Most of the stereotypes about Texans are just not true.
I only wear my cowboy boots on special occasions such as weddings and barn dance night.
I don’t care that much about football (I only have three Dallas Cowboys tattoos; the fourth one on my neck doesn’t count because my cousin accidentally misspelled it as Dallas Cobwoys).
I’m also opposed to guns, except for in extreme cases, such as when a stranger shows up in town or somebody says that they don’t like Waylon Jennings.
There is ONE stereotype though that I will admit is 100% on the money.
Texas people don’t know shit about winter. Example: me.
When I heard last week that Dallas had five inches of snow on the way and the wind chill was set to plunge to 20 below zero, I didn’t know how to process it. Is that even possible? Do temperatures even GET that low? Are they lyin’ to us? (Two things that Texans never trust: the government and the weatherman).
A wind chill of 20 ABOVE zero is unbearable to me. What happens at 40 below THAT?
Do we all die? Do I need to worry about my front door freezing shut? Do cars still start? Does the water in your toilet freeze? Exactly how far up into the body can a man’s testicles retreat?
Also, what supplies should I stock up on? Canned food? Duct tape? Bear traps?
I don’t know what a 20-below-zero wind chill with a side of five inches of snow even MEANS, I thought.
Well now I know what it means.
It means that everything shuts down. It means that driving becomes an Olympic sport because Texas cities aren’t prepared to maintain the roads. It means the electrical grid gets overloaded and about half of everybody–the rich, the poor, the 7-11 down the street–loses their power. If you were lucky and still had power like I did, it can still mean freezing your ass off if your heater, like mine, sucks too bad to even use most of the time.
Somehow it also means that your internet service starts to blow goats. Mine’s been going in and out since this mess started.
So that means no Youtube or Netflix for when you’re on your couch under eight layers of clothes, pissed off at nature and could use some distraction. It means that having a physical media collection can be pretty nice.
I browsed my shelves and, through clouds of my own visible breath, found exactly what I needed in these harsh days.
Road House. Of course!
Patrick Swayze’s Dalton would know how to survive a winter storm. Somehow it would involve kicking someone in the head, sure, but I’m not looking to copy his exact methods. It’s more about the inspiration. A little wind beneath my wings.
I hadn’t seen the movie in a good while, but I’ve had the Shout Factory Blu-ray set (that includes a whole second disc packed with four thousand hours of extras) for about two years and I’m embarrassed to report that I never even broke the plastic wrap until this week. Why? I don’t know. You make mistakes in life, but you learn from them. Or maybe I was just waiting for the right time.
What I’m trying to say is that much like the chaotic Double Deuce bar needed some cleaning up, my head needed some cleaning up. Time to bring in Patrick Swayze.
THE PLOT: In a 1989 world where mullets still rule and you can tell a classy nightspot by how much neon and hairspray are packed into the place, the Double Deuce in Jasper, Missouri is a lawless hellhole. Or, as the owner puts it, “It used to be a sweet deal; Now it’s the kind of place where they sweep up the eyeballs after closing.” To improve the place, he hires Dalton, who’s famous across state lines as the greatest bar bouncer around. Dalton takes the job and does it well. He fires everyone who needs to be fired, lays down the law and never loses his cool in the face of danger. However, there’s a bigger problem. All of the head-busting and face-smashing at the Double Deuce are just symptoms of a larger corruption. The town’s rich slimebag (Ben Gazzara, perfectly hateful) LIKES this chaos. He’s made it work for him and he needs to stop Mr. Dirty Dancing from fixing things and inspiring people to be better. Naturally, this leads to explosions, stabbings, shootings, cars crushed by a monster truck and a memorable throat-ripping.
DID IT HELP? Oh, hell yes. Road House cures depression and can warm you up like a raging fireplace. It’s inspiring and edifying and illuminating. If I could grow hair, I’d be working on my own mullet right now. At the very least, Road House is entertaining as shit.
It’s The Great Bad Movie of the 80s, a Joel Silver-produced, high-octane blast of raw nonsense. Yes, the plot is Goofball City, but the secret weapon of its lasting appeal is that it’s oddly well-made. It’s ready to be a hit. The pace moves at a gallop and it looks great as shot by cinematography giant Dean Cundey. He was a favorite of the likes of Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis and, in particular, John Carpenter–and, as in Carpenter’s work, Road House is all about rich use of the wide screen. The disc is a knock-out, bringing that nice film-y look with a touch of natural grain that you get from Blu-ray done right.
Meanwhile, its subtext is tons of fun. Road House is a western in 80s clothes. It’s the old story of the stranger who ends up in a bad town. Its main setting is a dangerous saloon. Even the character names are Old West throwbacks. Dalton is a reference to the outlaw Dalton gang who raised hell back in the horseback days. Dalton’s mentor Wade Garrett (Sam Elliott) is a nod to Pat Garrett. Bad guy Brad Wesley is likely taken from John Wesley Hardin. Even Dalton’s love interest, a winsome lady doctor (Kelly Lynch), is named Elizabeth Clay, but in the credits, she’s simply called Doc in a clear homage to Doc Holliday.
Furthermore, it twists the formula by also being a kind of sideways Kung fu flick (which are often Asia’s equivalent to westerns anyway). Most of its fight scenes are all about fast-paced punches and kicks, with the occasional headbutt and a few faces smashed into tables.
Westerns often deal in gunplay, but when someone brandishes a gun here, it feels like cheating. No one ever explicitly says it, but you can feel that in this world pulling out a firearm is not an “honorable” way to fight. Only the weak do that. In his commentary, director Rowdy Herrington notes that he made sure to hire several actors who had martial arts training–and it shows. These are some of the best fisticuffs scenes in a Hollywood movie at the time. Bodies fly all over the screen.
Then there’s Dalton himself, oh boy.
All action heroes are power fantasies. They’re sturdy, capable and generally not to be fucked with, but Dalton is even more “perfect” than most of the rest because he’s smart and even sensitive. He’s the only movie action hero who has a degree in philosophy! (Can you imagine Schwarzenegger or Van Damme playing someone who has a philosophy degree?) The movie doesn’t dive very deep into it. Mostly it’s there to explain Dalton’s approach to bar-bouncing and how he stays perfectly calm even when someone slices him pretty good with a knife (and how he’s still cool as a pint of Blue Bell later when he casually sews up the wound himself). Dalton’s conscious mind transcends the PHYSICAL REALM, MAN.
Patrick Swayze has a lean dancer’s body. He’s not Mr. Universe. It’s a running joke in the movie that people always expect him to be “bigger” due to his reputation. Dalton is imposing because he’s always mentally above whatever danger is around. Swayze naturally brings enough heat to sell that and pop your popcorn, too.
(Dalton also respects his elders, doesn’t drink, prefers to read at night rather than party and is more attracted to a brainy doctor than some bar floozie Barbie doll. He does smoke, but that was still considered cool in ’89.)
Yes, we later find out that he’s haunted by some dark stuff from his past, but that only makes him more appealing. He’s the heart throb with a broken heart.
Guys want to fight like him, girls want to fix him. Swayze carries more than one fantasy on his shoulders.
MY fantasy as I watched this was nice warm weather. No more snow. No more subzero wind chills. No more shivering on the couch. No more fucked up roads. No more empty supermarket shelves.
So, I did what Dalton would do. I got stoic, just like Dalton. I got mentally above it, just like Dalton. I took hot bubble baths, just like Dalton (okay, I made a big assumption with that one).
This will all be over soon.
This is Texas after all. Next week, temperatures will probably be in the 70s. A few months from now, I’ll be bitching about how hot it is outside.
What I’m trying to say is that Road House belongs in any respectable home video library.