Theme Song:
“Dead Heat,” performed by Phil Settle. There are no less than three writing credits on this song (John Huckert, Parick Read Johnson, and Phil Settle). These guys really wanted their screen credits.
“Kimberly,” performed by Joe Piscopo. This song was still nesting in Piscopo’s mind at the time, but let us never forget it would emerge a few years later.
Interesting Dated References: Joe Piscopo’s movie career.
Best Line: There’s some humorous banter between our two protagonist buddies, but that’s assuming you can get past those buddies being played by Treat Williams (Prince of the City, Once Upon a Time in America, Smooth Talk) and Piscopo (Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather).
Social Context: Made the same year as Piscopo’s divorce, Dead Heat appears to be some type of cross-genre clusterfuck aimed at those who really liked Lethal Weapon, but thought it needed a shit-ton of sci-fi weirdness and slapstick laughs.
Summary: Plainclothes police officers Bigelow (Piscopo) and Mortis (Williams) pal around and get involved with a jewelry store heist in which it is revealed the perpetrators were actually reanimated dead people.
This leads them to a pharmaceutical business, where they uncover a conspiracy by the aging owner of the company, who is reanimating dead people (played by Vincent Price, star of every single horror film from 1940-1969).
Peppered into all that horseshit is a bunch of fucking nonsense and gun battles and a span of time in which Piscopo disappears from the movie for 30 minutes. Williams spends much of the movie as a reanimated corpse after dying in a shoot-out toward the beginning of the film, and Piscopo is brought back from the dead in the third act.
I’m a good sport and all-in for some cheese, but this is a hard one to swallow. Just when you’re starting to enjoy the crime fighting duo, the plot about the zombies becomes needlessly complicated and distracting, and then you’re forced to sit through Zombie WIlliams carrying the film through the second and third acts. Not even Darren McGavin (Waikiki, A Christmas Story, Raw Deal) as an unscrupulous doctor can turn things around.
Worth Mentioning:
– Yes, Williams has to fight a reanimated cow carcass for like 15 minutes.
– Director Mark Goldblatt is an accomplished action editor (seriously, look at his credits) which explains all the extensive shoot-out sequences. Unfortunately his only other directing credit is the 1989 version of The Punisher, which starred Dolph Lundgren (Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Godfather).
– Professor Toru Tanaka (Bad Guys, The Running Man, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure) appears briefly as a Chinatown butcher.
Poster and Box Art: The theatrical release poster lets you know exactly what you’re getting into, aside from downplaying the zombie thing.
The home video release is similar enough I don’t feel like uploading it.
Availability: This movie has definitely not been lost to the sands of time. You can Blu-ray, you can stream, you can multi-format. It makes no sense.
Was Piscopos’ ass airbrushed out of the poster?
Was Piscopos’ ass airbrushed out of the poster?