I first caught ‘Dead Heat’ a couple of years ago as part of a double feature on ‘The Last Drive in with Joe Bob Briggs’ and I honestly cant think of a better example of a film that has good ideas driven into the ground by bad decisions. This one comes courtesy of ‘New World’ pictures, Roger Cormans production company, and you can pretty quickly tell that this has ‘New Worlds’ typical ‘fantastic soundtrack and character pieces held together with masking tape and a prayer’ aesthetic.
The plot follows two detective pals Roger Mortis (GETTIT?!?) and Doug Bigelow as they do their usual patrols of the city. After a strange encounter with two jewel theives that take an entire swat teams worth of bullets and are only stopped by LITERALLY being blown up. The pair discover that there was more to these crooks than meets the eye…namely that they’d already been checked into the morgue a few months prior. Some invetigations reveal that a shady scientific company appears to be stocking unusual supplies that have been shown to have restorative bodily properties. and, on inspecting the facility, they find something a bit odd.
A backroom containing a giant table and electronic equipment…and a stitched together biker who goes full on Beserker at the pair. during the scuffle Roger ends up dying in a pressure chamber, but Doug and one of the scientists at the facility get him tot he backroom and with some ‘weird science’ wondery, Roger is brought back to life. He feels great…but somethings off…it turns out, he’s rotting…unable to die! but rotting…with the local pathologist giving him only hours to live before he begins to decompose to a point that he’d be umable to hold his own frame.
And so, a race begins with Doug, Roger and others to find out WHO is running the ‘death ressurection’ racket and hopefully put an end to it before things get too far out of hand.
For starters, the script is a lighthearted and fun little idea, it moves at a reasonable clip at an hour and 20, they pace out the action across the 3 acts pretty well, and the three acts themselves are reasonable well paced out starting strong, maintaining a good momentum and finishing a *little* bit abruptly for my taste…but probably about as well as these things could have honestly.
The characters, for the most part are likable, but herein lies the first issue…while most of them are nicely charismatic and really fit the bill of the roles they’re playing. The character of Doug and more specifically the performance of Joe Piscapoe absolutely poured cold water on this thing. Doug as a character is a quip machine. He doesnt really do all that much plot wise, he doesnt have any real solid character development moments. He seems to literally exist in this film to turn EVERY. SINGLE. SITUATION…into a bad joke-fest. and its frankly insufferable.
Had they opened with him being that way, then maybe explored his character a bit more to reveal maybe some kind of background that means he uses humour to cover, and ended the film with him reigning in on it. I’d have probably gotten on better with the character. but after the first 10 minutes of the character not taking ANY situation presented to him seriously, I started to feel a nagging head pain, that only got worse and worse as the film wore on.
Honestly? this could have just been Roger, Randi (The scientist who helps the pair uncover the truth on whats going on) and ‘Smithers (the pathologist in the lab who first reveals the unusual circumstances) and it probably would have been a much stronger work for it. Unfortunately we end up with a bit of a crowded house, which didnt exactly do the film any favours.
The dialogue (bad jokes aside) is for the most part fine enough, nothing TOO out there or interesting, but the film has some interesting moments for decent one liners and I think they nailed the chartcter dynamics for the most part.
The tone of this thing is another minor issue…It cant seem to decide if it wants to be an all out action film with supernatural elements. or an action comedy, or an action horror/thriller…or some kind of macarbre dark comedy…so it just sort of…tries everything. Which makes it quite hard to get a decent read on the intention of the writer director…and can cause some moments of the film to feel a bit ‘bad taste’ or jarring compared to the general tone of the production.
Direction and cine in and of itself is actually pretty above standard, Its a studio picture so I expected the bare minimum to be met. But theres actually some really solid creative visions realised here and some really quite solid scene building. A particularly noteworth sequence being set in a chinese deli featuring special effects and puppeteering that, the first time I saw this, had my jaw on the floor.
Shots are well composed, Colour use is kind of drab here, which is a real shame as I think a splash of colour really could have helped elevate this one a bit more. sequence building can be a bit messy in places, I think they were tight on the amount of film they could shoot on. So there are moments where I feel a bit more B-roll maybe could have helped this one out a bit more. On the whole though, its a kind of inoffensive work. Nothing too ‘genre’ defining. but it gets the job done pretty well.
Performance wise, We stumble again. While our core cast of Treat Williams and Lindsay Frost are a deligthful pairing bringing real charm, charisma and energy to proceedings. I had a real bad time with Joe Piscapoe…I appreciate he was probably directed to be this obnoxious…but he REALLY gets to a point in this where I couldnt really roll my eyes any harder. he’s loud, awkward and a bit fumbly on physicality…I wasnt a fan.
Mercifully, the film does win things back with an unexpected (but welcome) Vincent Price cameo, and he’s as wonderful as ever, ultimately pulling the film back from becoming a bit bland. Darren McGavin ALSO delights as Dr. Earnest, giving ‘Mayor from Jaws’ vibes throughout ALSO helping to keep this thing on an even keel.
The soundtracks killer, Honestly? ‘Dead Heat’ is a fine enough film, it wont win any awards. But if you like New World pictures like ‘Night of the comet’ or ‘The Stuff’ you’ll probably dig this. it has sparks of a good idea, it just…doesnt quite fully realise them.
Someone on my discord server called this film ‘Miami Vice, but with zombies’ and I think they may be onto something…
TYTD Reviews 