Total Force (1996)

Back in March I had Rich Hawes from the DTV Digest podcast on our pod to discuss this film and its sequel, Absolute Force. He and Mike and Steve had just covered it for their throwback segment on their pod, and when I asked him about coming on, he liked the idea of discussing this and its sequel in more detail than the segment on their podcast allowed; and I, having seen that these were on Tubi, was definitely intrigued. In addition to us, our friends at Comeuppance have covered this as well.

Total Force is about Richard Lynch, a defense contractor who developed a device called the Neurolator--not to be confused with the delightful candy Now and Later, which I used to mix in with my other penny candy when we went to the Goldenrod on York Beach in Maine when I was growing up. No, the Neurolator uses a laser from a satellite to turn opposing soldiers' brains into mush, but not before they become violent zombies who attack their own troops. The problem is, the turn to mush part doesn't kick in, and now Lynch needs to call in the Total Force team, led by Timothy Bottoms, to clean up the mess. Then, after he frames them for dealing drugs (?), Lynch is then taken off the project himself, which causes him to call in mercenary Frank Stallone to break into the facility it's being housed in. Sounds like we need to call our Total Force guys back in, huh?

This movie was awarded zero stars by the guys at Comeuppance. That's right, "we award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul;" and Rich's compatriots on DTV Digest couldn't believe how horrible this was--and if you listen to their show at all (which you should be if you're not), they are almost never this hard on a film. Is this really that bad? Quite possibly, but it's an intriguing bad, which is why I think Rich wanted to discuss it. Writer/director Steven Kaman, who has worked with "rah-rah military beats bad guys" schlock auteur J. Christian, Engvordsen, looks like he's trying to go less black and white with this effort, but he's also trying for this MTV 90s TV show thing that feels all over the place. One scene in a hotel room or something where Frank Stallone and his team are getting their marching orders is a great example, cameras are whipping around all over the place, with all kinds of odd angles, while Stallone is slouched on a couch laughing at this creeper fixer guy getting fresh with Calista Carradine and her twisting the creeper's arm back as a result. We get these random in-cuts of stock footage like we're watching M/A/R/R/S's "Pump Up the Volume," which makes sense in a music video, but why here? When the thing becomes more straight-ahead actioner toward the end though, it's kind of a fun dynamic, especially with Bottoms, Stallone, and Lynch, but that's near the end of the movie, and by then you've been through a lot of kookiness. This is a unique entry in the 90s DTV action catalog, and that alone may make this worth it, or totally not.

Kaman also goes by the name "Sven Nuvo," and he got his start in the early 80s doing cinematography for X-rated movies. In 1987 he teams with the aforementioned Engvordsen for the latter's directorial debut, Hangmen, starring Sandra Bullock in her debut as well. From there he works with Engvordsen a lot, though it seems like as the 90s go on, and Engvordsen shifts into things like Airboss, which are more obvious rah-rah panderers, Kaman no longer works with him, and does this film instead, followed by two others of his own after--one of which is the sequel to this, Absolute Force. In that sense, this movie almost feels like a response to the films Engvordsen would do in the late 90s/early 2000s, like the Airboss series. The problem is, it's as if Kaman had too many things he wanted to say about foreign policy and the military-industrial complex--which he also demonstrates in this film that he may not fully understand, because it seems like he thinks there's an actual complex that exists. While the execution may not be there, I like that he tried to do something other than the rah-rah fest we see so often. Does that award him a star in a five star rating system? Good question, and I don't have an answer for you...

We last saw the great Richard Lynch here in 2013, and at that time we said it was a travesty he wasn't in the Hall of Fame. Now it's 2022, and he still isn't in there, so what does that make it? The thing about him is he's like a baddie in a can: you just open him up and throw him in a pot, and he's ready to eat. The problem is though, do you let him do his thing, or do you disrupt his flow with a bunch of other stuff? There's a scene where he's talking to Bottoms through a video phone, and it's all kinds of edits and different kinds of film all put together, which is meant to give us a sense of the technology. Again, I get what Kaman was going for, but the result was Lynch looked sillier than he looked sinister. Just the same, it's good to see Lynch back, and with all the credits he has out there that we haven't covered, I have no excuse to not get the next film of his up sooner than 9 years from now. (Scary to think about that isn't it, what the world will be like in 2031!)

Another issue with the film was that Frank Stallone and his crew--Calista Carradine, Oleg Taktarov, and Tom Bresnahan--were cooler than Bottoms's Total Force. Kaman at least mitigated this by having them kill innocent people, but then he further mitigated by having Stallone and Bottoms team up after Lynch turns a bunch of lab workers into zombies with the Neurolator and has them attack everyone while he tries to escape in a helicopter. From a Destro Effect standpoint, Kaman has committed a major error: he made is cooler baddies sufficiently bad, but then didn't give them their comeuppance. You can't use those two Destro Effect mitigating factors together, if you're using one you have to abandon the other. But as we saw with other decisions Kaman made, he just didn't care--or he was trying to make the point that one man's terrorist group is another man's government wet works clean-up crew team? Unfortunately if that was the case, I don't think it worked, and we were left with baddies who killed innocent people and got away with it at the end.

 

Finally, going back to Kaman potentially not understanding what the military-industrial complex is--or at least making it look like he didn't understand it--I guess it might be good to remember that in 1996 this kind of information wasn't as readily available. I myself didn't learn about it until a few years later, when I was in college and it came up in my Sociology 101 class. Nowadays you can look it and anything else up on Wikipedia, so not understanding a concept like this fully is less forgivable. Also, if you go on Twitter, you'll see a deeper understanding of how the military-industrial complex works, with people tweeting about how a fraction of our military budget would fund public college for everyone who wants it, or how PBS and infrastructure costs make up such a small percentage of the overall budget compared to military spending. We also talk about the trickle-down effects, like how the military-industrial complex begets the police-industrial complex and the prison-industrial complex. These were all concepts that were beyond the scope of what Kaman wanted to do with his movie, but it's interesting how he was trying them out in 1996, while his former directorial comrade Engvordsen was selling us on how great the military-industrial complex was in his late 90s and early 2000s films.

And with that, let's wrap this up. You can currently stream this on Tubi in the States, but I think Rich said in the UK you had to settle for YouTube. Whichever it is, free-to-stream is the way to go if you want to check this out. For Ty and Brett at Comeuppance to give this zero stars, and for Mike and Steve on DTV Digest to dislike it so vehemently, it has to be a unique brand of bad, which I think it is. For more info on it before you jump in, you can listen to episode 95 of the podcast where Rich and I discuss it. It was a great conversation and worth checking out!

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0145534

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

Spoiler (1998)

We're staring to exhaust our supply of Gary Daniels films. There are a few others available, and I plan on hitting them in the near future, but after that, it's either waiting for the pile of flicks he's done after 2009 to be released here in the States, or search around and see if some of the more obscure older ones pop up. But we got this one, so we might as well take advantage of it.

Spoiler takes place in the future, where criminals that try to escape from prison are so named, and when caught again, sent into deep freeze for inordinate amounts of time. Daniels is one of these Spoilers, and after he's caught escaping, he's given 26 years. Then he escapes again, and is given a bunch more. And then he escapes again, and is captured again. When he escapes this time, will he let them take him in alive?



If this sounds like a Groundhog's Day scenario in a movie, it felt like it too. The first 40 minutes or so is just the film spinning its wheels. Really, none of it gets us anywhere other than back to where we started. I want to say "who thinks that's a good idea?", but I'm not so sure the people who made this movie cared. All they seemed to care about was this idea of Daniels not aging and seeing his daughter when she's old and dying, and basing a sci-fi actioner around it. Not that this has a lot of action. First off, Daniels doesn't sport his sweet martial arts. Total waste. Why again did you cast Daniels then? And they had all this other talent that they used each for either one scene or a small part: Bryan Genesse, Meg Foster, Jeffrey Combs, (I think) Timothy Bottoms, and (I think) James Booth. This should've been The Fugitive set in the future, with Daniels using his wits to stay escaped-- not get captured and escape over and over. An idea and a film sauteed in wrong sauce.

The thing is, we've seen from films like Rage, that Daniels can do The Fugitive paradigm and do it well. And we had some really great supporting characters in this that could have filled that out and made it so much cooler. The film starts with Genesse and Daniels in dust-up, but it's really just them hitting each other and falling over. Hell no! You've got two great martial artists, and you can't have them choreograph something awesome for us? Then keep Genesse and have him appear in future scenes-- or maybe have him team up with Jeffrey Combs, who was himself a great baddie, but unfortunately only comes in at the very end. What? He should've been the Tommy lee Jones to Daniels's Harrison Ford. This was not a vehicle where Daniels was allowed to shine, and it suffered for that.



Let's get back to the Jeffrey Combs thing, because when he pops in in the last 15 minutes or so, I'm wondering "where have you been all my film?" He was the ultimate baddie, but he had too little time to flex his baddie muscles. The whole Groundhog's Day theme of this film, where Daniels keeps getting frozen and waking up decades later, meant that a guy as great as Combs couldn't appear for more than one small section, otherwise he'd bee too old later. That's why you scrap a silly premise like that. Also, it's probably time I got more Combs on this site, huh?

As I said above, this entire film was based around this idea of a father staying the same age and seeing his daughter when she's really old and on her death bed. Sounds cool in theory, but in practice, it killed everything that could've been good about the movie. I think sometimes these film makers get married to an idea, and can't see that it's sauteed in wrong sauce. When that happens, you get the best from actors like Gary Daniels left on the shelf, and potentially film anchoring performances from great actors like Meg Foster and Jeffrey Combs wasted on tiny parts.



Finally, I really liked the images of the futuristic cities in this. Again, because much of the film is Daniels getting frozen and trying to escape prison, we don't see those enough either. Ugh, it just makes me see how awesome a sci-fi futuristic Fugitive would have been with what they had to work with, and how much it was all wasted.

I can't do this anymore I need to put this review to bed. You want to watch a movie where Gary Daniels doesn't fight, by all means, but it wasn't for me. You want to watch a movie where the first 40 minutes goes nowhere, by all means, but that wasn't for me either. You want to watch a movie where a great Jeffrey Combs baddie gets barely 15 minutes due to a silly plot premise? By all mean, but it upsets me too much to talk about it. I believe this is out of print, but you can get it new or used on DVD from Amazon, but I wouldn't bother.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120187/

Lone Tiger (1999)

This was one of those sneaky ones that I had in my queue, not at the top but near it, and then, when all the ones above it were deemed unavailable, it was sent to me. Will it have been a nice surprise or worse than a Daffy Duck themed tie for Christmas. Also, Ty at Comeuppance Reviews took the plunge on this bad boy as well.

Lone Tiger is about a dude from Japan who comes to Las Vegas with a very furry tiger mask-- it looks like a furrier skinned it off a real tiger's face!-- and an eye for revenge. His dad used to wear the mask as a wrestler, and our man needs to know who murdered him. Also, he has his dad's score to settle with wrestler The Dark Tiger, played by Mattias Hues, the guy his dad was supposed to wrestle before he was killed. Anyway, when shady underworld dude Richard Lynch offers him some cash and a shot at joining Timothy Bottoms's wrestling league-- and as a result a shot at Dark Tiger-- he takes it, even though he and his trainer, Robert Z'Dar, are total douchebags. Oh yeah, and our hero befriends some street urchins too.



The only thing that made sense about this film was that it wasn't very good. First off, it has a running time of around 105 minutes, and we know if you're moving past the 88 minute mark, your film better be damn good, and this one wasn't even close. Second, was I supposed to take it seriously? I mean, between the mask, and the wrestling that was I guess guys fighting for real or something, and Timothy Bottoms's well-feathered hair, the whole thing seemed like a joke. The fights were extremely clunky too-- I wonder why, oh wait, I think I got it, the fights were clunky because the main hero was doing all his scenes with his vision obstructed by a ridiculous looking tiger mask! And the thing is, usually you can take something like this for the so bad it's good ride, and it would have been, except now we're brought back to that extended running time. By the time we hit the awesome stuff at the end with Robert Z'Dar coughing up his cherry Starburst (TM), any fun energy this film might have had had been exhausted.

One element of this film that looked intriguing going in was that we had three of the best DTV baddies, Richard Lynch, Robert Z'Dar, and Matthias Hues, all in one film. I had a feeling one of the three would end up being a good guy, and that was Hues, which was actually a really cool turn for him, because he works well as a good guy. I don't know that I'd like to see him as a good guy all the time, because he makes a better bad guy, but it's nice for a change. The other thing is, he had a really fun scene where he got to do some pro wrestling. This is where this film went wrong though, because they didn't give us more of that and less of our hero eating fried chicken or telling Richard Lynch he wouldn't kill for him.



Something tells me Robert Z'Dar was sold on this film when his agent told him he'd only have to wear sweatpants and act like a douche the whole time, only exerting himself for one scene at the end. Where do I sign up, right? Still, as long as that meaty face is featured prominently, I think we're all all right. I do think it wasn't very fair of the director to continue shooting while Z'Dar was coughing up his cherry Starburst at the end. Someone should've performed the Heimlich or at least kicked him over a dining room chair so he could perform it on himself.

We're much more used to the Timothy Bottoms that looks like our former President, G.W. Bush, so this extremely hair-feathered version is a bit of a trip. He and Richard Lynch-- whose hair is also fairly well-feathered, but we're used to that with him-- are like former adversaries or something, and they have a score to settle or something, I don't really know, by that point I was like 75 minutes in, and had really stopped trying. One could've double-crossed the other in an amateur bowling tournament for all I knew.



There was one plus, another McDonald's made an appearance. I'm wondering if I should start tagging them. If anything, it made my mind wander all the more as the film dragged on. I was like "man, that McDonald's sounds good right now, I bet I could run over there and back without missing anything..." It was cold out that day, though, and my tiger mask was at the cleaner's, and I couldn't risk the frostbite on my face.

You can get this from Netflix on DVD. How bad does that taste, huh? Almost none of the Bloodfist films are available, but hey, we got Lone Tiger. I don't know why I'm complaining, I was the moron who put it in his queue...

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0285680/

The Land That Time Forgot (2009)

We often give The Asylum a hard time for their crass approach to film making. Just stick a 90-minute sack of asscrack on the shelves with a name similar to another bigger film already in the theater, and hope as many people as possible rent it based on name-unrecognition. Here I have to give them some credit for creativity in The Land That Time Forgot, because the 1975 original was released to grab people who watched Land of the Lost, which was on TV at the time. A really cool way to make money off the Will Ferrell movie that was in theaters at the time, and pay homage to a classic fantasy film that was released to make money off the TV show the Will Ferrell movie was based on too.

The Land That Time Forgot is another C. Thomas Howell directed/acted Asylum effort. Here, instead of U-Boats and WWI, we have two modern newlyweds on a cruise (Howell and his wife, and the girl from the Miller Lite commercial and her hubby), captained by Timothy Bottoms, that's blown off course in the Bermuda Triangle, and ends up on an island with dinosaurs and whatnot. Howell's wife is separated from them, feared dead, while the other four meet up with a couple other cast-aways. These cast-aways take them to another part of the island, run by Nazi soldiers, also shipwrecked, and holding Howell's wife hostage. Anyway, they plan to get her out, while the two cast-aways they met steal Bottoms' boat, stranding them there. Now our heroes and the Germans team up and refine some petrol they've found, so they can power their submarine and sail home.



This was pretty good. If you like low-budget movies from the 1950s with silly looking dinosaurs and notsogood acting, this is the movie for you. It did have some lulls, and there were some scenes that could've been less drawn out, but overall, it wasn't as bad as we've seen from The Asylum. I guess my question is, why do these films have to be 90 minutes long? All of their 1950s counterparts were about 75 minutes. Chop 'em down a bit and just throw as many CGI dinosaurs and people running and screaming away from them as you can.

This is Howell's sixth directorial effort, and his third with The Asylum. I don't really know what there is to say about that, other than that seems to be how The Asylum has kept him around. He just gets to remake old Sci-Fi classics. There have been calls to get Howell into the DTVC Hall of Fame, but there have been just as many calls against it. I had originally slated him for the inaugural class when I started the DTVC in 2007, but I couldn't get him past the board, and as time's gone on, I think I can agree with that, as his resume isn't quite there. One thing I can say in his defense: this will be his 11th film on here, and of those 11, four are Asylum pics, and another is Red Dawn, not a DTV movie. Still, that Asylum argument is flawed, because The Da Vinci Treasure made my top ten DTV films of the 2000s.



A really interesting Timothy Bottoms. No George W. Bush for him. Hello Captain Ron! I almost didn't recognize him. According to the Wikipedia article on The Land That Time Forgot, Bottoms was in the 1991 remake of Land of the Lost, so his inclusion in this film is fitting. He has a vast bio that spans everything, and I'd like to get more of his DTV gems up here, but there's just so many other actors out there with priority right now, that we'll have to settle with reviews here and there for right now.

One of the elements I've never liked about The Land of the Lost was how someone always had to be stranded, in this case Howell and his wife. I can't fault this film for keeping that, because if they didn't, they would've been killed for it, as it was a part of the book and 1975 movie. It feels weird though, and maybe weirdest in this version, because everyone was working so well together, and for anyone to be left behind made a bad ending out of a really fun movie. Again, they really couldn't change it, so I'm not faulting them, just pointing out my opinion on it.



Do you recognize this girl? Her name's Lindsey McKeon, which probably doesn't ring a bell. Currently she has a part in one of the dumbest light beer ad campaigns ever, which is saying a lot, because light beer commercials are often as dumb as they get. It's those Miller Lite commercials where they say "man up and drink lite beer." Say it out loud so the sheer stupidity of the statement will sink in for you. "Man up and drink lite beer." Try some others while you're at it. "Man up and get a manicure." "Man up and watch a Matthew McConaughey Romantic Comedy." "Man up and ask your wife to get rid of the mouse you just saw run across the floor." And the best part, the women in these commercials are implying their gender is the inferior and weaker one. Notsomuch in Lindsey's, where all she does is bring back the old Seinfeld joke about the man purse; but in the second one, a woman tells a man to "take off [his] skirt", again indicating being a woman is a sign of weakness. Odd message from a woman, huh? Anyway, seeing McKeon in the commercial I was like "where have I seen her from?", and then seeing her in this I was able to look her up, and found that I could've recognized in any number of roles, though not her most recent one, the CW drama One Tree Hill (not a show I watch). If she's in that, what is she doing in light beer commercials? Better yet, what is she doing in Asylum pictures? Oh, and by the way, I drink PBR because they have no commercials.

This is one of the few Asylum films that gets it right. It is that modern 1950s style sci-fi flick with the bad special effects and bad acting. It might have been a little long and a little weird, but for what it is, it isn't so bad. We've seen The Asylum get much worse, so I guess we should be happy we made it out this time unscathed.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1410205/

Diamondbacks (1998)

Out of everyone in the DTVC Hall of Fame, Miles O'Keefe is probably closest to the Bruce Penhall/Julie Strain lowest level of bad action movies. He has his moments, like his two films with fellow DTVC Hall of Famer Rowdy Roddy Piper, and his role in Fred Williamson's Silent Hunter; but otherwise his movies tend to scrape the bottom of the barrel, which is fine, I guess. He may be most famous for his turn as Ator in the MST3K classic, Cave Dwellers. I still feel that episode is the pinnacle of the art form of making fun of bad movies, and a must-see for anyone who partakes in that for a hobby.

Diamondbacks is about a small northern California town that just happens to be the site of the main communications conduit between NASA and two astronauts orbiting in space that are deploying a satellite. Word on the street is this satellite will be used by the US to spy on its citizens. Miles O'Keefe, head of the eponymous militia group, doesn't want to see that happen, and he and his men don black jumpsuits and Kalashnikovs and take over the command center in their sleepy little northern California town. The dude running the command center won't go down without a fight, and he does everything he can to warn GW Bush impersonator Timothy Bottoms, the man at NASA in charge of the mission, that trouble's afoot. Luckily, Bottoms is a meticulous dude, and a split second blip in their equipment that occurred when Miles and his boys commandeered the center hasn't passed unnoticed, despite how crazy his fellow NASA cats might think he is. Can the California guy get a hold of Bottoms before Miles and his boys ruin the mission?



This is a very poor film shot on what must've been a shoestring budget. One clue to the lack of money was the file footage they took for free from NASA and spliced into the film. It looked extremely out of place and hilarious, like something my friends might have done as a joke in high school putting together a movie for a class project. Back in 1981, when MTV first launched, they also used NASA footage, that of the moon landing, again because it was free and they were strapped for cash too. In that case, the moon man would become an icon forever associated with the cable television station. In this case it looked ridiculous and let us know just what kind of crap we were in for.

I liked that Miles O'Keefe was in this schlock sack of asscrack. It tells me that if I ever got some scratch together to make my own film, I could probably afford him. He had to have done this for the promise of a warm meal everyday the film was shooting, and I'm not a bad cook. I can pay that kind of rate. I hope he likes Chicken Tetrazzini. According to imdb he's done nine movies since this one, the most recent 2005's The Unknown. At least I feel better knowing he's eating (or was until two years ago... maybe we should start a charity fund in case those Ator royalties are running out!)



Watching a lot of bad horror movies, I always come across the old "The whole town is Evil" paradigm where the hero[es] are stranded in this out of the way backwater where everyone is out to kill him[them]. This film uses the same paradigm, only changes it so they're all in league with the local militia. Every time our hero escapes the clutches of Miles and his men, the local he turns to for help inevitably double-crosses him and sends him with his tail between his legs back into captivity. It's never really a surprise either, especially when he goes to the not-so-cute yet presented as cute female radio DJ/political commentator. Of course, in her case, it may not be that she digs the militia, but rather Miles' Too Sweet Pecs.



This film was made two years before the 2000 election, where George W. Bush became our 43rd president, and Timothy Bottoms found his meal ticket. Other than Haliburton, I can't think of anyone who's profited more from Bush's presidency. I can't say I blame him either. I've been told by people recently that I look like a young Martin Van Buren, and I've been out looking for an agent in order to cash in myself. Just the same, it's hard to take him seriously now in this as a no-nonsense NASA head. My friends and I had the same problem when we saw him in the previously reviewed Uncle Sam Wants You... Dead. All we see is a goofy Dubyah. According to imdb, he's taken advantage of his post-2000 fame to move up from movies like this, to movies like the ABC Family original Holiday in Handcuffs, where Melissa Joan Hart kidnaps AC Slater and takes him home to meet her family. Bottoms plays the dad along side Night Court's Markie Post as the mom. Good work out of you Tim.

I got this recently on Netflix, and I must say, I can't really recommend getting your hands on it in even that capacity. Do not spend any money on it, it's so bad. Maybe if you've got an Netflix unlimited plan, and have gotten so many movies that month that it's paid for itself twice over, you may want to waste one on this, but it's iffy. I live in Portland, ME, and when I got this, I had to wait extra time because they needed to ship it special from Gaithersburg, MD. It wasn't worth it.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218155/

Uncle Sam (1997)

I think I saw this film with some friends the same night we rented Jack Frost. Or maybe we saw the trailer for it on the video that had Jack Frost, and we rented it later. I don't remember, and I'm not sure it's all that important anyway.

Uncle Sam is about a guy killed in Desert Storm who sits in a coffin in his sister's house for a while before his charred body is resurrected and he dons an Uncle Sam costume and kills everyone that's not patriotic. This film also has Isaac Hayes and the guy who does G.W. impersonations, which is interesting, because I didn't know the guy existed before G.W. was elected in 2000. Anyway, there's a big Fourth of July cookout, and Uncle Sam, who's already killed quite a few people, has plans to do away with a lot more then. Isaac Hayes won't let that happen, nor a kid who's related to the soldier (I can't remember if he was the son or nephew. It doesn't really matter). They blow the bastard up.

 

This movie was disturbingly bad. I like bad horror as much as the next guy, but this fell smack dab in the category of depraved, and I couldn't get behind that. Most distressing was some kid who was scarred with burns on his body, rendered blind, and confined to a wheel chair after a bad fireworks accident. It took a silly horror movie and made it darker than it needed to be. The people who make these films need to understand that you can't have it both ways: it's either silly or dark. When you've got a guy in a silly Uncle Sam costume killing people, you can't have a hideously scarred boy in a wheel chair.

My buddy liked this. I'm not sure I really get why. He liked it more than Jack Frost, which was pure silly, and silly done right. I'm assuming he loved it for how horribly bad it was; a bad that made me hate it. A bad that makes me sick to my stomach as I describe it to you.

We were all shocked to see this had the guy who does Bush impressions. You know the guy I'm talking about. He did that show the guys that made South Park used to have. He looks just like G.W. I've never seen him in anything other than when he's impersonating Bush, and even crazier, this film came out before Bush was elected, so it's not like he was playing on any fame from doing Bush. It was just another strange wrinkle in a totally odd movie.

 
I think the filmmakers were trying to make a point about the way a family deals with a soldier going away to war and dying. There's no killing by Uncle Sam for the first 45 minutes because of this. I think it's a very important issue, one that's even more relevant today; but I'm not sure a campy yet depraved horror film with a guy dressed as Uncle Sam killing people is the right venue to raise that issue. It just adds to the overall "huh?" factor of this film for me, and makes me all the more ill in trying to fathom what was going on in it.

I'm getting a headache, so I better wrap this up. Don't go near this. Don't rent it, don't watch it for free, don't have it on while you're doing something else. If your options are watching this, or staring at a wall for 90 min, start staring. This was hardcore.

For more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118025/

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