The dulcet tones of “Seventeen” by Winger punched the air as the jukebox slid to the left revealing a secret passage to the downtown Orlando sewer system. Edwige was the first to hop inside followed by the Revenging Manta and his brother the accountant. The Revenging Manta produced an LED lantern to light our way. This was the second time that week I’d be wading through sewer water.

I hate sewers.

— To be continued.

Seasons Greetings from all of us here at the Museum of Schlock. Four years ago, I had reviewed 2015’s Wild Card from director Simon West and starring Jason Stathum. It was based off of the novel Heat by William Goldman. I learned at the time that there was another version of this movie made back in 1986 starring Burt Reynolds in the lead. It was directed by Dick Richards and Jerry Jameson. Dick Richards? Dick is short for Richard which means his parents named him Richard Richards! Were they high?

Ummmm. This is the same movie as Wild Card. I’m not kidding. The dialogue is verbatim. Maybe because the script was the same one Goldman had written thirty years prior based on his own novel. You have Burt Reynolds as Nick Escalante instead of Jason Stathum as Nick Wild, but other than that it’s weirdly similar. I am not going to say one performance is better than the other, but I think I prefer the 2015 version. Maybe that’s because I saw that one first?

I don’t remember there being a warehouse hunt in the Stathum version, but I could be wrong on that. You have Peter MacNicol as the dorky Cyrus. I like Peter MacNicol. He was my main reason for watching Ally McBeal and Numb3rs. What? You never heard of Numb3rs? It was a police procedural series where the FBI solved crimes with the aid of a genius mathematician. It ran for five seasons on CBS. Judd Hirsh was also on that series. Yes, the same Judd Hirsh from Taxi.

Anyway, the plot for Heat is the same as Wild Card. A Las Vegas showgirl gets worked over by the spoiled son of a mob boss and requests Nick’s help to find out who this guy is so she can sue him. Nick goes sniffing around and finds out the creep’s name: Danny DeMarco. Nick goes over to “soften up” Danny’s bodyguards so Nicky can have her revenge. Reynold’s version of Nick gets brutal in his fights, bloodying kneecaps whereas Stathum was a bit more stylized in his fight choreography. Danny is humiliated, but gets out unscathed. But Danny DeMarco wants to get even with Nick.

I suppose that’s where the title comes from. The heat is on Nick due to the mob being after him. Or maybe Heat refers to the hot streak he’s on when he wins a hundred grand at the tables. I don’t know. Siskel and Ebert weren’t too kind to this movie upon release, but they tended to belittle Burt Reynolds’ movies. I managed to catch Heat on Plex and I believe there’s been a blu-ray out there of it.

The movie’’s fine, but I prefer the remake. 

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, and episode 645) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.