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Road House
Bad hair(perms and mullets), bad clothes (white suits and pastel shirts) and Patrick Swayze (yes, he of Dirty Dancing infamy), you just know it’s going to be a dodgy eighties movie (definitely the decade with the highest percentage of dodgy movies). From the opening credits, which surprisingly enough aren’t neon pink, just a really bad shade of purple, followed by a big bar brawl, you just have a gut feeling that this is going to be dodgy.
Just how dodgy, you could not have predicted. Road House is probably best compared to a train wreck. It’s awful, and yet curiosity causes you to look, or in this case spend two hours watching what must rank as one of the worst eighties films I have ever seen. It doesn’t rank up there with such classic disasters like Aeon Flux and Catwoman, but it’s pretty close.
The plot of Road House is predictable, mainly because you’ve seen it numerous times. The hero (Patrick Swayze) has a dark secret in his past that returns to haunt him. He has to defeat the mob boss, who kills his mentor and threatens his new found love. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it.
Dodginess
Road House scores a 5 on the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Scale, mainly because of the sheer volumes of dodginess inherent in the film. Things explode, people die, Patrick Swayze pretends to be able to do martial arts, and just when you think that there can’t be another cliché, the writers manage to worm in another one. The dodgiest moment for me occurred about a day after watching the film, when it led to the creation of the Dodgy Movies Reviewed. The Drinking Game.
Rewatchability Rating
Unless you were a teenage girl in the eighties and have a thing for Patrick Swayze with his shirt off, you’re not going to watch this one more than once. And if you are not as fascinated as “Train Wreck Films” as I am you won’t even manage that. Road House gets a 1 on the rewatchability rating.
Most Memorable Quote
Surprising how in some films the memorable quotes all come from the same scene. In this case they occur when Dalton (Patrick Swayze) is trying to rent a room on a farm. The first memorable quote is from Emmett, the owner of the farm. “Calling me sir is like putting an elevator in an outhouse. It don't belong.” The second comes as a result of a discussion about the cost of the room. “If it keeps you in the good graces of the church.” “Ain't it peculiar how money seems to do that very thing?”
Final Thoughts
Patrick Swayze made it as a heartthrob after his role in Dirty Dancing, and I guess the film producers were hoping to cash in on that fame by having a reason to show him topless as often as possible. By throwing in violence and sex, I guess they were hoping to snag the straight male audience as well. Maybe if they had’ve hired a screenwriter instead of just using the “Bad Action Movie Generator” they would have had more success.