Paul Morrissey's Heat

Also known as Andy Warhol's Heat

* * * (out of 4)

Andy Warhol factory filmmaker Paul Morrissey moves away from his junkie streets of the Big Apple to the sun baked swimming pools and verandas of Hollywood has-beens and losers in Andy Warhol's Heat. Welcome to the third and final entry in Morrissey's "Little Joe" trilogy which followed hunky hustler Joe Dallesandro as he drifted from place to place, either looking to score some drugs or trying to get some street johnny to hop into bed with him. (He went on to shoot the Warhol versions of Dracula and Frankenstein in Italy.)

While Heat contains slightly more plot than the preceding Morrissey-Dallesandro collaborations (Flesh and Trash) it also lacks the colorful New York factory types which populated those earlier films. Dallesandro would have interaction with a zany topless dancer eager to show her stuff, or have to evade the amours of a pregnant woman ready to break any second. John Waters certainly has his reasons for citing those no-budget stream-of-consciousness stories as inspiration for his own work, most notably Pink Flamingos.

Each film in the trilogy has a surprisingly non-judgmental take on these mouthy drag queens and gutter punks, these grotesques who steal garbage off the street and sell it to make a buck. There's a sarcastic humor in their dialogue which elevates their miserable little lives. One even gets used to those static camera shots which linger on them as they gab, gab, gab through their gritty "soap opera" scenes about who gets to keep the baby or who shoots up first.

As I said, those earlier films took place in the streets of Chelsea. Heat is a Hollywood which is becoming bleach white under the sun. Dallesandro plays Joey Davis, a former child actor who needs a place to live. After crashing in a hotel (and providing sexual pleasure to his grossly overweight landlady in exchange for the rent), he finds himself involved with an aging starlet, Sally (Sylvia Miles) who lives in a castle complete with staircases and great verandas.

Sally introduces Joe to her incompetent, bottom-of-the-barrel agents and lawyers (who seem more interested in digging up gossip to sell to the local trades rather than helping anyone) and tries to shield him from her nymphomaniac daughter. The scenes play out in typical Paul Morrissey fashion, feeling frequently improvised and dripping in camp.

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