Feeling the ‘Heat’ for a XXX-Rated Plot With No Villains

You think you got problems?

All Chuck Sutton wanted to do last Sunday night was rent “Heat,” the well-reviewed 1995 cops movie that paired Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Before the evening ended, Sutton’s estranged wife had left in a huff, and Sutton fears his neighbors will start looking at him funny.

“Can you believe this?” Sutton asks the next day as we talk in his apartment. After hearing his tale of woe, I’m not sure I can. I mean, I know his version is true because he showed me the evidence, but I was laughing so often as he recounted the events--in a high-pitched lilting voice that reminded me of ‘50s rock star Little Richard--that I fear I may have missed a couple of details.

Sutton is 58 and retired from both the Navy and United Parcel Service. He lives alone in a four-unit Anaheim apartment building, and, to show me how many videos he rents, he reaches into a desk and pulls out a clutch of rental receipts. “Did you ever see ‘Heat’?” he asks me. “That was a good movie, action-packed, so I went down to the rental place to get it.”

The plan was to watch the video Sunday with his cousin, who came down from Los Angeles with his two children. Sutton’s wife drove from Ventura County with their two children. The four youngsters range in age from 4 to 9.

Sutton picks up the story at the video store: “I go in and say, ‘Could you see if you have ‘Heat’? [The clerk] says somebody just brought it back in, and he reaches behind him and gets it. I said, ‘That’s strange. That movie came out three years ago and someone just had it out.’ ”

Because the film is nearly three hours long, it came on two tapes. The stickers on the two videotapes, which Sutton showed me in his apartment, read, “Heat, Tape 1” and “Heat, Tape 2.”

When he put in Tape 1 Sunday night, no one was paying close attention to the opening credits. When Sutton saw airplanes over desert terrain, he was confused. He saw “Heat” in the theater and didn’t recall it being set in the desert. “I’m trying to remember,” Sutton says. “I didn’t remember no airplanes in it.”

“Then we sit and we sit and we sit, and finally I call the video store and said, ‘What’s wrong with this movie? It looks like they’re flying airplanes.’ The video guy says, ‘You have to get into it. It’s a three-hour movie. It works its way back to L.A.’ ”

Sutton, his wife and cousin continued watching, but the action never returned to L.A. “I kept calling the store,” Sutton says, “and saying, ‘Man, when are Al Pacino and Robert De Niro gonna show up in this first tape?’ He says, ‘Keep watching.’ ”

Sutton doesn’t mind admitting that the three watched the full 90-minute Tape 1. No Pacino, no De Niro. And the kids? “They were watching off and on. It didn’t hold their interest.”

Vexed but assuming Tape 2 would tie things together, Sutton said he told his cousin: “Let’s go get some Kentucky Colonel chicken, and then we’ll watch the good part.” The three adults went for chicken.

When they returned 15 minutes or so later, the adults found Sutton’s two children, 7 and 9, watching an XXX-rated video. Three or four neighbor kids were watching it through the open apartment door.

“It shocked me,” Sutton told me. “I don’t have any tapes in the house at all. So I thought someone came in and put this tape in. The kids saw this man naked, and they weren’t about to change it, because they’d never seen nothing like that.”

Hurriedly ejecting the tape, Sutton saw it was Tape 2 of the “Heat” package he had rented. It then occurred to him with clarity, he says, that he had the wrong movie all the time.

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How did the kids react to Tape 2? “They enjoyed it!” Sutton said, half laughing, half exasperated.

His wife did not. She accused Sutton of knowing exactly what he was doing. Despite Sutton’s pleas that he was the victim, Sutton says his wife didn’t believe him.

Nor did she believe his cousin’s efforts on his behalf, Sutton says: “My cousin says to her, ‘Baby, we wanted to watch “Heat.” Chuck has been telling us what a good movie it was. That’s why we drove all the way down from L.A.’ She said, ‘Yeah, you saw a lot of heat, all right.’ ”

Sutton’s cousin headed for the door. “He grabbed his son by the hand and walked out the door. His son says, ‘Daddy, can we get that tape?’ ”

When I talked to Sutton on Monday afternoon, he was still confused. How could he convince his neighbors, few of whom speak English, that he doesn’t show X-rated movies to youngsters? He asked me if I thought he should call the police, if only to preempt any neighbor who might do so.

I didn’t know what to tell him about the neighbors, but I advised him not to call the police.

He showed me the “Heat” labels on both videos and played the opening minutes of both. I told him it was hard to believe they watched an entire 90-minute movie without realizing it wasn’t “Heat,” and he said it now puzzles him too.

To tie up the loose end, I went with him to the video store. The clerk said, once in a blue moon, someone will peel off the stickers and affix them to the wrong videos. He gave Sutton credit for a free movie.

“Do you need my boss to call your landlord?” the clerk asked Sutton, wanting to make things right.

“No,” Sutton said, “I just need to get the real ‘Heat.’ ”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com