UNCLE SAM – From Bill Lustig and Larry Cohen, ‘Uncle Sam’ is a kind of bastardised ‘Monkey’s Paw’ variant, one we’ve seen play out before in the likes of ‘Deathdream’ – young solider back from the war, sadly in a coffin, only, sadder still, he won’t stay in there. It’s really lumpy, but I liked its scattershot weirdness – a struggling pace fails to conceal oddities such as an Uncle Sam impersonator on stilts perving at someone’s window whilst trying to maintain balance, a suburban shoot-out finale involving canons and Isaac Hayes, and, best of all, an endless and pointless sack race – there you go, how many of those did Freddie f*cking Kruger ever win? I love the way it makes its political points by getting rid of any subtext whatsoever and just going for flat declarations – “war is bad, authority is bollocks, teachers are hypocritical dickheads etc etc etc”. And how about that ending? A direct homage to the final head-scratching frames of Fulci’s ‘City Of The Living Dead’ – Lustig, you’ve got quite a nerve. Well, don’t expect ‘Maniac’ or even ‘Maniac Cop’, but if you’re trawling the genre’s doldrum years (early / mid-nineties) you could do far worse.
THE INVISIBLE MANIAC – Quite literally mad scientist Kevin Dornwinkle escapes a locked ward and scores a gig as a physics teacher so he can perfect his invisibility serum and lech at his students. I should theoretically despise any variant of the ‘campus sex comedy’ thing that soiled the eighties from ‘Porky’s’ onwards, but ‘The Invisible Maniac’ is trash heaven. It’s one big throwaway gag, but there’s something squalid at its heart. All the men in it are awful, humiliated weirdoes; all the women are basically a load of tits. There’s nothing heavy about it on the surface – this is a film where someone is murdered by baguette, complete with comedy bulging throat prosthetic – but the mild sleaze feels nastier because it involves a pervy teacher and there’s just such a callousness about it all that somehow feels a bit thrilling. “F*ck reality, we’ve got a camera, a shower room and three or four days of catering budget – let’s go!” A questionable delight full of grubby quirks.
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