DEAD HEAT

US, 1988, 83 minutes, Colour.
Treat Williams, Joe Piscopo, Lindsay Frost, Darren McGavin?, Vincent Price.
Directed by Mark Goldblatt.

Dead Heat is an oddball police thriller. It looks and sounds like the work of young film-makers, tongue-in-cheek, satirical with spoof ideas as well as enjoying the genre of police investigations as well as science fiction. The plot defies credibility. It opens with a robbery at a jewellery store and attack by the police (who seem to be massacred unmercifully). Two police appear as heroes and discover that the robbers are already dead and have been injected with a chemical to make them live again. Just when the audience was least expecting it, Treat Williams as the hero is killed - and is brought to life again. He then has 12 hours to investigate what really happened as his body decays.

His wisecracking buddy, Joe Piscopo, also gets killed at some stage and reappears. The heroine, rather glamorous, we find is also resuscitated and towards the end of the film breaks up and disintegrates.

The film is glossy in its production, uses the conventions of the police thriller - but also has wisecracking cynical dialogue, especially from the heroes and from Darren McGavin? who turns out to be the arch villain. To give atmosphere to the film, Vincent Price appears as the scientist who invented the process.

There is stunt work, a range of special effects for monstrous-looking creatures as well as for decaying hero and heroine. Oddball.

1. Impact of the film? The mind of the film-makers? Serious/send-up spoof mentality? Police thriller? Science fiction?

2. City locations, laboratories? Special effects and make-up? Stunt work? Musical score?

3. The title and its ambiguities?

4. Roger and Doug, on patrol, their action in the jewellery raid? The discovery of the dead bodies? Rebecca and her help at the morgue? Dr McNab? Going to the laboratories, meeting Randi? The confrontation, Roger's death, revived? The Frankenstein laboratory echoes? The discussions about Roger being dead? Doug and his grief, hopes? The investigation? The monsters revived? Randi and her lies, the tape with Dr Loudermilk? McNab? and his interference? The discovery about the chemicals, the processes? Randi and her collapse? The attempts on their lives? Doug's death? The fights with the monsters - and their electrocution, drowning? Roger and his disintegration? The discussion with Dr Loudermilk to help people become immortal? The final confrontation and the spoof ending? The characters of Doug and Roger?

5. Randi, the PR guide, her lies, her glamour, her disintegration? The tape for Dr Loudermilk?

6. Rebecca, her work on the corpses, suspicions, helping the men, her death?

7. Dr McNab? - and his reasonableness, his disclaimers, the irony that he was the villain?

8. Dr Louder milk, the tape, his speech to the elderly wealthy? Vincent Price in the role?

9. The implausibility of the plot? The blend of tongue-in-cheek use of conventions with the serious visual style of the film? Did it work?