Roadhouse which is one word, not two. Why are we watching Roadhouse anyways? Well for those of you who aren’t aware, each and every week without a major wrestling event the hosts of the At Odds with Wrestling podcast assign each other something different from the wide world of wrestling to watch. As a day one listener and hanger on, I write up my thoughts as well. Usually these picks are old wrestling shows or lately, wrestling related movies. But that brings us back to, why Roadhouse? For those of you who aren’t aware, the legendary and recently passed hall of famer and former world champion Terry Funk is in this movie. He’s not in it a lot, but he’s in it enough. 

Speaking of enough, maybe I should say “enough” to some of my opinions. Months ago my dad found out I hadn’t watched any of the John Wick movies. He pushed and pushed and said they’re not just mindless action movies – and he was right. I watched all four movies in a short amount of time and loved them. My brother has probably watched Roadhouse dozens of times, and I’ve been in the room or at least the same house for many of those early viewings. Yet I never watched the movie. Not until this week for homework. I thought it was going to be a dumb mindless stupid action movie that would only result in me feeling like I wasted two hours of my life. 

Sure, I watch a ton of stupid stuff, but I have some sort of line for enjoyable stupid versus just stupid. I don’t know how exactly to describe that line. For those of us of a certain age, Tom Green painting his dad’s car is hilarious but the rest of Tom Green I don’t bother with. Adam Sandler with Drew Barrymore is great but I’ll pass on most of his work. All of this is a long way to say I never watched this movie because I was sure it was going to be stupid and a waste of time. 

Well, this movie is stupid, and sure there’s some scenes that are laughable, but it was a blast to watch. I had so much fun watching this movie. There is definitely something more to it. Some heart, some brain, something that raises it above forgettable B movies and into the cult classic it deserves to be. 

When we watch wrestling shows I go into far too much detail.  A thing I also do when the homework involves a little known Miz movie. But this is Roadhouse, and I’m willing to bet the majority of people who overlap in the Venn diagram between my blog readers and At Odds podcast listeners have watched this movie. 

Briefly though; Patrick Swayze is Dalton, the (second) best “cooler” – a super bouncer – that there is, and he just got hired to clean up a new bar. He’s calm, cool, and collected despite the violence and danger around him. He takes this personality to a new bar and there’s a bit more trouble therein than what was to be expected. The town is under the evil thumb of a ruthless corrupt local businessman. He will stop at nothing to get what he wants and for the most part he wants Dalton gone. Lots of fights, property destruction, arson, murder, and I’m probably forgetting some crimes along the way. Dalton tai chi and spin kicks his way through all of this. He falls in love, but almost loses her, but it’s ok he gets her back. There’s blood, boobs, and some amazing hair. 

Terry Funk is originally the head bouncer of the bar until Dalton fires him. Funk then joins the businessman’s henchmen union and gets a couple more licks in during the movie. He looks huge, he looks dangerous, and he looks like he’s having fun making the movie. 

However, just because he’s having fun does not guarantee the audience has fun as well. Yet here I am. I’m ready to watch this movie again. I think the secret to the movie is that Dalton is flawless. He’s such a man’s man. Men want to be him and women want to be with him. I was trying to find an old stand up routine but I can’t remember who the comedian was, which makes it tough to dig up. The stand up guy was talking about El Mariachi (and Desperado). Here are guns and explosions and fire and there’s Antonio Banderas falling all sweaty and dirty and his hair is blowing around – and it’s sexy as hell. Something along the lines of “men making men sexy for men”. If you’ve read this far then you watch wrestling and let’s admit it, you have to be pretty secure with your sexuality if you’re watching wrestling. We’re paying money to watch oiled up muscular men in their underwear roll around with each other. This same security can transfer to movies as well. Call it bad ass, or iconic, or anti-heroes, or man’s man like I did earlier, but deep down it’s straight men watching men that women and gay men think are sexy as hell and trying to not think too hard about that. 

Here’s Dalton, with a jacked body and great hair. Slow to anger, quick to react. He always knows the right thing to say. He’s respectful to all, even in his contempt of some. He has a code of honor that he lives his life by, literally a philosophy here. He gets the prettiest girl in town and pulls off incredible chemistry from the first meeting. Best of all, as we all wish we could have these attributes, we need someone to teach these things to us. Here comes Sam Elliot as Dalton’s mentor/father figure with arguably the best hair in cinema. The attractive apple doesn’t fall far from the fully follicle tree. 

There is also a sense of responsibility. Not necessarily to your job or your friends, because at this point I don’t know that Dalton would feel that this is anything more than a short term contract. No, a responsibility to your word. Dalton agreed to clean up that bar and even though this is becoming a bigger job than expected and now he has to clean up the whole town, he’s still following through on the original deal. Sure he has a crisis of faith, like all great heroes, but he comes through in the end. Maybe after Dalton is done reading Jim Harrison he’ll pick up some Joseph Campbell. 

After enjoying the hell out of this movie, I wonder if instead of a renaissance man a more up to date term would be a Roadhouse man. Brains, brawn, and a great head of hair. Although all of these qualities rarely exist in one person. Or, to quote the movie, “entirely too many brains to have an ass like that”.