Not to date myself, but I remember a time when Joe Piscopo told punch lines instead of being one. He was great on Saturday Night Live, very funny in Johnny Dangerously and surprisingly endearing in Brian De Palma’s criminally ignored comedy, Wise Guys.
Dead Heat, however, provides ample evidence for the continued absence of Joe on the celebrity stage. If there is a prize for Comedian Who Should Be Least Allowed to Improvise One-Liners, Joe wins hands-down, besting even the immortally awful Pauly Shore. Every single line Piscopo grunts out falls to the ground and dies an ignoble death. As a cop who becomes a zombie, poor Treat Williams suffers death, rebirth and decomposition, but that’s nothing compared to having to smile at every ill-timed goddamned gag that slips out of the witless jokesack that is Piscopo. When Joe finally gets murdered, the feeling is not one of sadness, but utter relief.
The rest of Heat’s a mixed, low-rent bag. A routine tale of buddy zombie cops (seriously, why should that be routine?), it has some pleasingly goopy gore, wastes appearances by Darren McGavin and Vincent Price, and at least gave Williams a paycheck to feed him until Deep Rising.
Other than Piscopo, the main claim to fame for Heat is being written by Terry Black, brother of writer/director Shane Black (Kiss Kiss Bang Bang). On the spectrum of movie people with more talented siblings, Terry is far from a Tony Scott, Beau Bridges or even Eric Roberts. He’s not even a Charlie O’Connell.
No, Terry’s a Stephen Baldwin. I didn’t want to go there, as there are just some things you can’t take back, but Dead Heat forced me to. —Corey Redekop