Dead Heat (1988)
When a cop comes back to life, the jokes are delivered – dead pan.
The 1980s gave us many things; the Rubik’s cube; shell suits (not necessarily a good thing), the Sony Walkman. It also gave us a plethora of ‘buddy cop’ movies with such gems as Turner & Hooch, Beverley Hill Cop and Lethal Weapon hitting our movie screens. It turns out that it also gave us Dead Heat, a buddy cop movie that seems to have faded into obscurity. Was it eclipsed by films with higher profile casts and bigger budgets or is it just pants?
While Dead heat does have a charm of its own it’s no Tango and Cash. However, it is worth watching; especially if you love cop movies, zombie movies or just love bad movies – OK, so it is a bit pants.
The movie follows the exploits of unlikely partners Deuce Bigelow, sorry I mean Doug Bigelow (played by Joe Piscopo, whom you will recognise but not know from where) and Riger Mortis – damnit, sorry I mean, ROGER Mortis (played by Treat Williams, again a familiar but unknown face). Doug is the tough-guy funny cop to Roger’s straight-guy (stiff?) cop routine and the movie revolves around their partnership. This is a pretty standard buddy cop formula, but when they are sent to a robbery to they stumble upon some hard-to-kill criminals who, it turns out, were dead before they robbed the jewelry store; breaking the standard formula. It’s here we learn why the standard buddy cop formula is proven, successful approach and you learn the lesson – when it ain’t broke – don’t fix it.
As with all buddy cop movies, the comedy between the two leads is essential and you with think that Joe Piscopo, who was a stalwart of America’s Saturday Night Live for many years, would understand the key to good comedy. However, despite being gifted such lines as “Sorry to interrupt your erection” he doesn’t quite nail it; or perhaps it’s because he’s been given such lines as “Sorry to interrupt your erection” things don’t click? Regardless, the two detectives just don’t bounce off each other and there is no chemistry between them (Timing!).
This is a real problem in a movie where chemistry is the key component and this holds the film back in many ways. In addition, the movie can’t quite decide what it wants to be; is it a light-hearted buddy cop movie or is it a zombie gore fest? Is it a comedy or a serious sci-fi horror? Fact is, the movie tries too hard to be all of these things and fails to be any of them.
That’s not to say we didn’t enjoy it; we did, but sometimes for the wrong
reasons. On the plus side, the sets are
believable (mainly because they are all location based) and there’s a great
cameo from Vincent Price who’s presence when on the screen is palpable. In addition, Darren McGavin, who plays Dr.
Ernest McNab (someone else you will recognise), makes a good stab at being the
evil doctor. However, the rest of the
cast are quite bland; even the sight of Robert Picardo in a ‘blink and you miss
him’ role can’t lift the rest of the acting up.
One highlight was the scene in the Chinese restaurant featuring Sub Zero from The Running man (Professor Toru Tanaka) and a load of re-animated animals on the rampage, which will put you off Chinese food for at least 10 minutes. The fight that ensues is quite amusing as severed duck heads try to bite our ‘heroes’ whilst gutted chickens dance around their feet trying to drag them to the ground, presumably so they can give them salmonella. What the ‘fight’ scene lacks however is a well placed quip; something like ‘We nearly fell foul of that lot’ or ‘Now who’s chicken?” but no, we get “from now on, I’m going to be a vegetarian”.
In the course of this review, we often do a
fair bit of research into the background of the film. For example, the film had a $5m budget but
only made $3.7m in the US, with roughly the same in the international market, which
perhaps tells you all you need to know.
To be honest, there is a “straight to DVD” quality to this movie that
makes this a clear Plopcorn nomination.
There were talks of a sequel, but these were shot down quite quickly by the
writer not knowing where to go after the ending and, to be fair, he had a
point. A sequel would have been nice,
but it doubt it would have generated enough interest to make it a success. We also found out that noted director Shane
Black has a small cameo role in the film as another ‘blink and you missed it’
character, this time a motorcycle cop.
It also seems he had some minor input into the script of this film but
was uncredited.
Overall, not an awful movie, but it’s only truly going to appeal to people that don’t mind watching bad films – like us. With the right cast , the right lines and the right direction this could have been a classic, but it was not to be. A film that is definitely under the radar, a film that is definitely worth a watch and a film that is definitely Plopcorn.
