Road House (1989 film)

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Road House
Theatrical release poster.
Directed by	Rowdy Herrington
Produced by	Joel Silver
Written by	Story: David Lee Henry Screenplay: David Lee Henry Hilary Henkin
Starring	Patrick Swayze Kelly Lynch Sam Elliott Ben Gazzara Kevin Tighe Red West Kathleen Wilhoite Sunshine Parker Tito Larriva Marshall R. Teague Terry Funk
Music by	Michael Kamen Willie Nile (co-composer)
Cinematography	Dean Cundey
Editing by	John F. Link Frank J. Urioste
Distributed by	United Artists
Release date(s)	May 19, 1989
Running time	114 min.
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$10,000,000 (estimated)
Gross revenue	$30,050,028 (USA)
Followed by	Road House 2: Last Call

Road House is a 1989 action film directed by Rowdy Herrington and starring Patrick Swayze as a bouncer at a seedy roadside bar who protects a small town in Missouri from a corrupt businessman.

Contents 1 Plot summary 2 Box office 3 Soundtrack 4 Story Source 5 Cultural impact 6 Notes 7 External links

[edit] Plot summary

This article may require copy-editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling. You can assist by editing it now.  (April 2009)

James Dalton (Swayze) is a professional "cooler" (i.e. head bouncer) with a mysterious past who is lured away from his current job in Los Angeles by club owner Frank Tilghman (Kevin Tighe) to work at his club, called The Double Deuce, in Jasper, Missouri. With a philosophy degree from New York University and a preference for resolving confrontation peacefully, Dalton seems the antithesis of the nightclub bouncer.

Upon arriving in Jasper, Dalton anticipates his popularity among some of the local townsfolk and buys a battered old 1965 Buick Riviera, filling the trunk with spare tires. These come in handy when local thugs repeatedly slice the tires on the wheels and vandalize the car. He takes lodgings in a local farm. When the farmer and his new lodger become acquainted they introduce themselves to each other as "Emmett" and "Dalton". The occasion is also Dalton's distant introduction to local business magnate (and next door neighbor) Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) who buzzes Emmett's farm with his helicopter.

In the course of cleaning up the violent nightclub, he dismisses several unruly and corrupt employees, including Pat the bartender (John Doe), Wesley's nephew, and Morgan (Terry Funk), a surly bouncer whose disagreeable personality causes more trouble than it solves.

After a scrape with Wesley's henchmen as a result of refusing to re-hire Pat McGurn as the bartender due to his skimming, Dalton visits the hospital, along with his own medical file, where he meets Dr. Elizabeth Clay (Kelly Lynch). The doctor and Dalton strike up a friendship which leads to the two of them dating. Unfortunately, Clay, known to Dalton as "Doc," happens to be Wesley's ex-wife.

Wesley calls Dalton to his home attempting to make peace with him. Wesley offers Dalton a chance to come work for him. When Dalton declines, Wesley begins an assault on Dalton's friends in town and cuts off liquor deliveries to the Double Deuce. Dalton's mentor, aging cooler Wade Garrett (Sam Elliott), arrives in town and helps Dalton defend a shipment of liquor from Wesley's thugs. Garrett's reputation precedes him. He is treated with reverence by his fellow bouncers, and sticks around to help Dalton protect the Double Deuce from Wesley and his goons. Wesley's assault on Dalton's friends begins with Red Webster (Red West), Elizabeth's uncle. After Red does not pay his ten percent of protection money, Wesley's thugs wreck the store and cause an explosion the same night. Dalton, not wanting a problem, allows Wesley and his men entrance to the Double Deuce that night, along with their customers. Wesley allows his girlfriend, Denise, to do a strip-tease while bandstand player Cody (Jeff Healey) plays a cover of Muddy Waters' "Hoochie Coochie Man." Dalton does not like what Wesley is trying to do, and takes Denise off the stage; all the while, the patrons are cheering. Wesley, wanting more trouble, calls in his right-hand-man, Jimmy (Marshall Teague), who is a martial artist. Jimmy starts a fight, assaulting the bouncers with a pool cue. The rest of Wesley's henchmen take on Dalton, Wade, and the employees. After finishing the bouncers with the pool cue, Jimmy pole vaults onto the stage and calls out Wade. Despite Wade being a good fighter (it is later revealed that he trained Dalton), Jimmy gets the upper hand until Dalton intervenes, and the two have a brief but heated skirmish before Wesley fires a gun into the air and calls off his man. The next day, after car dealership owner Pete Stroudenmire does not pay protection, Wesley has one of his goons, Gary Ketchum (Anthony De Longis), destroy the dealership with his monster truck as Dalton and his friends look on. Garrett gives Dalton fatherly advice, and their conversations, as well as interactions, reveal that Dalton considers Wade his most trusted friend. Later, Wade tries to persuade Dalton to leave town, but Dalton is determined to stay.

That night, Doc comes over to persuade Dalton to leave, however while she is telling him, Emmet's house is blown up by a bomb. Dalton runs to the house and gets Emmet out. While he is relieved that he is not injured, he hears the engine of a dirtbike in the distance and sees Jimmy, who stops and laughs at the carnage, and begins speeding away. Dalton, furious, obviously having had enough of Wesley's mistreatment of the townsmen and bullying, chases after the bike and lunges at Jimmy, knocking him off. They fight, at which point Jimmy reveals that he "fucked guys like [Dalton] in prison". Dalton manages to gain an upper hand in the fight, at which point Jimmy pulls a gun on Dalton. Dalton rips out Jimmy's throat with his bare hands (a feat previously implied to have been used to kill a man in self defense in Memphis). Jimmy dies from the wound. Returning to the Double Deuce, Dalton receives an ominous call from Wesley, seeking revenge for Jimmy's death and wanting to get rid of Dalton. Wesley gives Dalton a choice of Wade or Elizabeth, telling him one of them dies. Wesley flips a coin, but hangs up and does not tell Dalton what it landed on. Wade staggers into the bar, severely beaten. After Dalton helps him to the bar, Wade reveals three thugs assaulted him, telling him he was lucky after beating him and leaving. Dalton makes the fatal mistake of leaving Wade at the Double Deuce while he goes to retrieve Elizabeth. Elizabeth, horrified at what Dalton had done the night before, refuses to leave town with Dalton and Wade. Dalton goes back to the bar, planning to leave town with Wade. Dalton, thinking Wade is asleep, turns him over to find a knife in his abdomen. Stabbed into his body, is a note "It was Tails." Enraged, Dalton sneaks into Wesley's compound, where he takes out the remaining members of Wesley's gang, including Morgan and O'Connor. Ketchum the truck driver is revealed to be Wade's killer, pulling the knife used to stab Garret from the forged gas pedal of Dalton's car, which he rigged with the blade to distract them, while he snuck into the mansion. Dalton fights Ketchum, but he pulls the knife. However Dalton disarms him, stabbing Ketchum in the abdomen, and pans irony with the same words on the note, "Tails again." Dalton throws the knife into Pat, killing him and also ambushes Tinker, an obese thug, with a stuffed polar bear as a weapon.

Dalton finds Wesley and the two fight until Dalton pins Wesley on the ground. Staring down at Wesley with his hand poised to rip out Wesley's throat, Dalton sees the error of his own violent ways; he turns his back, giving Wesley the opportunity to pull out a gun. Clay shows up just in time to watch as the townsfolk Wesley has bullied over the years, Red, Emmet, Stroudenmire, and even Tighlman come to Dalton's defense and shoot Wesley dead. The townsfolk then quickly hide the five or six shotguns they had with them; at this point, the police arrive, and each of the members of the town that were present at the murder say, in turn, "I didn't see nothin.' You see anythin'?" When he is asked if he saw anything, a dazed Tinker, the sole survivor of Wesley's men, just said "a polar bear fell on me" which causes laughs all around. The movie then concludes with a shot of a fully naked Dalton jumping into a local swimming hole to share a romantic skinny dip with Doc.

[edit] Box office

Road House's total domestic gross was US$30,050,028.

[edit] Soundtrack

The soundtrack for Road House featured the late Canadian guitarist Jeff Healey, whose band was featured in the film as the house band for the Double Deuce. The film's score was composed by Michael Kamen.

[edit] Story Source

The storyline of Road House derives in part from the 1953 Western Shane, with which it shares many similarities (mysterious stranger arrives from out of town, attempts to limit violence, refuses to work for the other side, ultimately wins a climactic fight freeing the townspeople).^[1] Also, Ben Gazzara's Brad Wesley character bears a strong similarity to Ken McElroy, subject of the book In Broad Daylight.

[edit] Cultural impact

A sequel, Road House 2: Last Call, was released directly to DVD in July 2006. Set many years later and telling the story of Dalton's adult son, it featured no one from the original cast and only a few references to Dalton (who was reportedly shot dead before the movie took place). At the same time Road House 2 was released, the original film was reissued in a deluxe edition featuring, among other features, separate audio commentary tracks by director Rowdy Herrington, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, which the duo had expressed an interest in during the introduction of the tenth anniversary Clerks DVD.^[2]

In 2003 an off-Broadway musical production of Road House was staged as a campy comedy by Timothy Haskell, as seen by its full title of Road House: The Stage Version Of The Cinema Classic That Starred Patrick Swayze, Except This One Stars Taimak From The 80’s Cult Classic “The Last Dragon” Wearing A Blonde Mullet Wig.^[3][4]

Road House has been parodied by Michael J. Nelson as the inaugural track for Nelson's Rifftrax commentary service.^[5] In his book Mike Nelson's Movie Megacheese, Nelson ironically declares Road House "the single finest American film."

On Mystery Science Theater 3000 (for which Michael J. Nelson was head writer), Road House was frequently cited as a favorite film of the characters. In Episode 321, the film is referenced when Joel Robinson and the Bots sing the song "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas." Swayze reportedly found the tribute quite amusing.^[6]

In 2004, WFMU DJ and Monk writer/producer Tom Scharpling performed a live, one-man performance of the entire film on his radio program, The Best Show on WFMU^[7]. Listeners were encouraged to buy or rent the Road House DVD, and play the movie with the sound off in synchronization with Scharpling's live radio performance. The performance contained many humorous re-interpretations of the script, such as continually referring to Brad Wesley by Gazzara's actual name, as well as the substitution of the film's original soundtrack with music from '80s synth-pop band Bronski Beat, Pavement, The Alarm, The Smiths, Wilco, Nena, Let's Active, The Misfits, Belle and Sebastian, Franz Ferdinand and the '90s Canadian pop-punk band, Cub.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Road House

• Road House at the Internet Movie Database
• Road House at Allmovie
• Road House at Rotten Tomatoes
• Road House at Box Office Mojo