Review of Dead Heat (1988) by Bryan G — 22 Oct 2005

[font=Courier New]I got this Zombie DVD box set a couple of weeks ago, and have been watching the films one by one. [i]Dead Heat[/i] was the one that I was looking forward to the least. I was kind of taken back at the fact that a comedy zombie film was included in this otherwise straight horror filmed set. But after watching it, it is pretty much the best film in the set.

I will admit that a lot of the jokes in the film aren?t that great. Maybe they were back in the late 80?s when it came out. But man did I not laugh at a lot of the film. That is pretty much the only element in the film that really hurts it. Everything else has such a naive charm, it is hard to hate it. For me at least.

Treat Williams plays Roger Mortis, and Joe Piscopo plays Doug Bigelow, his partner. The two are LAPD cops, and best of friends. After a robbery of a jewelry store, where the robbers don?t go down after being pumped full of lead, the two go on an investigation to discover the source of these jewel robbing zombies.

But during their investigation, Roger is killed. But he doesn?t stay dead. Using the same machine used to bring the jewel thieves back to life, Roger is turned into a walking corpse. And he is determined to figure all of this out before his body completely decomposes.

The film has a pretty nice little imagination going for it, and I like that. Instead of having standard flesh eating zombies, these are more like the mind controlled kind. But they are done up like the flesh eating kind. And when they shoot guns and fight, it doesn?t seem so odd like with [i]Nightmare City[/i]? another movie from the same DVD box set.

As far as zombie movies go, this is one of the better ones I?ve seen. It might not sit well with some, but comedy fans should enjoy what this film has to offer. And a nice little cameo by Vincent Price only makes the film better. [/font].