Thursday, October 21, 2021
31 Days of Horror 2021 Day 21 Dead Heat
SOURCE-Airing on Joe Bob's Last Drive In
I love how Joe Bob keeps showing films that I have seen but not thought about in years. Dead Heat came on in 1988,and got horrible press. Was called one of the worst films in years. Not sure why I didn't see this in a theater. Because back in 1988 I was going to see pretty much every horror and sci fi film that hit theaters.
Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo are cops and are heading to robbery at a jewel store. Bullets don't seem to effect the robbers. So Williams and Piscopo use a non-conventional way to stop them. Which of course gets them in trouble with their Chief.
A cornor friend of our leads,love that Williams is playing Roger Mortis,informs him that the robbers have autopsy scars. And she remembers performing the autopsy on them. She finds an odd chemical in the dead bodies,so our two cops goto the company that makes this chemical to see what is up. Treat ends up trapped in decompression room. Which the company uses to kill the animals they experiment on. Treat dies.
But Treat is brought back to life. And now him and Joe are trying to figure out how and why someone is using dead bodies to commit major crimes. But can they solve this case before Treat dies again? Seems the process used to bring Treat back also causes his organ to liquify over the course of a few days.
Dead Heat was made by New World Pictures. And appears to have a fairly high budget. But it only made a bit over 3.5 million at the box office. Oddly it found it's audience with home video and cable airings.
The comedy and horror in the film don't mix that well. Which sucks cause the premise is a great idea. But lots of Piscopo's one liners fall flat. Mostly cause they happen during scenes where we are suppose to be scared. Maybe if the gore factor was turned up a few notches this film would have worked better. Look at Peter Jackson's Dead/Alive. It has you laughing while at the same time grossed out.
Whoever did the FX work in this film did a great job. You got lots of puppets. A pile of well done practical effects.
Dead Heat gets a B-.