Heat is one of the more mainstream films produced by Andy Warhol's "Factory" and directed by Paul Morrissey. It is something of a send-up of Sunset Boulevard, with male beauty Joe Dallesandro in the William Holden part. In the film, Dallessandro seeks to advance his career by bedding anyone who is able to help him, from corpulent lady motel owners, to the gay boyfriend of a movie star's ex-husband. His career moves land him in bed with a fading but still-influential movie star (Sylvia Miles), and they enjoy a brief relationship. This ends, however, when Dallessandro decides that he wants to handle his career on his own. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Review
In Heat, Paul Morrissey provides a backdrop of faded Hollywood for his cast to satirize. While some attention is paid to the faded glamour of old Hollywood and the finale is an obvious parody, Heat is less a tribute to Sunset Boulevard than yet another ode to Joe Dallesandro. Like in Flesh, Trash, and Flesh for Frankenstein, Morrissey's camera worships the frequently undressed Dallesandro, who is besieged by the sexual attentions of desperate women, but couldn't care less. He's on the make, and while sex is all around him, it never seems to touch him. Or does it? One could say that Dallesandro's character in these films is a mirror of Warhol -- cold, distant, asexual -- but that would miss the point. Dallesandro's eyes gave him away, and while he may not have responded sexually to all of the adulation that came his way, one look at his eyes revealed that he was hurting inside. This was a hustler with a heart rubbed raw by life's harsh reality. When one looked in Warhol's eyes, there was nothing there. This is also the paradox of Morrissey's films for Warhol. They're supposed to be jokes, but when considering the fates of many Factory Superstars (including Andrea Feldman), there's not much to laugh about. Heat does have some truly funny moments -- Eric Emerson's poolside self-abuse, Ast's massage scene with Dallesandro, and Sylvia Miles' wonderfully schizoid turn as Sally Todd. But it's also a difficult film to watch at times -- overlong, shrill, frequently boring, and it could be argued that Morrissey and company exploited the conditions that ultimately led to Feldman's suicide. Still, although it isn't the best of Morrissey's films for Warhol (that would be Trash), Heat is probably the most palatable introduction to his unusual body of work. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide
Dallesandro plays Joey Davis, an unemployed former child star who supports himself as a hustler in Los Angeles. Joey uses sex to get his landlady to reduce his rent, then seduces Sally Todd (Miles), a former Hollywood starlet. Sally tries to help Joey revive his career but her status as a mediocre ex-actress proves to be quite useless. Sally's psychotic daughter Jessica (Feldman) further complicates the relationship between Sally and the cynical, emotionally-numb Joey.
