Andy Warhol Presents Heat - a film by Paul Morrissey

Andy Warhol Presents Heat - a film by Paul Morrissey Review

Andy Warhol Presents Heat - a film by Paul Morrissey Feature

• Single VHS video of Heat.
• Originally made in 1971. Mystic Fire video 1987.

HEAT is the third in the trilogy by director Paul Morrissey, in collaboration with Andy Warhol, which captures the essence of some failed American lives. In Morrissey's detached and thoroughly Warholian take on Billy Wilder's SUNSET BOULEVARD, Joe Dallesandro plays Joey Davis, an oversexed has-been child star who arrives at a seedy and sex-drenched poolside motel. There Joey meets Jessica, a frumpy and burned-out fellow motel resident, and learns that her mother is the aging and fading movie star Sally Todd, who was also his former costar. Joey's half-baked aspirations for stardom lead him to the beds of almost every character he meets, and he eventually forges a sordid liaison with Sally and moving into her crumbling Hollywood Hills mansion. Joey half-heartedly fends off the advances of Jessie, as well as Sally's ex-husband's live-in lover and anyone else who comes along with something to offer. The mostly ad-libbed dialogue and ramshackle cast of characters create a shambling and hysterical chain of nonevents that lead to a torpid California poolside anticlimax. Morrissey's meandering camerawork and loosely structured plot structure allows the actors' magnetic and manic personalities to take over, as the minutiae of their failed ambitions and sordid habits are scrutinized by the lazy and all-seeing eye of the handheld camera. Along with its comic meandering and satirical overtone, HEAT pinpoints the zeitgeist of 1970s Los Angeles with an unrelenting look at the lives of these Hollywood has-beens and their empty worldview. A vintage camp classic.

Paul Morrissey Collection (Flesh / Trash / Heat)

Paul Morrissey Collection (Flesh / Trash / Heat) Review

An icon of the Andy Warhol Factory and one of the most famous figures of the late 1960s and 1970s, Joe Dallesandro shot to fame in this landmark trilogy of underground filmmaking from acclaimed director Paul Morrissey. Raw, charismatic, and unabashed, his performances anchor these unflinching and often hilarious looks at life on the streets where hustling, conning, shooting up, loving, and bickering make up every memorable day.

In Flesh, Joe stars as a dim and sweet-natured hustler who journeys from one client to the next in a quirky odyssey that goes from the clutches of an amorous artist to a pair of beauties including a young Patti D'Arbanville.

In Trash, Joe struggles to provide a living for his demanding girlfriend (Warhol favorite Holly Woodlawn), crossing back and forth between the gutter and the high life in a quest for happiness.

Then Joe hits Los Angeles as an unemployed former child star in Heat, a fast and funny look at fleeting fame where an affair with fallen star Sylvia Miles (Midnight Cowboy) results in hilarious complications.

Now restored and remastered with all-new extras, these masterworks of true independent cinema burn brighter than ever in these sensational new special editions, with an exclusive fourth bonus disc of additional extras!