Mark Goldblatt aimed just above the belt with his genre hybrid Dead Heat as he cross-pollinates a grizzled detective story with a zombie satire. What results is an over-the-top laughfest which, for what it sets out to accomplish, succeeds. However, those looking for substance need move along as zombie shoot outs, mullets, and a resurrected liver fill this criminally-overlooked piece of escapist horror.
After foiling a jewelry store heist by two crooks who take over fifty rounds each, detectives Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo) discover that the deceased are just that twice over or, more specifically, corpses of zombies. As they set out to find the perpetrator of the crime wave plaguing the city and helmed by the undead, Roger is killed before being brought back to life. However, the clock is ticking as the duo follow the trail lined by money and greed to the culpable mastermind.
First things first: Terry Black’s script is highly derivative of Rudolph Maté’s D.O.A., starring Edmond O’Brien as Frank Bigelow, so much so that Piscopo’s character shares the same surname. However, Goldblatt has fun with the character as he takes advantage of the phonetic similarity of the name to “gigolo” (long before Mike Mitchell’s Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo saw the light of day) as the actor’s trademark swagger, cocky-sure outlook and approach, and mullet are only superceded by the less-than-subtle foreshadowing in Williams’s character title of Roger Mortis.
The film’s creativity doesn’t end with the character names as the viewer is forewarned that you can very well toss Dan O’Bannon’s zombie butterflies, seen in his reanimated satire, The Return of the Living Dead, out the window because a undead liver awaits amid a zombie shoot out as Vincent Price, at the end of his career and life, fittingly plays Arthur P. Loudermilk, a man on his deathbed. Did I mention mulletphobes are equally cautioned?
Now, aside from the tongue-in-cheek satire of the wealthy as Loudermilk tells his prospective buyers of eternal life that, “God didn’t mean for rich people to die and if he did, we can buy him off,” nothing of consequence outside of mile-a-minute fun is to be had here because plot plausibility gives way to ironic coincidence as Randi James (Lindsay Frost) takes a shower after finding her would-be lover’s corpse moments after instant nightfall descends upon Los Angeles. Yet, what can we expect after Roger, having arrived back from the dead refreshed, openly submits to an impromptu physical as if this were an everyday occurrence.
Though feasibility points are graciously granted as whole sections of a wall sprayed with bullets disintegrate, leaving gaping wounds where decades of politely succinct bullet holes once stood, and a squid spurts liberal amounts of blood in a cut-away instead of the wound’s severity being unnecessarily sedated by the commonplace straightaway shot, Goldblatt does take the easy route by having Roger explicate the entire malevolent scheme at the film’s climax instead of permitting the scenario to play itself out before the audience. However, now back at even, the director creeps ahead once again as he sardonically alludes to Monty Python (“just a flesh wound”) and Casablanca (“Roger, I think this is the end of a beautiful friendship”) as Piscopo’s mullet fades into the light.
All mullets aside, Mark Goldblatt’s Dead Heat is a pleasurable way to rid yourself of a little under an hour-and-a-half. Few directors are willing to approach a piece of useless cinema with as much gusto as Goldblatt and his effort pays off as this little known cult classic continues to gain a wider audience as the years roll by. Though it will never esteem to the pedestal of such works as Dan O’Bannon’s The Return of the Living Dead, Tim Burton’s Beetle Juice, or Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead, Dead Heat is a sleeper of a horror comedy, with or without its mullets.
Conversation piece: The Los Angeles license plate 2GAT123 seen during Dead Heat also appears in Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic, Mimi Leder’s Pay It Forward, Mick Jackson’s L.A. Story, David Lynch’s Mulholland Dr., and John Stockwell’s Crazy/Beautiful.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
