What’s a “good-bad” movie? It’s the kind of flick that might have you cackling, hollering or groaning, one that is not exactly great cinema but is great fun. It’s highly watchable even though — or maybe because — it’s memorably ridiculous. And it always has at least one element that pushes it into absurd territory.
“Road House” is the 1989 cult favorite starring Patrick Swayze as Dalton, the Tai Chi-practicing, philosophy-degree-holding bouncer-cooler with a heart of gold who is remarkably adept at ripping out throats.
Even then, Roger Ebert identified “Road House” as expertly walking a fine line. The movie “exists right on the edge between the ‘good-bad movie’ and the merely bad,” he wrote at the time. “I hesitate to recommend it, because so much depends on the ironic vision of the viewer. This is not a good movie. But viewed in the right frame of mind, it is not a boring one, either.”
When it comes to relishing the zaniness of this and all good-bad movies, an ironic vision and the right frame of mind are essential — always. Have you similarly deliberated the merits of “Road House”? Here’s my breakdown of why, ultimately, it prevails.
What Makes It Good?
The Actors Were All In
The level of commitment and the lack of irony by the entire cast — which includes several skilled actors like Sam Elliott, Kelly Lynch and Ben Gazzara — is a big part of what makes “Road House” work. Let’s be thankful they were not more in on the joke. In fact, Swayze drew on personal experiences to round out the Dalton character, who is brought in to clean up the Double Deuce, a Missouri bar overrun with a needlessly brazen, reckless, rowdy and violent crowd.
“I grew up with this mentality,” Swayze told the critic Joe Leydon in 1989 about the ready-to-fight attitude amid his Texas upbringing. “It was all around me. Probably, subconsciously, I still wanted to work out, hopefully, the last of my angry young man syndrome. So ‘Road House’ was very much a cathartic experience.”
The music in “Road House” is also surprisingly special. The Jeff Healey Band, a real blues-rock band that sold millions of records, is the house act at the Double Deuce, and they are way too good to be stuck with this gig. Naturally, they perform in a cage to protect them from the riotous patrons. Healey, the guitar-playing leader of the band, also has a role as Dalton’s friend, Cody.
What Makes It BAD?
Mindless Brawling and Pointless Nudity
There is plenty to cringe at when watching “Road House” today, more than 35 years after it was released. Much of it was obvious back then, too. As the Washington Post put it in 1989, in a cutting, but not wrong, review: “Road House” is “full of gratuitous mayhem, head-bashing, gay-bashing and woman-bashing.” (The latter two bashings refer mostly to offensive language and crude jokes that have not aged well.)
It’s the unnecessary number of women who are topless for no plot-based reason whatsoever that is perhaps the most tasteless and even more incomprehensible than the nonstop punching, kicking, stabbing and bottle smashing. But, if nothing else, at least Dalton’s love interest, Elizabeth (Lynch), is an emergency room doctor, a nominally progressive decision for a 1980s action movie.
What Makes It Good-Bad?
Trucks, Taxidermy and One-Liners
There’s the unraveling and weirdly complex plot that includes a wealthy villain with a taxidermy room of big game including a polar bear. There’s the fact that a monster truck is used to covertly tail someone, a truck that’s later used for a vehicle-crushing rampage at a car dealership.
But it’s the one-liners that really elevate “Road House” to the good-bad distinction. It is nearly impossible to pull out the best because the dialogue is practically all one-liners — bizarre, head-scratching and often hilarious.
There are the memorable ones spoken by Dalton including: “Pain don’t hurt”; “I want you to be nice until it’s time to not be nice”; “You’re too stupid to have a good time”; and the moderately poignant, “Nobody ever wins a fight.”
But it’s the zingers spoken by the rest of the cast, some with tiny roles, that live rent-free in my head.
Like when the farmer Emmett (Sunshine Parker) suggests that Dalton drop the formalities: “Calling me ‘sir’ is like putting an elevator in an outhouse. It don’t belong.”
Maybe best of all is when a leering bar patron hits on Denise (Julie Michaels), one of the film’s main blonde babes. He says, barely containing his drool: “Hey, vodka rocks. What do you say you and me get nipple to nipple?”
Denise, glancing down at her cleavage, responds practically deadpan: “I can do that without you.”
Videos: Silver Pictures
Maya Salam is an editor and reporter, focusing primarily on pop culture across genres.
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