Dead Heat

Dead Heat (1988), directed by Mark Goldblatt, Vinegar Syndrome 4k remaster, encoded in 10 bit HEVC with AAC sound, including original theatrical stereo, commentary track, and English subtitles.

IMDb : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094961/

Video encoded in two-pass 9 500 kbps x265 10bit with the veryslow preset for archive quality image.

English and English SDH subtitles OCRed, proofed and corrected.

Note : Have you ever thought to yourself "I wish there was a buddy cop movie with zombies, and where one of the cops actually becomes a zombie"? Or possibly "The ideal firearm for the undead must be the Uzi"? Well, thanks to the power of cocaine, it's morning in America, because here's Dead Heat, the story of two cops who are buddies (check) who fight a lot of Uzi-wielding zombies (check), one of them is killed and reanimated by a Frankenstein-style machine and later uses an Uzi himself (check!), there's an inspired sequence in a Chinese butcher shop where all the dead animals come to life and attack, and to top it off, it stars Treat Williams, Joe Piscopo, and Vincent Price for some reason. Oh, and the practical effects are generally surprisingly good (there's one optical effect that's horrible, though.)

The sheer frequency of clichéd 80s quips in this movie is totally off the charts, I swear these people are constantly trying to be funny (and mostly failing). It's truly a movie that could only have been made in a specific time and place, the time and place being face down in a mountain of blow in 80s Hollywood. It's also worth noting that the director, Mark Goldblatt, is an accomplished editor, having cut the original Piranha, Enter the Ninja, The Howling, and Halloween II, as well as several James Cameron films.

Much like this movie itself, the existence of a 4k remaster confuses and angers me, but it looks quite good, maybe a little grainier than I would have liked. It also sounds fine, and the commentary track is good, although everyone's less ashamed about this than they should be.

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