Doctor Movie: Episode 309: Dead Heat

Show Notes

Join Doctor Movie for a look at your favorite movies from behind the steering wheel!. We have a first time watch with a late 80s flick that raises the dead. Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo are Dead Heat. Its a buddy cop film with a bit more bite, let’s dig in.

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What is Doctor Movie! and Hail Ming Power Hour!?

Cinematic oddities and awesomeness under the watchful of the all-powerful Ming and Doctor Movie!

And only Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo can figure it out.

All that and how to make your teeth more attractive, right here on Doctor Movie.

Let's hit it.

What's happening everybody?

Welcome back to another episode of Dr.

Moobie.

Your favorite show that's from behind the steering wheel.

I don't know, that one's just kind of sticking.

It's just kind of working.

I'm your host, Rick, if you're new to the show, which you're probably not, because I think 15 people listen to the show, and that's totally fine.

But if you're the same 15, you know who I am, but if you don't, I'm Rick.

And, or Doctor Movie, you know, not to bust the illusion there.

But, you know, it's just a fun way to talk about movies that back in the day when you went to the video store, and you would pick the movies up based off the cover, and you'd set it back down, and you never got to check it out, that's kind of the premise for the majority of the show.

Now, we are gonna cover some bonafide classics as well.

Favorite movies, if you will.

But today is one of those movies that I just kind of gave a hard pass on in 1988, and that movie is Dead Heat.

I was 18 years old at this point, and I don't know, there's a difference between dark humor horror movies and slapstick horror movies.

And here's the thing, I was a Joe Piscopo fan.

He did an HBO special, yes, for going that far back, around 86 or so that I watched a multitude of times.

Love that special, love Joe Piscopo.

I just don't know that I want him to be in a horror movie.

So I kind of gave it a pass.

So here we are, finally talking about it, 1988 Dead Heat action slash horror movie.

It's a buddy cop film, really, when it comes down to it.

So let's read a little synopsis here, which looks, holy smokes, that joker's long.

Let's see if I can get all this.

When a dutiful Los Angeles police officer named Roger Mortis, uh-huh, not Rigor Mortis, but Roger Mortis, who's played by Treat Williams, tries to apprehend robbers, hold on, there's a car coming, that happened to be zombies.

As he ends up as one of the undead himself, since Mortis has managed to stay in his right mind, he aids his loud-mouth partner, Doug Bigelow, which is Joe Piscopo, in getting the bottom of the macabre crime rig.

Eventually the cops track down the villains, including Arthur P.

Loudermilk, which is Vincent Price, of all people, and try to end their supernatural thievery.

Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of detail for stuff that...

Yeah, I guess it kind of matters.

Directed by Mark Goldblatt, what else has he done?

Oh, he did The Punisher.

Looks like he worked on Humanoids from the Deep, worked on Piranha.

He's included in Electric Boogaloo, which is one of the greatest movie documentaries ever made.

X-Men, The Last Stand, Exorcist, The Beginning, Predator 2, so OK, all right.

Got some some legit, legit stuff going on here.

OK, so let's look.

Do we have a why to watch?

OK, here we go.

Why to watch?

Amusing, thrilling and graphic.

Yeah, I really feel like this is probably intended for something else because thrilling, graphic.

I mean, there's some decent effects, I guess.

One or two from a big trouble little China aspect.

Let's see.

The cast is great.

The jokes are funny and the creature and makeup defects are delightfully gnarly.

Yeah, you know, they're OK.

I don't know.

There's nothing to write home about.

There's one in particular that's pretty good.

The rest of them are kind of passable.

I mean, you're just kind of like, I've kind of seen that before.

Let's see.

It says, fun movie.

The effects are really nicely done.

And I'd say I enjoyed seeing the recently, seeing this recently more than when it came out.

Yeah, I mean, that's obviously where I'm at because I didn't watch it back in the day.

So sometimes a later viewing actually helps a movie.

Dead Heat is fast-paced, never dull, with Treat Williams doing much of the heavy lifting.

Yeah, that's the thing.

It really shocked me, I will say.

It does become the Treat Williams show, and that's fine.

I have no problem with the Treat that is Treat Williams.

As far as the cast, well, we just talked about the main one, Treat Williams being Roger Mortis.

We got Joe Piscopo as his partner, Doug Bigelow.

We got Vincent Price as Laddermilk, who's, you know, he's ending his days here.

He's getting on up there.

We've got Darren McGavin in this, which is great, which is the dad from The Christmas Story.

But for all of us horror fans, come on.

He's Colchak, right?

The Night Stalker.

Who else have we got that's worth mentioning here?

I mean, that's kind of it.

We do have Ricardo in this, Richard Ricardo, or Robert Ricardo, sorry.

So yeah, you got the brother, right?

I mean, that's kind of it.

Lenia Quigley is in this?

Okay, she plays one of the zombies.

So okay, didn't even pick up on that.

For the most part, that's kind of it.

I don't see anybody else worth going bananas about.

It does say Dick Miller is in this.

I don't remember seeing Dick Miller, but that totally makes sense if he is.

But anywho, let's talk about this sleeper.

Buddy Cop film, it feels like every Buddy Cop film, they're in the middle of this big jewel heist that's going on.

They're trying to stop the bad guys, and they find out that it takes a little more to kill these guys than normal.

And Treat Williams ends up smashing them with a car or some degree like that.

It takes something extreme to knock these guys out.

And they get called into the sergeant's office, and he gives them the rundown of, if you guys don't straighten up and stop, I'm having to pay for all of them.

You know, it's your typical buddy cop movie where if you don't straighten up, your ass is grass.

You know, that kind of stuff.

You know, it feels so much like just every other buddy cop movie for a while.

But then they realize that when they go to the coroner's office, which the coroner is also kind of the girlfriend of Treat Williams' character, Roger.

And she's like, hey, there's a problem with these crooks because they've had operations.

And lo and behold, they've had autopsies.

Matter of fact, she's the one that did it.

She says, I never forget a body.

So, you know, there's some jokes in here.

It's not as jokey as I expected.

So I kind of have to...

I'm glad of that.

And as you can tell, Treat Williams is the upright, straight cop.

Business first, stopping the bad guys, takes it serious.

Joe Piscopo is the loose cannon, which kind of works, you know.

So that's kind of your setup with that.

Yeah, so they start trying to figure out what's going on with these bodies and how these people are coming back.

They do some research.

It leads to a facility that's buying a certain amount of a chemical.

Can't remember really what leads them to thinking this chemical is.

It's some chemical they use.

Postmortem, I guess.

An extensive amount is being used in this company.

They go to check it out, and this is your scenario where, hey, here's a pressurized room that we put animals in to test, and it can pull all the oxygen out and kill the animals instantly.

Yeah, so obvious foreshadowing there.

They, at this point, Piscopo starts sneaking around and finds this huge machine in a room with a body laying under it.

It's kind of a Frankenstein looking machine because they're using kind of like electricity to kind of bring them back.

I guess it's electricity.

It's some kind of shock waves, of course.

And it brings back this biker dude.

Huge belly, huge dude, but his face has been like totally disfigured or split in half.

I mean, it's a pretty good effect.

And so they're fighting.

And at the same time, Treat Williams gets locked in that pressure room.

But you see somebody pushing the buttons like on Inspector Gadget, right?

You get the bad guy that all you see is his hands, and they're pushing the buttons.

Well, that's happening.

So they end up killing Treat Williams.

And when he comes back, he remembers everything is normal.

He knows kind of everything that's going on.

He remembers everybody.

He's cool.

But he has no pulse, no heartbeat, no temperature.

He's the living dead.

And here's the catch is apparently this stuff wears off after time.

So he's got a good 12 hours to solve this mystery.

And so there you go.

There's your setup for the rest of the movie.

And that leads to the lady that works at the company that was kind of lead them through.

She's kind of innocent.

Turns out that she's also somebody that has been brought back from the dead.

When they check out her place, she's got a videotape and it's got Vincent Price on there on his deathbed.

And he's saying all these things to her.

And she says that she is his daughter.

And he was a famous millionaire.

Oh, I forgot too.

Also, there's a multitude of well-off people that own businesses that are being knocked off one by one.

And it turns out that Vincent Price and Darren McGavin's character are in cahoots to knock off these people and take over their businesses and get the money.

So this movie is all about greed.

So far, it's even bringing back the dead alive and making them your slaves or bringing yourself back and living forever when they finally get it right.

And that's kind of what we're going with here.

The big shock in this one is at one point, you kind of get the set up where Treat Williams is dead, Joe Piscopo is going to help him.

They're going to solve the mystery before Treat Williams decomposes, which is happening as this is going on.

His body is decomposing minute by minute.

So he gets ugly as it goes.

Kind of taking the American Werewolf scenario.

And, you know, for that part, I kind of have to say, alright, it becomes quite enjoyable.

It gets pretty good at this point.

But it all leads down to Joe Piscopo being killed.

Even though you don't see it, you just, they find him dead.

And when everything is revealed and you see who's behind all of it, they bring back Joe Piscopo to try to kill Treat Williams.

Now, how long you've been dead affects how much memory you have.

Most of them, when they come back, they're angry kind of zombie killers, whatever, right?

But yeah, that's really what this is all about.

And there's a cool scene where they, there's more reveals as we go.

I don't want to give everything away.

I kind of want you to check this one out if this is your bowl of stew.

Yeah, there's some other reveals.

There's some other secrets.

There's a code that has to be figured out.

And it all leads to a big showdown at the end and an explanation of what's going on.

You know, it's not bad.

It's really not that bad.

A lot less slapsticky than I expected.

Yeah, it's fine.

It's fine.

Probably would have enjoyed it back in the day if I would have gave it a shot.

But, you know, again, it's just that, I don't know, something about it.

You saw it and you're like, yeah, I don't need another, not to downplay the movie, but we were starting to get Transylvania 65,000, all these other movies that were Saturday the 14th, more slapstick, making fun of the horror genre.

I just didn't care, you know.

And thought this would kind of fit that category, and, you know, gladly I was a little bit wrong here.

Sure, it's got some comedy in it, but for the most part, it's a pretty solid flick, not a bad watch.

It has a reminiscence of things like movies like Dead and Buried, which is a great movie.

Some of your zombie flicks, you get some references to a few things here and there.

So, yeah, not a bad watch.

And I think I still left enough details out to make you kind of want to check it out.

So, yeah, go ahead and do that.

So as far as the rating, I'll give this a...

I'll give it a four.

You know, it's all right.

It's pretty good.

That may be a little generous.

Maybe more of a three, but I'll give it a four.

I would actually go back and check it out again to pick up on some details that I kind of skipped.

But yeah, not bad, not bad.

So on Tubi, so you can check it out.

It's right there for you.

Just give it a watch.

Let me know what you think.

All right, folks, that's it for this one.

If you got any recommendations for movies you want me to cover or talk about or if you want to just tell me how much you enjoy a certain show, a certain movie, a certain episode that I've done, if you think I'm crappy, if you think I'm good, or just middle of the road, yeah, let me know.

Be glad to hear from you.

And hope you have a nice whatever it is for you today.

Night, evening, morning, yeah, lunch, brunch.

Alright folks, we will.

Check you later.