Be Nice: Why ROAD HOUSE is the Best Terrible Movie
Imagine, if you will, a thirteen-year-old boy. He loves karate, rock music, explosions and has recently discovered the wonders of the female body. If someone gave this thirteen-year-old $17 million 1989 dollars ($45 million today) to make a movie, the movie he would create would be Road House. Over the course of two hours, Patrick Swayze punches, kicks, and throat-rips his way through the town of Jasper Missouri on a mission to clean up the Double Deuce, a dive bar. While the film is marketed as an action/thriller. I see it as an absurd comedy - one of the best there is.
Dalton (Patrick Swayze) is hired to work at Double Deuce the bar that’s described as a place that “used to be a sweet deal and now is the kind of place that they sweep up the eyeballs after closing”. The bar has everything: babes, booze, blow, broken bottles, and bare arms. I swear no one has sleeves in this bar. I am so sad that this is not an auditory medium because I wish I could share with you the wild line readings from this first scene. A drunk says to a sultry woman, Denise, “Whaddaya say you and me get nipple to nipple?” A man billed as “sharing husband” offers to let a stranger kiss his wife’s breasts for $20 — the guy touches them without paying and a whole fight breaks out. There are so many broken bottles (I lost track after 12), and people keep getting thrown through tables. The amount of money that this dive bar in a small town must spend on tables and glasses is absurd.
Speaking of money, Dalton is paid an absurd amount for this job. He asks for “$5000 up front, $500 a night, you cover all medical costs.” In 2024 dollars that is $12,500 and $1250 respectively. And while it is unclear how many nights a week Dalton works (I think it’s all seven), he’s making at least $2500 a week. He is pulling in far more than the average Kansas City resident in 1989 (the average salary was $400-600 a week). But that may be fair for the most famous bouncer in the world.
For some reason, Dalton is world famous as a bouncer. In the first scene some guy stabs him and then says that he “always wanted to take him on.” When he makes it to the Double Deuce, the news that he is at the bar spreads among the staff and they all know who he is. Wade Garrett (Sam Elliot) comes to help Dalton out and as soon as someone says his name the other bouncers all fanboy over him. Maybe it speaks to how little I talk to people at bars but I don’t think I could name a bouncer if my life depended on it.
On his first real night at the bar, Dalton is put in charge of all bar business, which is kind of crazy when you consider that he was hired as a bouncer and now has control over all personnel and fires a good chunk of the staff in his first couple days. He gives a speech detailing his three rules on how to clean the bar up: never underestimate an opponent, take it outside, and be nice. The condition on being nice is that Dalton will tell the team when it is time to not be nice. For the rest of the movie the word nice is never said…
The big bad of this movie is Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara). He has no redeeming qualities, he is just a power hungry, money grubbing, violent, mean guy. We meet him in two parts — first he is throwing a raucous pool party with lots of topless women and dudes jumping in the pool in jeans. The next day he is seen driving down the road singing along to a doowop song and swerving wildly all over the road, almost causing Dalton to crash. This seems unintentional, he’s just a douche.
For whatever reason everyone in this world has a knife. Every fight escalates to someone pulling a knife on Dalton and stabbing him. For a pretty rural town, there’s a surprising lack of guns. Another thing that a lot of people are lacking in this movie is underwear. Dalton gets straight out of bed and puts a pair of jeans on. When Dr. Clay and Dalton hook up, she is not wearing underwear. Dalton enjoys a post-coital cigarette in the nude on his roof. Later when Garrett is recounting his past encounters, he shows a scar he has right below his waistband, so if you want to see Sam Elliot’s pubes, this is the movie for you. At the very end of the movie Patrick Swayze jumps in the pond outside his house fully nude (I paused and rewound the movie too many times to confirm this).
One of the most adolescent parts of this movie is the giant-ass monster truck that some of Wesley’s goons drive. Initially it’s just a part of the background, but like Chekov’s gun, it comes to fruition when Wesley has someone drive it through a car dealership. There is not a story purpose for the monster truck, it seems to be that the director found a sweet ass monster truck and was like “I need this in my movie.”
The combat in this movie is comical — aside from the constant knife pulling and bottle breaking, there are so many crotch punches/kicks. At one point, Wesley’s main goon Jimmy uses a pool cue to pole vault onto the stage. After getting on the stage and proving his gymnastic prowess, he jumps right off to fight Garrett. At one point Garrett is really getting under Dalton’s skin and Dalton swings at him, but using Sam Elliot’s raw masculinity he catches the punch with ease and they have a real man’s man moment.
Dalton isn’t the average action hero, he’s not juiced up and loves killing people. He’s nimble, pretends to avoid conflict, and even has a philosophy degree from NYU. What philosophy does he study? Dr. Clay asks him and Dalton (or more likely the screenwriter) brushes off the question. The shirtless tai chi scene is the epitome of this “philosophical action hero” idea. Sweaty Swayze is at his peak as his oiled up muscles glimmer in the morning light that even the men around him are stunned by his beauty. Dalton’s aversion to killing makes the throat-rip near the end of the movie all the more stunning. In a fight between Jimmy and Dalton, that could have been taken from Mortal Kombat (with cheesy starting lines that don’t quite make sense “Prepare to die!” “You are such an asshole!”) Dalton performs his fatality move when Jimmy pulls a gun on him, triggering him to the last time he throat ripped a dude in Memphis. Dalton shows restraint later in the movie when he has finally beaten Wesley (a task that was harder than it seems for a man in his 50s). He holds his hand up in the vague martial arts throat ripping pose, but then shows mercy on him. He’s not bloodthirsty like other action heroes, he’s just looking for justice.
Since it’s an action movie, and an 80s movie, there is going to be a fair helping of misogyny and toxic masculinity, but there is less than other films of the era. While the women in the movie are often objectified, they are largely done so by the villains. Dr. Clay, Dalton’s love interest, is shown to be a competent professional and even pushes against Dalton when he becomes obsessed with beating Wesley. Outside of Dr. Clay the women in the background aren’t given much more to do than “being sexy,” but for a movie with this level of immaturity I was surprised by how little problematic behavior was in it. It is still an action movie from the 80s so there’s a lot, but less than I was expecting.
The movie ends in one of the most anti-climactic ways possible. After Wesley’s death, the police (who have been conspicuously absent from the entire movie up until this point), show up and the townspeople who kill him all pretend to not have seen anything. The final line, the last piece of dialogue the audience hears, the thing that brings the curtain down on this movie is Tinker (one of the goons) saying “A polar bear fell on me.” This is the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. Why was this chosen to be the last line of the movie? Who thought that the polar bear line was so good that it could end the movie? Was there a secret extra scene that got cut? This has been driving me wild. There is an epilogue kind of scene with Dalton and Dr. Clay swimming nude in the pond, and the band plays a really good Bob Dylan cover while the credits roll. But why was the last line of the movie given to a goon? Ugh this is why, despite it’s terrible screenwriting, campy performances and an adolescent fixation on kung-fu and boobs, Road House is the greatest terrible movie to ever be made. It sticks with you, makes you think, and makes me want to watch it all over again.
I have not seen the Jake Gyllenhaal version, and lowkey don’t want to. I don’t think any movie can approach this campiness with the earnestness of Swayze and the rest of the Road House team. The director’s name is Rowdy for god’s sake, you can’t get more campy than that. So please go watch Road House, or don’t, it’s not a movie that will change your life for the better. But if you are/were/know a thirteen-year-old boy, then you’ll have a special place in your heart for this movie.
This movie is so bonkers I couldn’t find a place to put all my thoughts in clear paragraphs so here’s a list of some of my bonus thoughts.
Throughout the entire movie, Dalton only drinks coffee and never eats (he does have 2 beers once).
A PA hands the radio antenna to Red instead of him picking it off a shelf.
Wet g-string contest with black g-strings, don’t think that would work, and if it did, kinda gross.
I hope to look like Sam Elliot when I am 41
When does Dalton sleep? What are his hours? How many days a week does he work?
Keith David is hired as a bartender, and only has one line. This is seven years after The Thing, he deserves more.
Garrett almost calling a woman a see-you-next-Tuesday
Dalton’s karate gi tucked into jeans.
Sam Elliot is still breathing after he’s killed.
“I see you’ve found my trophy room, the only thing that’s missing is… your ass.”