ROAD HOUSE [1989]

Road House (1989)
Directed by: Rowdy Herrington
Written by: David Lee Henry, Hilary Henkin
Starring: Ben Gazzara, Kelly Lynch, Patrick Swayze, Sam Elliott

USA

AVAILABLE ON LIMITED EDITION 4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY AND STANDARD BLU-RAY: NOW, from ARROW VIDEO

RUNNING TIME: 114 min

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera

James Dalton is a professional ‘cooler’ (specialised doorman or bouncer] with a mysterious past who’s enticed from his current job at a club in New York by Frank Tilghman to take over security at his bar, the Double Deuce, in Jasper, Missouri. Tilghman plans to invest substantial money into the club to enhance its image, and needs a first-rate cooler to maintain stability. Dalton dismisses several unruly and corrupt employees and begins to turn the Double Deuce into a nicer place. However, there’s a problem. A big problem. Some of the sacked employees are also employed by or connected with Brad Wesley, a not at all nice local business magnate who appears to have a stranglehold on the town….

Though I tend not to go for this guy film/girl film stuff – a really good film should be enjoyed by both sexes and I happily admit enjoying and even owning a fair few films that are often categorised as ‘women’s pictures’- when Patrick Swayze tragically died in 2012, I reckon that many women all over the world put on Ghost or Dirty Dancing, while quite a few blokes chose Point Break or Road House. Road House most certainly isn’t the action masterclass that Point Break is; in fact a lot of people would make a good case for it not being that good a film at all, but I always have a great time watching it. I feel that, to truly enjoy and appreciate this rowdy [was there ever a director more appropriately named than Rowdy Herrington?], campy, absurd, drunken guy’s night out of a movie, you have to try to be in on the joke. It’s an unashamedly trashy, not to mention corny, exercise, kind of an updated Western [right up to many of the characters being named after real-life Western personalities] garnished with as much 80’s cheese as possible, but knows that it’s an unashamedly trashy, not to mention corny, exercise. Taking place in a town which seems to only consist of two actual houses – one of them being a farmhouse – a couple of shops and a club, it features lots of vicious, convincing brawls, lots of great silly dialogue, and a movie star who may never have been the best actor about but who for me is definitely at his coolest as the bouncer who seems to not let anything ruffle him. This is the kind of film where, if you’re a bloke, you just want to be the hero in it.

Bearing no resemblance to the fine 1948 noir Roadhouse starring Ida Lupino, Road House’s story was supposedly inspired by the true tale of a bad man who was found killed but none of his neighbours owned up to it. The character of Dalton [his first name is James, though it’s never actually said] was named after the town of Dalton, Georgia, principal screenwriter David Lee Henry having passed through Dalton and liking it so much he just had to call his hero by its name. Annette Benning was originally cast in the female lead role until replaced by Kelly Lynch for seemingly unspecified reasons. The shoot was very hard for Swayze, who suffered so many injuries that he told a reporter that he didn’t think he’d live through the production. He then had to turn down Predator 2 because he was recovering. The majority of shooting took place in the studio even though the film doesn’t have a particularly studio-bound feel; the most notable exceptions being the scenes in and around the farmhouse. The original cut neared two and a half hours, and, while none of the deleted footage has been made available and may be lost, we know that some scenes between Dalton and the bartender Ernie were removed, as was a scene where Dalton makes the other bouncers don ballet outfits and dance as part of their training. There’s also a picture showing Dalton fighting with Ketchum, the guy with the From Russia With Love-style knife-boot inside the Double Deuce, and it’s obviously a different fight than the one we see in the film. Surprisingly Road House was a commercial failure in cinemas, and unsurprisingly got mainly poor reviews, though it became a big hit on video. It was the first ’18’-rated film I went to see when I turned 18. Swayze was asked to star in 2006’s straight to DVD Road House 2: Last Call, but left the project after ‘creative differences’ and the lead character was turned into Dalton’s son. It’s basically a weak remake. Some say an official remake starring Jake Gyllenhaal came out. They must have dreamt it.

Our hero soon gets to work, firing several employees for theft, drug dealing and having sex on duty, but one of them, Pat, who’s the nephew of Brad Wesley, the crime lord who seems to control the town through bribery, intimidation and violence, pressurises Tilghman, the club owner who recruited Dalton, into giving him his job back and attacks Dalton, who badly injures Pat and his accomplices. Receiving a knife wound in the process, Dalton visits a hospital and befriends Dr. Elisabeth Clay to whom Wesley is also attracted. After sending his henchmen to unsuccessfully try to disrupt business at the Double Deuce, Wesley offers to hire Dalton himself. Dalton refuses and Wesley uses his connections to prevent the Double Deuce from purchasing alcohol from any suppliers. Seeing that things will get tougher, Dalton uses his own connections to secure some supplies and reunites with his mentor Wade Garrett, an aging bouncer who arrives in town after a disconcerting phone call from Dalton, in a part that seems that it was absolutely made for Sam Elliott. However, for a film considered by some at the time to be excessively violent, Dalton doesn’t actually strike a punch until almost half an hour into it, and even then the joy of seeing of seeing him actually fight is held off for a bit longer. It’s like those Bruce Lee classics – and there’s a distinct influence of The Way Of The Dragon on this film – where you know the hero is as tough as they come and can probably take everyone else in the room but would really prefer not to fight at all, doesn’t even do anything during the first two or three fights that we see, and the tension just builds and builds because you know that eventually he’s just going to have to cut lose. After all, it’s all about being nice – until it’s time to not be nice.

All you have to do is follow three simple rules.
One: Never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected.
Two: Take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it’s absolutely necessary.
And Three: Be nice.
If somebody gets in your face and calls you a cock******, I want you to be nice.
Ask him to walk, be nice.
If he won’t walk, walk him. But be nice.
If you can’t walk him, one of the others will help you. And you’ll both be nice.
I want you to remember that it’s a job. It’s nothing personal.

God I just love Swayze in this movie, simply exuding hardness and given lots of laconic Clint Eastwood-style lines to play with. Of course he does eventually kick ass in great fashion and repeatedly so but, again much like those Lee movies, the film has its cake and eats it, staging lots of brutal fights for the audience’s enjoyment and reveling in the bashed-in faces, broken limbs and, in a shot originally missing in the UK version, even a neck being ripped out, but also spouting an anti-violence message. At least until the end which in terms of a serious narrative seems too pat but then we shouldn’t try to take anything in this movie that seriously, violence just causes worse and worse repercussions, and Dalton certainly isn’t happy about being pushed to the limit. However, ss well as being the best bouncer in the business, Dalton also has a PhD in philosophy from New York University, which means that he’s capable of deep insights into his trade, such as: “In a fight, nobody wins”. Okay, I’m slightly mocking the movie in a way, and I’m not in any way suggesting that it’s especially intelligent, but I do genuinely think that some thought was put into bits of the screenplay. The action highlight is a one-on-one battle by a river, where Dalton faces off against a bad guy who spouts the immortal line: “I used to **** guys like you in prison”  – this by the way being in a film where its star is topless throughout. It seems like the most amount of time was spent on this scene, which is very well staged, choreographed and even photographed. It’s so good that it makes the final confrontation a bit lame by comparison, it involving more sneaky around than punching – and are we supposed to consider Ben Gazzara as being of some physical danger to our hero. And it’s a little disappointing that we see Dalton practising tai chi but in his fights he mainly uses a combination of mixed martial arts and western boxing.

But then it’s not all about action. While I love Road House the way it is, one could say that there are actually a few longueurs and even unnecessary elements in the film, a good example of the latter being the tarty bimbo girl friend of Wesley’s who tries it on with Dalton with no success, is beaten up off-screen and then shows up to do a striptease for no apparent reason, except that this film has clear routes in exploitation cinema of an earlier kind. It feels like she was intended to be a relatively important character but the two screenwriters – Henry and Hilary Henkin who did some extra work  – couldn’t figure out what to do with her. But, on the other hand, I really like the section where Dalton, Elisabeth [whose glasses come off after work] and Garrett hang out all night – I just like spending time with these people,  even though Kelly Lynch’s acting is quite abysmal. It’s one of those performances where you wonder why it was considered satisfactory, but which, if you’re like me, just adds to the enjoyment of the proceedings. The romance element, such as it is, is unconvincing, but you can’t really complain when the couple get it on in as un-erotic and absurdly over-choreographed a sex scene as you can get outside of an “erotic thriller” from the same period, set to the very same song that backed a similar scene in Dirty Dancing. By the way, legend has it that Swayze’s wife Lisa coached him to be more passionate in the scene and he ended up slamming Lynch against the rocks so hard that she requested padding.

Meanwhile Gazzara’s main villain swerves around whilst driving his car in a very goofy moment, beats up a henchman who apologises to him in a ridiculous, gratuitous display of power, and constantly spouts a mischievous smile and glint in his eyes. Gazzara totally gets it and is clearly enjoying himself. It’s really best to take Road House as a comedy, because it’s just crammed full of laughs intentional and unintentional, the beauty being that it’s sometimes hard tell which is which. This takes skill, I tell you. The fat bouncer who suddenly leaps over the bar yelling: ”Jesus Christ”. The blind character played by blind musician Jeff Healey, who by the way wears a wristwatch, saying to Dalton that he’s glad to see him. Then soon after he reaches up to touch a stripper and the guitar in the song he’s playing magically continues. The firemen who run towards a blazing building when an ambulance speeds past at high speed and cuts them off. Dalton being supposedly so incredibly fit yet constantly smoking. The idiot Wesley saying to Dalton: “We’ve been looking everywhere for you” yet, as I mentioned earlier, he’s just living across the river from him. A man being able to muster a groan despite having his throat ripped out. Random people at a car lot cheering a Bigfoot demolishing cars [entertainment in Jasper must be hard to come by]. “Pain don’t hurt”. A guy offering others to feel his girlfriend’s breasts for twenty bucks, somebody [who can’t act to save his life, he’s worse than Lynch which is saying something] doing so then saying: “I haven’t got twenty bucks”. I get the impression that more and more people are appreciating Road House and seeing it for what it truly is. It takes genius to make a film like this.

4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY LIMITED EDITION CONTENTS
• 4K (2160p) Ultra HD Blu-ray presentation in Dolby Vision (HDR10 compatible)
• Original lossless stereo and DTS-HD 5.1 surround audio options
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Mark Bell
• Double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Mark Bell
• Double Deuce coaster
• Collector’s booklet featuring original production notes

DISC ONE – FEATURE AND EXTRAS (4K ULTRA HD BLU-RAY)
• Audio commentary with director Rowdy Herrington
• Audio commentary with Road House fans Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier
• A Conversation with Director Rowdy Herrington, an interview with the director about the genesis and making of the film
• ‘Pretty Good for a Blind White Boy’: The Music of Road House, a featurette on Michael Kamen’s score and blues musician Jeff Healey’s performance in the film
• Remembering Patrick Swayze, a tribute to Road House’s iconic lead actor
• On the Road House, a featurette where cast and crew members look back on the film’s success
• Patrick Swayze Profile featurette
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image gallery

DISC TWO – EXTRAS (BLU-RAY)
• I Did It My Way, an interview with second unit director and stunt coordinator Charlie Picerni
• Henchman #2, an interview with actor and stuntman Anthony De Longis
• Blonde Ambitions, an interview with actor Laura Lee Kasten
• Fightin’ Man, an interview with actor Roger Hewlett
• Ain’t Nothing Gonna Kill Me but Me, an interview with actor Travis McKenna
• Pain Don’t Hurt: The Stunts of Road House, a featurette on the stunts seen in the film
• What Would Dalton Do?, a featurette where professional bouncers show their appreciation for the film
• Selected interview soundbites
• On the Set, archival behind-the-scenes footage

LIMITED EDITION BLU-RAY CONTENTS
• High Definition (1080p) Blu-ray presentation
• Original lossless stereo and DTS-HD 5.1 surround audio options
• Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• Reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Mark Bell
• Double-sided foldout poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Mark Bell
• Double Deuce coaster
• Collector’s booklet featuring original production notes

DISC ONE – FEATURE AND EXTRAS
• Audio commentary with director Rowdy Herrington
• Audio commentary with Road House fans Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier
• A Conversation with Director Rowdy Herrington, an interview with the director about the genesis and making of the film
• ‘Pretty Good for a Blind White Boy’: The Music of Road House, a featurette on Michael Kamen’s score and blues musician Jeff Healey’s performance in the film
• Remembering Patrick Swayze, a tribute to Road House’s iconic lead actor
• On the Road House, a featurette where cast and crew members look back on the film’s success
• Patrick Swayze Profile featurette
• Original theatrical trailer
• Image gallery

DISC TWO – EXTRAS
• I Did It My Way, an interview with second unit director and stunt coordinator Charlie Picerni
• Henchman #2, an interview with actor and stuntman Anthony De Longis
• Blonde Ambitions, an interview with actor Laura Lee Kasten
• Fightin’ Man, an interview with actor Roger Hewlett
• Ain’t Nothing Gonna Kill Me but Me, an interview with actor Travis McKenna
• Pain Don’t Hurt: The Stunts of Road House, a featurette on the stunts seen in the film
• What Would Dalton Do?, a featurette where professional bouncers show their appreciation for the film
• Selected interview soundbites
• On the Set, archival behind-the-scenes footage