Director: Mark Goldblatt
Tagline: "These cops are on the biggest murder case of their lives… their own!"
Plot: Treat Williams' punningly named Roger Mortis is a typical buddy-cop-film protagonist. He plays by his own rules, shows little concern for traffic laws or civil liberties, and thinks nothing of "requisitioning" a colleague's car without permission, then plowing it into a machine-gun-wielding punk. But he does have one small quirk: He's dead. So his lame quips with partner Joe Piscopo (whose career died around the time this movie was made) take on a decidedly morbid bent. Williams goes looking for the (also-deceased) bad guys who killed him, but even the sweet release of death can't provide him with any relief from Piscopo's groaning one-liners and hacky riffing.
Key scenes: Piscopo's dramatic chops get a rare workout when he puts on his very best sad face and tells a colleague that Williams "died the way dogs are supposed to die." (Of old age while frolicking in a field?) He also shows his spiritual side: Questioning whether Williams' corpse should be reanimated, he ponders, "What about the soul, Becky? What about the soul?" Throughout the film, Williams' appearance grows skuzzier and more grotesque until he begins to look like the roadie for a post-apocalyptic punk band. Eventually, he and his similarly undead adversary engage in an epic short-range machine-gun battle, pumping round after round into each other.
Can easily be distinguished by: It's that buddy-cop movie from the '80s. You know, the one where the hero is a decomposing corpse.
Sign that it was made in 1988: Even in 1988, Piscopo's modified mullet was hopelessly out of date. And his effeminate-gay-guy routine would survive the decade only in the manic "ad-libbing" of kindred spirit Robin Williams.
Timeless message: Life is too precious to waste watching Joe Piscopo movies.
Memorable quotes: When a concerned soul tells him he looks hurt, Williams responds with a terse "Lady, I'm fucking dead."
- Comments