Dead Heat

Plot Summary

We are going to try to not spoil things for you, because for all we know someone might end up wanting to watch this movie after reading our review. Dead Heat is the story of two detectives, Roger (Treat Williams) and Doug (Joe Piscopo), who respond to a jewelry store heist and stumble onto a conspiracy to resurrect the dead.



What makes it bad?

Mr. Tropnevad's Thoughts

For starters Joe Piscopo is in this movie. Who is Joe Piscopo? He was an actor who pretty much disappeared in the early nineties, so here is a reminder. He was on Saturday Night Live in the eighties with Eddie Murphy (another acting failure). This guy was a mullet wearing, muscle bound, macho man during the eighties. Now he does nothing and his bad acting here shows you why.

While watching the movie it was obvious that Joe thought it was a joke and was constantly looking up at something off screen, making really bad one liners such as “You are under arrest. You have the right to remain disgusting,” and trying not to laugh at things that should not be funny. The worst part of Piscopo is that no matter how much you want him dead, you know that he can be brought back to life due to the nature of the film.

The worst part of this movie isn’t Joe Piscopo, though, it’s the fact that movie forgets about logic. I don’t care if it’s a zombie movie or not, but if someone unloads an entire Uzi into your chest you are going to have a lot more holes. Not to mention internal organs coming out. Yes, I understand it’s a zombie being shot up and your blood coagulates but that still wouldn’t keep everything in your body.

I am going to spoil the movie for a few lines so you might want to skip to Zentilack's part. There is an asphyxiation room that Roger is accidentally killed in. Let me explain this to you if you are not aware of safety rules. There is no such thing as a room you cannot get out of; there have always been laws and regulations set in place so that no one accidentally gets trapped and dies. The other problem I had with this room is that it may have been thick glass on the door, but Doug could have easily shot it and eventually broke though. The same goes for the door knob.

Another issue I had was the slowly decaying body of Roger. If he was going to decay in twelve hours he would have appeared to be rotted away worse than was shown. At one point early on, he is told he is slowly decomposing. What did they do at this point besides put make up around his eyes? Nothing. I’m not even going to talk about the lipstick scene, but if you watch it, you will understand. Then it goes to the other extreme when Roger is in an ambulance crash/explosion and his body looks like a burn victim and he doesn’t seem to care that his skin is peeling off.

Zentilack’s Thoughts

Joe Piscopo. While the man doesn’t bother me as much as my compatriot, he wasn’t exactly good here. His effort seemed pretty basic. It’s a cheesy horror-comedy from the 80’s and I didn’t expect that much, but he did not sell any of his few serious moments in the film.

The special effects were, honestly, kinda disappointing. I, too, had issues with the lack of decomposition, though the story kind of indirectly explains it (though not very well). My problem here was how intact everyone remained. Ignoring the fact that no one ever got a bullet in the head in a zombie movie (seriously, I don’t remember one head shot), nobody ever lost an arm or leg or anything like that. Even if the arm was just dangling by a bit of flesh, that would have been cool. Dismemberment of the undead is something we expect, and Dead Heat didn’t really deliver here.

For me where this movie really falls short is the story execution. It’s an amusing plot, with some mad science, zombies, mystery, and even a bit of a love triangle thrown in. The problem is that many of the plot threads are mishandled. One character is introduced, gives no indication of their complicated background until it is dumped on the audience all at once, then is hamfistedly eliminated and never spoken of again. It feels like they had a good idea but someone decided that story comes second to goofy jokes and...well, that’s it. Just goofy jokes.

There were quite a few things that made me tilt my head (spoilers):

*Spoiler:What did the Chineese guy have to do with all this? Was he the one who gave the villian the resurrection process or was it the other way around? Why was his chandelier a temporary resurrection machine? Why did Randi (Lindsay Frost) look totally normal until the bathroom scene? Why did nobody ever get shot in the head?/Spoiler*

Also, why in the world would you have an asphyxiation chamber, where this company apparently kills test animals, right in the middle of an ordinary office hallway? I mean, do the employees walk past it to get to the break room? Why would you do that?

What makes it good?

Mr. Tropnevad's Thoughts

This is a pure 80’s movie that anyone that loves 80’s movie styles will love. It has two things going for it: It’s a buddy cop movie and it has zombies. The zombies are not the traditional type. They shoot guns, commit crime, and make horrible jokes.

This film was directed by Mark Goldblatt. Wait, did you ask who this man is and why should I care? He directed one other movie The Punisher, the one with Dolph Lundgren, but he’s not really known for his direction. He is an academy award nominated film editor, nominated several times but has never won because the academy apparently hates science fiction. His most recent editing job was ‘Rise of The Planet of The Apes.’ He learned all of his editing techniques from Roger Corman, and if you don’t know who that is, just wait. I’ll be looking at some of Corman’s work sometime soon. Back to the movie.

This movie is incredibly cheesy, but in a good way. Every time the two cops are in a gun fight they say or do something so ignorant that it makes you wonder how they have not been killed already. This was amusing to me because I was constantly laughing at how these guys were even alive. While Piscopo is a complete waste in this movie Treat Williams tries his hardest to keep the movie going by being serious. While some of the special effects are bad there are a few scenes where I was pleasantly surprised by the use of makeup, such as the fat dead guy with three noses and three eyes.

The best part of this movie is the butcher shop scene. If you're on the fence about seeing this, I recommend watching for this scene alone. The zombie carcasses of ducks, pigs and even a cow are hilarious and the horrible puns alone will make you laugh.

One last mention of goodness is that in the beginning credits it says Vincent Price was in this movie. I had no idea Price was in here. I am a huge Price fan but in the eighties he seemed to only make horrible movies, so don’t be shocked if his acting is lousy.

The studio that made this wanted to make a sequel. The writer apparently did not and left no open door for it at the end. This is a good thing.

Zentilack’s Thoughts

You know, for all my complaining about the mishandled story elements, the core of the story still manages to come through. Two friends going after an evil mastermind with nothing but a bunch of fun action scenes standing between them. Yeah, the serious moments kinda drag, but they’re few in number and not enough to drag the whole thing down.

As I noted earlier, I don’t hate Piscopo. I can’t say that I like him, it’s more of a “Meh...” He and Treat Williams did have some amusing banter between them. I love well done banter in movies. They just don’t do it like they used to, and it’s done adequately well here.

While Piscopo is, to me, okay as the funny guy (he certainly doesn’t excel at it), Williams is an entertaining straight man (ie, the serious guy). He lets Piscopo do his job as the goofy one and plays off his antics. The nice thing about it is that Williams never becomes overly serious or robotic and he doesn’t act annoyed at his partner’s jokes. He acts like a normal guy who enjoys working with his offbeat friend. When I watch this, I can believe that Roger is actually friends with Doug.

As far as a favorite scene goes, I think my favorite is a brief encounter between two zombies near the end of the movie. Both have Uzis (I think everyone had an Uzi in this movie), and they are standing about ten feet apart. They open up and riddle each other with bullets for what seemed like forever but neither one falls. Maybe that’s an odd choice for favorite, but I couldn’t stop laughing.

Final Thoughts

Mr. Tropnevad

I recommend streaming this one night with a couple of friends and having a few beers while watching this. This movie isn’t worth a buy unless you are a fan of the movie. It is on blu-ray, but it has nothing on it but the movie and no extras, not even the trailer. This is a movie that should be remade, but with decent actors and definitely not Will Farrell.

Zentilack

Dead Heat is really not much more than an average film. It’s certainly fun to watch the first time and would be much better with friends. While I liked it, I don’t really feel any desire to see it again. I’d recommend it as a rental or stream it on Netflix if you like the genre. If you’re the kind of person who has never seen an 80’s movie they liked, though, avoid this one.

Stream via Netflix