by Gord Lacey 3/19/2003
After DEA agent Nick Slaughter (Rob Stewart) gets the boot from the department he settles down in beautiful Key Mariah. While the Key may look beautiful, it creates enough work for Nick to run a somewhat successful investigation business with the help of his partner Sylvie Gerard (Carolyn Dunn). Truth be told; it's Sylvie that keeps the place running and the money coming in. The Key is full of dead bodies, drug runners and beach women, perfect for Nick.
This disc contains episode 2 from the first season and episode 10 of the second:
Fowl Play This episode is strickly for the birds. Nick is persuaded by Sylvie to take on the case of some dead rare exotic birds found on a local beach. The client is an overzealous, yet perky naturalist with hidden animal magnetism. The scent from the expensive poultry leads the two straight to some animal smugglers and a deranged reptile lover. The adventure is crawling with poisonous and slimy characters, and the reptiles are dangerous also. In solving the case, Nick and his client fit in a little romance with some odd mating rituals and help from a mouthy parrot.
She Nick faces his past in this heart-touching episode. If pain of a broken heard is not enough, Veronica, his old flame, is nothing but trouble for Nick. First, this beautiful blonde gets him fired from his DEA position five years ago, and now she returns with yet another favor to ask of him. She's found a wealthy older man to marry and wants to forget her drug days, but an old druggie buddy threatens to blackmail and expose her ugly past. The suspense builds to murder, voodoo and the occult with passion and action abound.
I must say I was really surprised when I discovered what Tropical Heat was. In Canada we knew the show as Sweating Bullets, and I have no idea why it was renamed for the US. This is a typical Canadian "action" show; totally cheesy. I watched a few episodes when it aired on TV, but never really got into the show.
Video
Simply put; this isn't good video. The reds are too bright, and the picture contains much edge enhancement. It's obviously the show was transferred from some tape source for this DVD because it's too soft to have come from film. There aren't any dust specs, but the picture flashes a few black frames in EP 2 (7:24 in) and there's another shot that contains a line down the right side (31:40 in). It's far from a beautiful picture, but looks slightly better than VHS. Each episode features 12 chapters.
Audio
The audio on the release compliments the video; it's not great either. The disc contains a 2.0 Dolby Stereo Surround audio track, but I only heard audio coming from the center speaker. If you accept the mono-sounding track on the release, it's not all that bad. The dialog is easy to understand, and sound effects and music sound good. I did notice the audio become louder on episode 2 after chapter 7 (22:20) so I had to turn the volume down a bit. The release is Closed Captioned for the hearing impaired.
Extras
Nothing at all on this disc, just the two episodes. Interactive Menus isn't an extra!
Summary
I'm a little surprised that Artisan Entertainment released this show. They haven't put much TV product out, so for them to release a Canadian show that isn't well-known, it caught me off guard a bit. I wish the quality of the release was better, but hey, with a list price of $14.98, I wasn't expecting all that much. Fans of the series will be happy to have something on DVD, even if it just replaces some worn out tapes.
Fans of "Friday The 13th: The Series" will recognize Chris Wiggins who played Jack Marshak in the series. Now there's a good Canadian show someone should release! Wiggins appears in "She."
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