Dead Heat (1988 film)
| Dead Heat | |
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DVD cover
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| Directed by | Mark Goldblatt |
| Produced by | David Helpern Michael L. Meltzer |
| Written by | Terry Black |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Ernest Troost |
| Cinematography | Robert D. Yeoman |
| Edited by | Harvey Rosenstock |
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Production
company |
Helpern/Meltzer
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| Distributed by | New World Pictures |
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Release date
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Running time
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86 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $5,000,000 (estimated) |
| Box office | $3,588,626 (US) |
Dead Heat is a 1988 American action comedy horror film directed by Mark Goldblatt and starring Treat Williams, Joe Piscopo and Vincent Price. The B movie is about an LAPD police officer who is murdered while attempting to arrest zombies who have been reanimated by the head of Dante Laboratories in order to carry out violent armed robberies, and decides to get revenge with the help of his former partner.
Detectives Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo) are called to the scene of a rather violent jewelry store robbery. The robbers take on a squadron of police in a messy shootout, but neither seem affected when they are riddled with bullets. Thanks to the combined, albeit extreme measures of Mortis and Bigelow, they are able to take out the criminals, their acts narrowly avoiding termination. Meanwhile, a coroner friend of Roger's, Rebecca (Clare Kirkconnell) informs the detectives that the two bodies they had brought in had previously been to the morgue: not only do they have autopsy scars, but she herself clearly remembers performing the autopsy and has pictures to prove it, suggesting they simply got up and left the morgue at their own volition.
There is a preservative chemical compound found in the bodies that connect the pair of detectives to a company that had ordered a great amount of it recently. Mortis and Bigelow investigate and meet the company's head public relations person, Randi James (Lindsay Frost) who gives them a tour of the facility. When Doug wanders off to investigate a suspicious room, he encounters the reanimated corpse of a biker on a strange machine and in the fray, Roger is knocked into a decompression room used to humanely kill failed test animals and is asphyxiated to death.
Encountering the machine, and realizing it is capable of bringing people back from the dead, Rebecca and Doug successfully bring Roger back from the dead. He says he feels fine, yet he has no heart beat and his skin is cold to the touch, Rebecca surmises he has about twelve hours before the reanimation process ends and he dissolves into a puddle of mush. Roger decides to take this time to find and exact his vengeance on the person who killed him. They go to Randi's house just shortly before she is attacked by two more undead thugs, which the partners are able to subdue. Randi says that she is the daughter of a rich industrialist, and the owner of the company she works for until his death, Arthur P. Laudermilk (Vincent Price).
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