It has been a full week now, and we are back to Wacky Wednesday. Funny that it is technically the third zombie movie so far this year, but oh well.
This one came under my radar when I saw it being featured for Wolf Choir's monthly B-Movie Bingo program at Hollywood Theater. Unfortunately I missed it when it was there, but no reason I couldn't feature it myself for this year's festivities. B-Movie Bingo is the first Tuesday of every month and is more about the experience than the quality of the movie. You play bingo with a card that has a plethora of action movie cliches like, "long boring scene," "male ponytail," "teamed up with a rookie or animal," "uzi," "white suit," and "shooting while dying." There are prizes and you get to scream the different squares out if the hosts miss something. Plus, there is a special definition for the "blank square." It is not a free space, no, it is much better. It is something completely bizarre, a scene, a line, a woman putting a birthday cake with a lit candle into a drawer; it's basically something that is so strange, you would likely never see it in any other movie. I think that is actually my favorite part of B-Movie Bingo and I'll mention the scene in Dead Heat I think was probably called out as the "blank square" when they showed it.
I love campy films, but I especially love those that just go all out because they know what they are doing is ridiculous and don't give a s***. That is exactly why I found myself enjoying this one more than I think I should have. Detectives Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and Doug Bigelow (Joe Piscopo) find themselves on a strange case when they thwart a robbery at a jewelry store but discover the crooks were already once pronounced dead. They investigate Dante Laboratories, suspecting they have some way to resurrect the dead. Doug finds a suspicious room with a mysterious machine and the reanimated corpse of a biker. Roger tries to help fight it off but is killed in the line of duty, but becomes one of the undead to fight the zombie crooks and the madman behind the machine. It's a zombie buddy cop movie! A ridiculous premise executed in an off-the-wall and ridiculous way all true to the era of '80s camp horror. Of course it wouldn't have been as good without Vincent Price's cameo as the "deceased" owner of Dante Laboratories, Arthur P. Laudermilk. Really anything that man is in makes it worth a watch.
WHITE SUIT
You're not looking so good there Rog
It is super campy, with cringe-worthy one-liners and cheesy effects, but that is what makes it so much fun. I believe the "blank square" would have been the scene in which our heroes are interrogating a suspect at a restaurant and he turns on a small resurrection machine, reanimating all of the meat in the restaurant. All of the meat. A, what I assume is a liver, jumps onto Roger's face while Doug wrestles with a pig carcass. The best though, is when a whole cow carcass, head not included, breaks out of the freezer. Doug's cheesy one-liners throughout the film, but particularly in this scene will force a laugh and make you roll your eyes, but it is still amusing. The examples, when he was fighting the resurrected pig, "Alright, this little piggy's going to market," and when Roger asks how they are supposed to kill the cow carcass he replies, "Maybe we can drown it in A-1 sauce."
I literally can't even
You know it is a true 80's comedy when it has its own movie-title ending credit song.
Don't watch unless you don't wanna watch the movie. Or do and watch it anyway!
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