Catch the Heat Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Catch the Heat Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov October 6, 2022

Joel Silberg's "Catch the Heat" (1987) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber. The only bonus features on the release are two vintage trailers for the film. In English, with optional English SDH subtitles for the main feature. Region-A "locked".

How do you write the screenplays for The Lineup, Marlowe, Murphy's War, In the Heat of the Night, and The Towering Inferno and then go on to produce a ‘screenplay’ for a big turkey like Catch the Heat? Did someone else do the writing on your behalf and in the end you just endorsed his work? Were you going through a difficult period that temporarily impaired your ability to think straight and write as you did in the past? Did you urgently need money to take care of a big debt? I checked three times to be certain that the Stirling Silliphant from the opening credits of Catch the Heat is the same person that was involved with the films I mentioned above. I could not believe what I was seeing. Silliphant did the screenplays for some pretty average films like The Killer Elite and Circle of Iron too, but Catch the Heat is so bad that at times it is actually nauseating. Rod Steiger is in it too, wearing an awful cheap wig and uttering lines that made me wonder whether he might have been on some sort of strong medication. Or was Steiger desperate to get paid, too?

The ’80s gave us a lot of bad films with legendary stars but many of them are very entertaining films because they have special attitudes and styles. Plenty of these films have a great sense of humor that nowadays feels almost revolutionary, too. A good number of these films were intentionally bad because they loved to mock what was perceived to be good and great, and a lot of people, myself included, appreciated their badness when it was witty and illuminating. But Catch the Heat is not that kind of entertaining, witty, or illuminating bad film. It is an amateurish film of the kind that gives you a lasting headache and makes you angry that you cannot claim back the time you wasted on it.

In San Francisco, veteran cops Checkers Goldberg (Tiana Alexandra-Silliphant) and Waldo Tarr (David Dukes) agree to head to Buenos Aires and take down the powerful drug lord Jason Hannibal (Steiger). Shortly after, Checkers becomes Cinderella Pu, a sexy Hong Kong-based dancer, and ends up auditioning for a prominent producer in downtown Buenos Aires who supplies Hannibal with beautiful girls that are used as drug mules. The girls are completely unaware that they are being exploited. They are hired to work in a popular nightclub where they are introduced to Hannibal who promises to make them big stars in America. However, to become big stars the girls need big boobs, so Hannibal arranges that they get implants that are loaded with top-quality heroin worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Once they land in America, the future stars then have an accident and die, the heroin is removed from their fake boobs and sold to local pushers, and Hannibal becomes a little richer. Cinderella Pu quickly becomes one of Hannibal’s future stars and, with Waldo’s assistance, begins gathering information about his illegal business.

Catch the Heat was directed by Joel Silberg, who either did not know what to do with Silliphant’s screenplay or did not care for it. Why? Because the story the film tells is essentially a collection of random events where the actors behave as if they are warming up for an audition. The worst offender is Alexandra-Silliphant, who simply cannot act and goes through more than two-thirds of the film dispatching lines in very broken English and behaving as if she is in a parody hastily put together for the amusement of a small group of kindergarteners. Dukes treats his character as a necessary decoration and, sadly, it appears that it is exactly what the screenplay demanded. Steiger’s contribution is quite surreal. His cheap wig and erratic behavior make him look like a senior citizen with some sort of a mental disorder, not a drug lord with an international reputation.

Catch the Heat Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Catch the Heat arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Lorber.

The film looks quite good in high-definition. In fact, aside from a couple of indoor sequences where the grain becomes a bit powdery, I would say that the current master consistently produces very strong visuals. There are no traces of problematic digital corrections. Clarity, delineation, and depth are always pleasing. Fluidity could be improved, but specific encoding optimizations would have done more to strengthen the visuals. The color scheme is very good. Saturation could be slightly better, but the overall balance and temperature of the visual are always convincing. Image stability is good. I noticed a few white nicks, but there are no distracting large cuts, debris, warped or torn frames to report. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free player in order to access its content).

Catch the Heat Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There is only one standard audio track on this Blu-ray release: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. Optional English SDH subtitles are provided for the main feature.

I did not encounter any issues to report in our review. The dialog was very clear, clean, stable, and easy to follow. Balance was good, too. The final third of the film has quite a bit of intense action that sounded very good on my system, though the original sound design isn't going to impress folks that appreciate what modern blockbusters have to offer in the audio department.

Catch the Heat Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• VHS Preview - a vintage VHS promo for Catch the Heat. In English, not subtitled. (2 min).

• Trailer - remastered trailer for Catch the Heat. In English, not subtitled. (2 min).

• Cover - reversible cover with vintage poster art for Catch the Heat.

Catch the Heat Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If Catch the Heat was similar to the various colorful 'boob noir' films Andy Sidaris directed, I would have enjoyed it. I like viewing these types of genre films in the wee hours of the night and have plenty of them in my library. But Catch the Heat is like an amateurish parody with a female lead that simply does not know how to act. I don't know how Rod Steiger was brought on board, but his contribution is pretty surreal, too. There are a lot of bad-yet-entertaining '80s films that you can pick up on Blu-ray, but Catch the Heat isn't one of them. AVOID.