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Road House (1989)

Dir: Rowdy Herrington

James Dalton (Patrick Swayze) is an extra special bouncer. Why? Well, it’s because he kicks much ass, but does it fairly and, by God, he does it with heart!
One day he is hired by a Frank Tilghman (Kevin Tighe) to clean up his club, ‘The Double Deuce’, in the small town of ’Jasper’. It seems the club has turned into a no go area for decent folk and not a night goes by without some kind of major brawl.

Getting down to business Dalton fires the staff who don’t come up to scratch, including the thieving barman Pat.( the unfortunately named John Doe).
Pat though is the Nephew of the town’s corrupt, ruthless Mr Big, Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) who runs a brutal protection racket on the town’s businesses.

With Dalton and Frank not backing down over Pat, Wesley wages a more and more violent vendetta against the club and matters are only made worse when Dalton falls for Elizabeth Clay (Kelly Lynch), a sexy Doctor who Wesley has also taken a fancy to.
And so, with the help of his old mentor Wade Garrett (Sam Elliot), Dalton gets ready for the fight of his life…….

 

There was a time dear reader when Patrick Swayze stood tall before the cinematic screen, from 1983 until his fall from box office grace in 1991 he appeared in a near perfect mix of unpretentious crowd pleasers (“Red Dawn”) two of the most successful (even iconic) films ever to come out of Hollywood (“Dirty Dancing”, “Ghost”) and a couple of ‘hip’ and critically admired movies as the icing on top (“The Outsiders“, “Point Blank“).
And with such a varied and successful CV as that, it’s hard to imagine how he could slip into straight to video hell like “Black Dog”.

But let us go back to 1989, to one of those amazingly popular films mentioned above, and take a look at the aforementioned “Road House”
With absolutely no pretensions Rowdy Herrington’s fist flying movie delivers ever damn action cliché you could think of. But it delivers those cliché elements so well that only the most cynical and stony hearted viewer could not help but be entertained.

For a start, in Dalton, the film is graced with a wonderfully charismatic hero.
Here is a guy who smashes in faces, kicks in knee caps, has a dark secret in his past, carries his medical records around with him to save time in emergency wards and yet he always finds time to aid the helpless (even stopping an old drunk guy from falling off his stool…ahhh), to calm his soul with a spot of early morning Tai Chi (in an hysterically over the top sequence laced with unintentional homoeroticism) and of course to romance the ladies.
Swayze carefully plays it all just the right side of camp and even gets suitably intense when the script calls for it. Basically it’s a very confident, very astute and very likeable performance.

You want violence? ‘Cause you do! And “Road House” delivers almost non-stop, comic book, violence from start to finish with massive amounts of fist pumping, bone crunching, high kicking mayhem, a couple of rather impressive explosions, and a surprisingly gung ho action/gunplay finale with a delightfully bloody dénouement. All of which is crafted with that big budget gloss and expertise you would expect from a Joel Silver production.
The stunts/fights are arranged by Benny ‘The Jet‘ Urquidez (who gave Jackie Chan one of his best one on one bouts in “Meals on Wheels") and they perfectly mix gritty realism with wildly over the top theatrics.

But seeing as this is a film aimed mainly at the red blooded male (even with Swayze’s oiled up torso and tight buns) the makers have also been careful to provide some intellectual stimulation on the shape of…breasts. Yes, breasts. Lots and lots of breasts and all essential to the plot.

Running around this full-on entertainment are a number of other solid thespians doing their bit for the cause.
Ben Gazzara chews up the scenery as the ruthless crime lord and spends most of the film sporting an evil smirk and spitting out dialogue like “I see you’ve found my trophy room Dalton. The only thing missing is your ass”.
Always watchable stalwart Sam Elliot is given the classic role of ‘the old guy whose seen it all, but still has the energy to fight and to fuck damn it’. And like Gazzara he relishes the hard ass attitude of his character and the dialogue that goes with it, like this classic remark as Elizabeth walks away, “That gal‘s got entirely too many brains to have an ass like that“. And (with the odd bit of help from a stand-in) he handles the bruising fight scenes admirably.
Kelly Lynch’s character (seemingly dressed in a ‘Waltons’ table cloth) slows things down a bit, but the typically cheesy 80’s take on the ‘romance’ sequences is so ‘so bad it’s good’ that you now (though they would have stunk the place out in 1989) feel a certain warped pleasure in the fact they exist.
Though Elizabeth does inflict a painfully tiring ‘morality’ on us when she whines at Dalton about his violent actions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever lady, just be glad someone’s doing something and not standing around with their fingers up the arse like you.

The support cast is also weirdly enjoyable.
Kathleen Wilhoite (“Murphy’s Law”) enjoys her role as a no nonsense barmaid, Marshall R. Teague has a blast as Wesley’s lead heavy, Jimmy , and also delivers the film’s best line as he grabs Dalton in a neck hold, “I used to fuck guys like you in prison”!
The most noticeable support (basically because his band plays in almost every other scene!) is blind Rhythm and Blues guru Jeff Healey as Cody, the lead singer/guitarist of the ‘Double Deuce’s’ house band. Cody is the equivalent of the old Western movie saloon piano player, the dependable guy who bashes out the tunes no matter what is going on around him!

The soundtrack is packed with foot tapping tunes, not just from Jeff Healey, and when backed with Michael Kamen’s original score it’s a perfect accompaniment to the cheesy, slam bang shenanigans.
Though the less said about Kathleen Wilhoite’s musical outburst the better as it’s extremely embarrassing, though even this adds to the fun ‘family’ atmosphere.

The ‘Double Deuce’ itself starts out as a superbly realised ‘dive’ which houses every red neck, bad guy cliché character you could ever hope for and hammers home just how bad it is by having the band play behind a screen of chicken wire!
The place is later cleaned up of course and made nice for the nice people, but you can’t help but think that the nice people are, in reality, only flocking to the place in the hope that some violent smack down action WILL occur!
Of course we have the age old ‘plot hole’ (hey James Bond has been getting away with it for decades) where you wonder why the bad guy doesn’t just have the hero shot (emphasised in a scene where Dalton is ‘invited’ to meet Wesley at his mansion ), but of course we would have no film if that happened, so we forgive such things

With a proposed sequel in the works and a nice looking, widescreen DVD now in circulation, it’s time for “Road House” to be re-discovered.
Yes it’s packed with big hair, macho histrionics, women with huge shoulder pads and bad make-up, lots of cheesy dialogue, a less than subtle soundtrack and bags of cliché characters and set-ups.
But in this case all those are actually positives and when combined with mucho violence, wanton nudity, solid acting and tight direction it all adds up to one hell of an enjoyable ride.