Bullet Points: Arizona Heat
Glenn Frey was right… the heat is on. Especially in the world of action entertainment.
We’ve had movies like Red Heat, Dead Heat, City Heat, Muscle Heat and just plain ol’ Heat. On television we’ve had shows like L.A. Heat and Acapulco H.E.A.T.
Our resident hidden gemologist, Matt Spector, recently brought another member of the “HEAT” family to my attention, 1988’s Arizona Heat…
- Murphy’s Law: As the movie begins, Detective Larry Kapinski (Michael Parks, Death Wish V) is trailing a scumbag pusher named Pencil Eddie in hopes of finding out who is supplying Eddie with his drugs. The trail ends at a dilapidated apartment building in a rough part of town. Kapinski calls for backup, before he goes inside. Several uniform officers show up and surround the building while Kapinski and Officer Jack Murphy go inside the apartment buidling. Murphy is sweating like a whore in church as he enters the building and is visibly on edge. This ends up costing Murphy his life as he kicks down the door of the drug lab instead of waiting for Kapinski and ends up shot in the chest immediately. Kapinski gets there seconds later and take out all the bad guys, but that really doesn’t do poor Murphy any good.
- Monsoon Season: Arizona Heat takes place in Phoenix during Monsoon Season… for those of you unfamiliar with Arizona’s Monsoon Season it typically runs from June through September and brings with it high humidity that often causes lightning. And lightning is what the newspapers are saying killed Officer Robinson who was responding to a car stopped in the middle of an intersection, with a driver who is believed to be drunk. As Officer Robinson is trying to communicate with the driver there’s a lightning strike and moments later the car explodes killing the driver and Robinson.
- Fake News: The next day Kapinski is called in by his boss, Captain Samuels. Samuels wants Kapinski to investigate the murder of Officer Robinson… that’s right it was no lightning strike. But Samuels does not want his best detective and known womanizer Kapinski to investigate this on his own, he has decided to assign him a partner in the form of Jill Andrews (Denise Crosby, Eliminators). Kapinski reacts the way you’d expect a maverick cop who always works on his own and plays by his own rules to react to the news that not only is he getting stuck with a partner, but the partner is a woman. And at this point Kapinski doesn’t even know that Andrews is a lesbian… after that truth bomb is dropped on him Kapinski becomes what would be described as a “human resources nightmare” in today’s world.
- Investigation: After their initial meeting in Captain Samuels’ office, Kapinski and Andrews head down to the lab to find out what they can about the explosive device that caused the car to explode and kill Officer Robinson. From there it is a trip to the morgue to see if the coroner was able to identify who the driver of the car was. It is at this point that the coroner reveals the only portion of the driver’s anatomy that was not completely burned away was the driver’s unusually large penis.
- Detour: A bank robbery will momentarily divert the attention of Kapinski and Andrews, who respond to the call and help their fellow boys in blue. This turn of events gives the movie a big action boost, first with a good old fashioned cops and robbers shootout and then with Kapinski living up to his maniac reputation as he and Andrews hop in a police cruiser in hot pursuit of the bank robbers. The car chase does a ton of property damage, especially to a used car lot, and it ends when the chase goes off road and the bank robbers drive off a precipice and plunge to their explosive death.
- Another One Bites the Dust: During all of the commotion at the bank robbery shootout, nobody noticed when Officer Rollins was shot in the back by a motorcycle helmet wearing sniper from a rooftop across from the bank. And Kapinski quickly theorizes that they have a cop killer on their hands. Unfortunately, knowing they have a cop killer on their hands is not enough to stop the cop killings (please note: all the cops that are being killed were with Kapinski at the drug bust at the start of the movie. Kapinski and Andrews still have nothing solid to go on, until Kapinski’s informant Toad comes through with some valuable information.
- Foot Long: Toad finds out from a local stripper that her aspiring porn actor boyfriend, known as Foot Long, has been missing ever since the night he agreed to help a guy play a prank on a friend and pretend to be drunk/ stop his car in the middle of an intersection. So if Kapinski and Andrews can find the guy who put Foot Long up to this prank… they will likely find the killer. I could say more but then I will do just as HORRIBLE of a job as Arizona Heat did in keeping the identity of the serial killer a mystery. From the moment the killer appears on the screen early on in the film, you know there’s something shady about the guy and nobody who was even half paying attention to the film would be shocked at the inevitable reveal.
Watching as many movies as I do, it is easy for movies to become a blur in my memory, but I can’t imagine I will forget Arizona Heat anytime soon and much of that is attributed to Michael Parks. Parks grabs this movie by the back of the neck and says “Let’s go!” and to her credit, Denise Crosby keeps up with Parks every step of the way.
The next step in this review is to provide you with some Bonus Bullet Points…
- Memorable Quote #1: “Cooper and Blakely couldn’t find their buttholes without a mirror.” – Captain Samuels
- Memorable Quote #2: “I want to come in and barf my guts out!” – Jill Andrews
- Memorable Quote #3: “You think when I’m not on the job, I’m playing hide the weenie?!” – Larry Kapinski
- If You Ever: …wanted to see Michael Parks in bed with a mother and daughter, then Arizona Heat is the movie for you.
And now for the first time ever a SUPER BONUS BULLET POINT…
- WTF: At one point, after a tough day on the job Captain Samuels tells Kapinski he needs to go get himself a woman for the night. So Kapinski does just that… in fact he gets Andrews’ roommate/girlfriend Terri. Something Andrews finds out the next day when she goes to pick up Kapinski for work, not because Terri is still there but because while Kapinski is in the shower, Andrews pops an unmarked tape into the VCR while she waits and it is a Kapinski/Terri sex tape. This causes Andrews to storm upstairs and confront Kapinski in the shower, he then pulls her in the shower, kisses her and rips her shirt open. And this WTF moment was considered cover worthy by Republic Pictures Home Video.
