It’s October. Time to talk horror. This year I’m reviewing a different horror movie each day of the month.
Dead Heat, which stars Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo, begins like any other buddy cop film. The problem with all the Lethal Weapon copycats is they could never quite nail the balance between action and well-written humor. Dead Heat attempts to throw another genre into the mix: horror. It’s not very good at any of them.
As goofy as it is, Dead Heat has an energy that immediately drew me in… at arm’s distance, anyway. Early on, Williams and Piscopo have a shootout with a couple of jewel thieves who just won’t die until one steps on a grenade and Williams rams the other one with an unmarked car. When the cops visit the bodies in an autopsy room, the medical examiner informs them the bodies have been on her table before.
Early on in their investigation of the zombified crime ring, Treat Williams is killed and resurrected himself. Williams discovers he doesn’t have a heartbeat and doesn’t breathe even though he (initially) appears to be in good health. He only has twelve hours to nail the bad guys, at which point he will decompose completely. After one action sequence, a woman comments, “You’re hurt!” To which Williams deadpans, “Lady, I’m dead.“
The makeup effects aren’t bad. The movie itself is, and maybe this goes without saying, but it’s a good bad movie as long as you can stomach mediocre action and lazy one-liners. Just be warned that the filmmakers seem to think Joe Piscopo is a decent substitute for Eddie Murphy, but he’s not… obviously. I’ve always wondered why Treat Williams (playing a character named Roger Mortis… hardy-har-har) was never a bigger star.
Come back at midnight Central Time for the next movie.
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