Dead Heat 1987

Two seasoned detectives, Roger Mortis and Doug Bigelow, dive into a brutal jewelry-store heist that spirals into a violent clash with the police. The shootout ends with the pair miraculously surviving, and their captain assigns them to follow the case, hoping their relentless persistence will crack what seems like a straightforward crime.

The mystery deepens when a coroner named Rebecca reveals a chilling detail: the two bodies brought in had already been to the morgue. Not only did autopsy scars exist, but Rebecca remembers performing the autopsies—and has photographs to prove it—suggesting the corpses somehow got up and walked away. This uncanny twist props the investigation into a world where death does not settle easily.

As Mortis and Bigelow chase the truth, a preservative chemical found in the bodies links them to a company that has recently ordered large quantities. Their search leads them to the company’s public relations chief, Randi James, who gives them a tour of the facility. While Doug quietly probes a suspicious room, he encounters a reanimated biker operating a strange machine. A brutal struggle erupts, and Mortis joins the fight. In the chaos, Mortis is knocked into a decompression chamber—an execution-style setup intended to humanely euthanize failed test animals—and the chamber is activated, leaving him lifeless.

The fuse of the story ignites when Rebecca and Doug manage to revive Mortis using the very machine that seems to bend death. He awakens with no heartbeat and icy skin—conditions Rebecca assesses as a window of roughly twelve hours before the reanimation wears off. Mortis decides to use this fleeting life to seek vengeance on his killer and to continue solving the case that brought them here. With time ticking, Doug splits off to meet at Randi’s home, while Mortis and Randi visit the tomb of Arthur P. Laudermilk, the man behind the company’s wealth and the limelight of their investigation.

A cryptic numeric code discovered at the tomb becomes a pivotal clue, guiding Mortis back to the mysterious world of resurrection. Returning home, the duo finds Doug dead—suspended and slowly drowned in a fish tank after hours of inaction. Randi confesses a shocking truth: she herself is undead, once a recipient of Laudermilk’s resurrection experiments, and now a participant in the tangled web of power and immortality.

Armed with new questions, Mortis confronts the head coroner, Dr. Ernest McNab, who appears to control much of the macabre operation. McNab’s plan becomes clearer: reanimate criminals to steal for him while keeping his own hands clean, even as he kills Doug and seizes control of the operation. He captures Mortis, locking him in an ambulance with Rebecca’s corpse, and releases the brakes to send the vehicle careening toward a catastrophic highway collision. McNab emerges, scarred and more undead, and returns to a laboratory where he and Laudermilk’s resurrected form pitch the resurrection machine to a group of wealthy clients.

In a brutal confrontation, McNab reveals a reanimated Doug—the brain deteriorated by hours of death—rendering him essentially a zombie with no memory of Mortis. Mortis, however, awakens that memory, reviving Doug’s sense of self just long enough to turn the tables. The two confront McNab, who fatally self-destructs rather than face justice. Mortis and Doug resurrect McNab to expose his crimes, but Mortis triggers a catastrophic overload in the machine, causing an explosive unraveling of McNab’s fate.

With the invention rejected and the machine destroyed, the surviving duo ponders the moral weight of resurrection, immortality, and what lies beyond. Laudermilk’s promises of endless life collapse in the face of a world where memory, identity, and humanity can be fractured beyond repair. In the final moment, as the pair contemplate what comes next, a curious notion of reincarnation lingers—Doug joking about being reborn as a girl’s bicycle seat, a light note that sits oddly against the nightmarish events they’ve endured. The last line lands with a wry, shared aside from Mortis: “This could be the end of a beautiful friendship.”