Dead Heat (1988)

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

This was a rare treat to watch. I had forgotten how good and funny this little horror comedy thriller is.This is a buddy-buddy cop tale that takes a walk on the Darkside. While in a shootout with a couple of jewellery store robbers they are amazed when the bad guys just won't lie down dead even though they're dancing a Spandau Ballet in a hail of bullets. It takes a hand-grenade and a speeding car to bring them down.It's not until they get the bodies into the morgue that they realise they have already been autopsied...This is one of the best and funniest Zombie films around. Back in the glorious '80's the special FX really did go the extra mile. The scene in the Chinese butcher's shop is hilarious and gruesome as the dead animals come back to life.However, not everything about this movie is fun. Around the half way mark the film slows down and the laughs start to disappear... in fact, the story pretty much stops. It does pick up in the last fifteen minutes of the film but never quite reaches the highs of the first half of the movie.Both of the lead roles, Treat Williams as Roger Mortis and Joe Piscopo as Doug Bigelow, work well together and this chemistry works well and pretty much holds the film together. It's when these two aren't together that the movie suffers. Most of the comedy moments are where these two are working off each other.Both Darren McGavin (of "Kolchack: The Night Stalker" fame) as Dr Ernest McNab and Vincent Price as Arthur P Loudermilk are underused. These two could have been utilised a little more in the second half of the film, this may have helped the lift the movie here, making it a little less boring.Mark Goldblatt, does a good job of utilising the lead actors and bringing out some really good dark comedic moments.I'd recommend this to anybody who has a dark sense of humour and likes everything horror and Zombi. Still one of my favourites of the '80's even with the stale second half... it has a special place in my heart.

Dead Heat (1988) ** (out of 4) Cops Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo) break up some sort of strange laboratory but in the process Roger is killed. A doctor uses the equipment to bring Roger back to life and now the two cops must try and see who is bringing the dead back and why.DEAD HEAT isn't a masterpiece and it's not an awful film so it's certainly somewhere in the middle. Your ability to take Williams and Piscopo as a comedy team will certainly determine how much of this film you can actually take. For me, I didn't think the comedy team worked overly well together but at the same time it has a rather campy feel to it and there are some entertaining things scattered throughout the picture.The one good thing here are the special effects, which get to air on the side of gory since the film is thankfully rated R. One of the highlights is a sequence where a woman pretty much starts to melt and fall apart right in front of you. This scene is certainly the best moment in the film and it's too bad there were more like it. The other monster effects are fairly good including one large beast that the cops battle towards the start of the picture.Both Williams and Piscopo are in "good" form but the screenplay honestly doesn't give them much funny things to do. Horror legend Vincent Price appears in a couple scenes and he's certainly worth watching, although he too isn't given much to do. The biggest problem with the film is the fact that it's extremely uneven in its tone and it never really seems to know what it wants to do. I will say that the dumbest moment in the movie is when the two cops are getting screamed at by their boss because they killed two bad guys. Yet, the boss never mentions the fact that these two bad guys killed a couple dozen cops before being taken down!

After 25 years of hearing of this, I finally got to see Dead Heat on Netflix disc just now. Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo are cops investigating a jewel robbery. I'll stop there and just say that the plot gets weirder when it involves zombies. But Piscopo has some good funny lines, there are a couple of fine-looking women in Lindsay Frost and Clare Kirkconnell, and some nice villains portrayed by Keye Luke, Darren McGavin, and the legendary Vincent Price. Much of the makeups and special effects are a bit on the cheezy side but since none of it is meant to be taken too seriously, it's actually quite a hoot to watch. So on that note, I recommend Dead Heat. P.S. I also recommend listening to the commentary track involving the director, writer, and the two producers as well as watch the deleted scenes on the disc especially one that has Roger Corman/Joe Dante player Dick Miller as a guard who mentions a famous comedian once associated with one of the players!

Mortis and Bigelow are cops that are chasing crooks that are turning up dead for a second time. Someone has discovered how to bring back the dead and is sending them on crime sprees. Now these decomposing criminals are in the way of officers Mortis and Bigelow. When Mortis is killed he gets Resurrected, but has only a short time to find out who is behind it all before he decomposes.......it might be that really famous star from the fifties and sixties who is in this for about five minutes....Without the high concept twist, which is admittedly funny, this would just be another generic buddy cop movie with silly one liners and not much else.The high concept is good, and it works for the most part, but like officer Mortis, it runs out of steam before the film ends. The first act is great though, and its surprising at just how violent and inventive the special effects are, theŷ really are the best part of the film.As soon as Mortis is resurrected, the film goes over the top, and not in a good way. Bigelows one liners become more desperate, and Williams resorts to wearing lipstick, and more makeup in every other scene.But its still a fun movie, not as good as I remember, and on the plus side the high concept is original.And any film that feature Vincent Price in a white suit, and a man exploding, is worth watching...isn't it?