The Further Adventures of Uncle Sam is a 1970 animated short (13 min) by Dale Case and Robert Mitchell.
Uncle Sam is spending his time running a tiny gas station somewhere in the desert Southwest, accompanied by his buddy, a bald eagle. While Sam snoozes in a rocking chair, the eagle takes a walk to the top of a nearby hill. While he's there, a big muscle car pulls up to the gas station. As Sam looks under the hood of the car, two Mooks who look a lot like the Blue Meanies from Yellow Submarine leap out, throw him into a sack, and drive away.
The eagle sees all this happen from his perch and goes off in search of Sam. Eventually the eagle finds Sam being held prisoner at the top of the bad guys's tower. It's not exactly clear just what the bad guys are up to, but they get a new idea: kidnap the Statue of Liberty.
Very much an Unintentional Period Piece, bearing not just a typical look for early '70s independent animation, but also some very unsubtle satire that roots it in the anti-Vietnam War era. Sometimes also called The Further Adventures of Uncle Sam: Part 2—it was under this title that the cartoon got nominated for an Oscar—but that title was a joke, as there was only one cartoon and "Part 2" does not appear in the film's credits.
Tropes:
- All Deserts Have Cacti: How else to show that Sam's gas station is in the desert Southwest?
- Art Imitates Art: The mooks look just like the Blue Meanies from Yellow Submarine. And the blimp ride that Sam and the eagle take is highly reminiscent of that film.
- BFG: The hunter has a gigantic shotgun that he uses to take out big game.
- Bond Villain Stupidity: The head bad guy leaves Sam atop the tower, sitting on a barrel of TNT, with a burning pile of money evidently meant to blow up the dynamite. Sam uses the smoke from the fire to send an SOS signal which brings the eagle to rescue him.
- Capitalism Is Bad: The mooks all have money bags for heads. The city is choked with pollution from pumping oil wells. As Sam and the eagle fly out of the city they pass a parade of garish, ugly advertisements. And the head bad guy is a cartoon capitalist who smokes a fat cigar and literally sets money on fire.
- Circling Birdies: A brief shot of stars circling around Sam's head after the bad guys slam the hood of the car down on him.
- Damsel in Distress: The Statue of Liberty winds up tied to a stake in the arena, screaming for help. Sam shows up and rescues her.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: The bad guys imprison Sam in the top of their evil tower, which looms over the center of the city, and which has as its top...an ice cream cone. (Sam is imprisoned in the ice cream ball.)
- For the Evulz: It's not really clear what the bad guys are up to. Why did they try and kill Sam? Why did they tie the Statue of Liberty to a stake?
- Giggling Villain: When the two mooks at the gas station chuck Sam into their car. One of them starts giggling. His partner jabs him in the ribs to make him stop.
- Line Boil: A lot of this in what was obviously a low-budget hand-drawn cartoon.
- Losing Your Head: While the mooks have moneybags for heads, the evil boss has a bomb for a head. He lights it, only for the eagle to swoop in and whisk it away. The bomb explodes in the far distance, leaving the body of the boss stumbling around, fruitlessly trying to find its head.
- Medium Awareness: At multiple points during the cartoon a cameraman shows up out of nowhere, filming the action, then disappears. Nothing further comes of this.
- Monumental Damage: The Statue of Liberty, represented here as a zaftig woman, is kidnapped.
- Mutual Kill: One scene has a gross Great White Hunter type shooting lions and alligators and whatnot with an enormous shotgun, then pullling his dead game down into a trap door. He sees a second, identical hunter, gets excited and shoots him. But after he chucks the second hunter into the pit a shotgun blast from the bottom kills him, and he falls in too.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Ends with Sam, the Statue of Liberty, and the eagle strolling off into the sunrise together.
- Satire: Extremely non-subtle; this cartoon's satirization of capitalism and American excess is very very obvious. One scene has an elephant and a donkey fighting. The hills morph into the heads of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon.
- Speaking Simlish: Most of the talking is done with pictures and thought balloons, but when Sam confronts the head bad guy, they yell at each other in angry gibberish.
- Satan: He pops up out of the ground the hunters fell into, looking pale. He drinks the blood they left on the ground, turns red again, then goes back down to Hell.
