I had high hopes for Dead Heat. It’s got a top-notch cast, Treat Williams (Tales from the Crypt, The Phantom, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous!?), Joe Piscopo (Saturday Night Live), Vincent Price (1 or 2 Films) and the absolute show stealer – Robert Picardo. Yeah, that’s right, The Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager! And to be honest it didn’t disappoint, much.
There were a few occasions when I questioned what I had let myself in for by agreeing to review this film, most notably when the villains start donning gimp masks, but all in all I really quite enjoyed it.
The action centres around the crime fighting duo of Roger Mortis & Doug Bigelow (betchya can’t guess which one dies & which one is the ladies man?) as they attempt to hunt down the guy responsible for killing Roger before he melts into a sort of human goulash. And no that’s not a typo, the dude is hunting his own killer after he’s dead. That’s right, not even death can prevent this guy from coming after you and kicking your ass…which is pretty hardcore! Almost makes up for the whole Miss Congeniality thing, almost.
But they don’t just stop with bringing the bad guys & the good guys back from the dead in this film. No, they start re-animating pretty much anything. Headless cows, cooked boars, Cantonese style duck..they even turn a piece of liver (or some other red gloopy bit of an animal) into an Alienisque face hugger. Nice!
The dialogue has its moments as well. Bits are Grade ‘A’ Stilton, but there are a few gems hidden in it. The faux gay banter between the cops shortly after Roger’s resurrection is good for a giggle and there are a couple of one liners which while not laugh out loud funny did get a mild chortle;
“Remember the good old days when guns killed people?”
I have to admit, though, there was one part of the film where I was sorely disappointed. Roger’s death in the decompression chamber is a bit of a fucking cop-out (no pun intended). Every good horror fan knows that:
Dude + Compression chamber = Lots of swelling, a big POP and a huge red mess.
Well, it looks like the guys behind Dead Heat didn’t get the memo on that one. We get a little throat clutching, a hint of a bulging eyeball and that’s it; gone, dead. Come on, that’s really not the way it should be…though if they had turned him into a bloody mess on the inside of the chamber it might have made it difficult to resurrect him later. Wait, what am I saying? This is a film where a melting skull, no longer attached to a body, can utter a final good bye – they’d have found a way to bring him back; they could have shoveled his remains onto the resurrection table or something.
But even with that massive disappointment, Dead Heat still makes my recommended list. If you haven’t seen it, then you have to watch this film…even if it’s only to witness the birth of the pale skinned, eye liner wearing Emo look Roger sports in the midst of his decomposing.
Official Review
These cops are on the biggest murder case of their lives… their own.
Violent criminals who can’t be killed are shooting up Los Angeles, and the investigation leads LAPD detectives Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo) to a mysterious pharmaceutical firm.
But when Mortis is suddenly murdered , his coroner girlfriend and loose cannon partner discover the company’s “resurrection machine” that turns Roger into the walking dead. Now the department’s most unstoppable cops must battle zombie hit men, a butcher shop gone berserk and the deceased industrialist (the legendary Vincent Price in one of his final roles) who may hold the key to it all.
But can Mortis solve his own homicide case before he completely decomposes?
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This post is tagged Cops, Undead, Vincent Price, zombies
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