Review: Dead Heat

Two cops (straight-laced Treat Williams, goofy but muscular Joe Piscopo) investigate robberies, end up at a pharmaceutical company (headed by the recently departed Vincent Price), with Lindsay Frost as a PR person. There they stumble upon a machine that can reanimate the dead, hence the near indestructibility of the robbers. Soon enough, poor Williams himself winds up dead…then Undead…then slowly dying again, hence the need to find out just who is behind this all. Darren McGavin has an inexplicable part as a gleefully shady coroner, whilst Robert Picardo plays a cop, and Keye Luke turns up in the kind of shady Asian mystic role that James Hong tends to get (I’d suggest Hong bothered to read the script, but this is the same guy who agreed to appear in “The Golden Child” and “Tango & Cash”, so maybe not), whilst the great Prof. Toru Tanaka is his hulking henchman.

Slightly underrated, but incredibly uneven, somewhat flat 1988 mixture of cop-comedy and zombie/mad scientist flick wants to be off-the-wall and gory (it certainly has moments of both), but never generates enough energy or interest, due mostly to poor direction. Meanwhile, Piscopo tries hard to make his Mel Gibson meets Frank Sinatra meets Jerry Lewis character interesting, and fails. He might’ve done better in other films if given the chance (he has definite action-comedy presence to him), but he rarely turned up on screen again, and certainly didn’t quite mesh here. He seems to be in a different film to everyone else and his one-liners are pretty awful most of the time. And yet, y’know what? He’s certainly the most watchable thing about the film. He may not be right, but he’s fun at times (He also gets the best line; ‘Remember the good old days, when guns killed people?’).

Williams, on the other hand, approaches being dead like he’s got a pineapple shoved up his arse and hasn’t seen the light of day in about 40 years. He, as is the case with many of the actors, also seems to be under the impression that being resurrected from the dead is like, no big deal. See what I mean? The film is just so flat and lethargic for what could’ve and should’ve been a crazy, gory load of fun (Sam Raimi or Stuart Gordon might’ve known what to do with this one). For instance, there’s an outrageous scene involving a reanimated animal carcass, as well as a kick-arse decomposition (one of the better ones out there), but there’s little of interest around it, the plot isn’t adequately explained, and for every interesting use of special FX by Steve Johnson (“Big Trouble in Little China”, an example of what this film could’ve and should’ve ended up like), there are some phony-looking ones too.

Overall, the film is so close to being watchable, that, given this was one of Vincent Price’s final appearances (his body may have become frail, but that voice projecting mellifluent evil is still there), I might suggest that if there’s nothing else on, you might find this tolerable. It sure is weird, at any rate. It’s just that there were the raw materials for a good film here, but bad directing and acting (by Williams and Frost especially) stop it from being anything memorable. Directed by editor Mark Goldblatt (who earned an Oscar nom for his work on “Terminator 2: Judgment Day”), making one wonder how the hell an acclaimed editor make such an enervating film as director? The pacing here is shockingly bad. It was Goldblatt’s directorial debut, whilst the screenplay is by Terry Black (yes, brother of the more talented Shane, who has a cameo here). It’s nowhere near the stinker you’ve heard it to be, but I still can’t come close to recommending this one. Apparently a sequel was planned, before New World Pictures went under (But wasn’t this a flop anyway?).

Rating: C