film on. The movie also randomly introduces another kid an hour in to the runtime that got burned and blinded by fireworks the year before and suddenly it makes him a main character for the last half hour. They also make it so that Sam says more to this random kid at one time than anyone else in the movie and he gets some weird psychic ability to know what’s happening with Sam and Jody. The script isn’t the best.

A decent enough movie to watch but mostly noteworthy as a historical signifier for the end of the old style of slasher. Also corners the market on being the one movie horror fans have to watch for a 4th of July party.

Score: 3 out of 5