Bullet Points: Dead Heat (1988)

Zombie movies are a dime a dozen. Even television is caked full of them by now and it’s only a matter of time before The History Channel and TLC find some way to make money from the craze. Dead Heat is a film that I have been aware of only in passing for the better part of my life but have somehow never watched. It’s odd, too, because I would consider myself a fan of both Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo. Well, unlike what these zombie movies might teach us, we only have one life to live and you can be damned sure I’m not going to live mine without seeing this buddy cop action/zombie/comedy.

• Cash and Dash Gang: The film opens with an absolutely bonkers bank robbery scene with the two cops, Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo), showing up with both guns and quips at the ready. The cops unload hundreds of bullets into the robbers with no luck until Mortis’ quick thinking solves the issue. It’s a scene that I did not expect in a very good way. Mortis and Bigelow drop hilarious lines left and right.
• Buddy Cops: Aw shit, man. These two guys have the most stereotypical police Captain I’ve seen since Last Action Hero. I love it! He shouts at them for blowing the area to smithereens but also congratulates them on stopping the robbers. I believe that is both positive and negative reinforcement. The two then meet up with Mortis’ ex who just so happens works in the morgue, and are off to solve the case.

• Big Pharma: These big think-tank pharmaceutical companies are gonna be the end of all of us. Here, their experimentation has led to some wild zombie-like creatures. Mortis and Bigelow get into another scrape, and Mortis ends up eventually joining the ranks of the undead.
• “Remember the good old days when guns used to kill people?”: As the two men get closer to finding out who is behind all this madness, zombie hit-men start coming after them and their new lady comrade from the pharma company. Things get a little out of hand, as you might expect, and before long Mortis is near the end of his journey. His condition is getting worse every minute and it’s clear that no antidote is gonna make him normal again.

• The Terminator: Rigamortis, I mean, Roger Mortis has a Terminator-style showdown with the security guards protecting the big bads. It is fantastic! Never did I expect to watch to undead dudes stand face to face and blast each other with sub-machine guns. By this point in the movie, most of the characters have been killed so you’ll be latching onto Roger pretty hard in the hopes that finds the bastards responsible.
• “Welcome to zombie land”: It looks to me like someone needs to be sending a big, fat check to the makers of this movie. The movie ends with a bang and very little chance at a sequel. There was talk that the studio wanted director Mark Goldblatt to make a second one but I find it best to sometimes leave movies like this alone. The last thing we need now is some idiot trying to make a sequel to Dead Heat 30 years too late. The truth is that the film ends exactly how it should, and I was more than happy with it.

The Verdict: I thought that Dead Heat was amazing! Somehow, writer Terry Black hasn’t had much success elsewhere in his career and that is a real shame because this movie is tragically underrated. Speaking of underrated, Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo should be on more lists of the greatest buddy cop duos. They play off each other so well and exist in that funny medium where all the good ones (like Riggs and Murtagh) get from point A to point B in different but parallel ways. I think the story of Dead Heat was unique and played as straightly as one could while also being funny and having a serious amount of gore. The effect department did a phenomenal job and anyone leaving this off of their list of great zombie movies should consider swallowing a sharp, serrated object. Take it from me, Dead Heat won’t scare you this Halloween, but a reality in which you don’t watch this movie is the real nightmare.