A Very Important Post About... Why "Road House" Is Awesome

An ode to the finest film ever directed by a man named Rowdy.

Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Any time the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World writes about Israel there is a need to follow up with a topic that is much less fraught. In this case, it means it is finally time for me to write about one of my favorite films ever: Road House, directed by Rowdy Herrington.¹

Road House is about Dalton (played by Patrick Swayze), the second-greatest bouncer in the land, who is hired by the owner of the Double Deuce in Jasper, Kansas to clean up the bar. A local tycoon named Brad Wesley (played by Ben Gazzara) likes things the way they are, and makes life difficult for Dalton and his friends. Violence and hilarity ensue.

As Ana Marie Cox and I have discussed repeatedly on Space the Nation, there is a delicate alchemy to a good bad movie. The bad seems self-explanatory: maybe the plot makes no sense, or the characterizations are too thin, or script is too hackneyed, or the budget is too small for a quality production. Road House meets this criteria in its absurd plot and paper-thin characterizations.

The bad part is easy. A good bad movie, however, has to meet two additional criteria. First, even if most of the movie is bad, there has to be some element of it that actually works. The actors have to commit, or the fight scenes have to be good. Even set design can elevate a bad film. Without something good, however, bad films tend to be so bad as to render them unenjoyable. For example, I regret to inform all of you that the 2025 version of War of the Worlds is bad in every way.

Second, and more important, the film has to be entertaining. Actors delivering absurd dialogue but doing so with conviction can be riotously entertaining. Which brings us back to Road House:

My affection for Road House was there from the very first time I watched it on VHS. My college girlfriend and I were in the video rental store² and grabbed the case for this film out of curiosity. The video store clerk saw us and hyped the film, explaining, “that movie has the best sex scene Patrick Swayze has done since Dirty Dancing.”

Intrigued, my girlfriend and I watched it that night, and could not stop laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole thing — including the sex scene.³ What really cemented Road House in our hearts was when, after my girlfriend repeatedly noted the homoerotic subtext between Dalton and Jimmy (played by Marshall Teague), the bad guy’s chief henchman, we got to their final confrontation scene:

The subtext became text! And I knew that I would watch this film again and again and again.

Earlier this week the New York Times’ Maya Salam tried to explain the enduring appeal of Road House as a good bad film:

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….

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.”

Teague’s “I used to f**k guys like you in prison” is also pretty great. Perhaps nothing captured the gleeful absurdity of Road House more, however, than this priceless Parks and Recreation bit in which Andy describes it to an audience:

The final thing that makes Road House endure is the hair. By God, the 1980s hair in this film is spectacular, every blow-dried, frosted strand of it. Every time I watch it, the debate emerges: whose hair is more feathered, Patrick Swayze or Kelly Lynch? Sam Elliott’s hair in this film belongs in the goddamn Smithsonian. The hairstyles in this film are just spectacular.

In conclusion, Road House is awesome. It’s not good, mind you — but it will always be awesome.

1. Just the original version of Road House. As far as Drezner’s World is concerned there was no sequel, nor was there any remake.

2. A video rental store? Why yes I am old, why do you ask?

3. Kelly Lynch, who played Swayze’s love interest in the film, can explain the absurdity of that scene better than I could.