![]() The gargantuan monster truck that one of Wesley’s minions drives around town and inevitably uses to crush a collection of smaller vehicles. The swinging blues rock of The Jeff Healey Band. The silly cartoonishness of the Double Deuce’s bar fights. The bold and glitzy fashion, including the face-engulfing glasses worn by Dalton’s paramour, Dr. Literally every notable element of Herrington’s film screams ’80s. He’s old-world and new-school, urban and rural, East and West, and the absolute epitome of poised, tough, sexy cool.ĭalton may survive to the end of his adventure, but there’s no future for him because he’s a perpetual relic of his time and place, and so too is Road House, right down to its absurdist conceit only at this precise moment of cultural excessiveness could anyone buy a straight-faced saga about the greatest bar bouncer in America being a mythic legend who risks it all for the little man and loves like a romance-novel heartthrob. He wears sweater vests and kimono-style shirts but he’s equally comfortable going shirtless, his sweaty torso covered in dive-bar battle scars. He fights like hell and once killed a man, yet he also has an NYU degree in philosophy, knows martial arts, and practices meditative tai chi in the early dawn hours. As befitting an ’80s tale, Wesley’s main goal is to become even richer than he already is, but his greedy plot hits a snag thanks to Dalton, who’s a modern archetype that marries the then and now.ĭalton drives a Mercedes-Benz as well as a Buick Riviera. That begins with its neo-Western premise, in which Dalton is cast as the famed desperado enlisted to bring law and order (and grace, panache, and morality) to a dissolute saloon establishment operating under the thumb of an evil businessman, Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara). Like Swayze’s silky mane, everything about Road House is intrinsically tied to the decade of its creation. That coiffure should be in the hall of fame, and it’s complemented by all sorts of gloriously big supporting-cast hair, be it Kelly Lynch’s wavy-on-top, straight-to-the-shoulders ’do or Sam Elliott’s long and splendidly dirty-gray locks (with matching scruffy beard). Dalton isn’t just any old bouncer he’s “the best,” though one can tell that from the way he dresses, carries himself and calmly and methodically dispatches ruffians.ĭalton is defined by Swayze’s distinctive charisma, as well as by his trademark tan suit (with its baggy, tapered pants and shoulder-padded jacket) and his beautifully manicured mullet. Simply put, a Road House without the ’80s is no Road House at all.Īny discussion of this most beloved of action movies must begin, first and foremost, with Patrick Swayze, who-like Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones, Sigourney Weaver and Ripley, and Jeff Bridges and The Dude-is forever synonymous with James Dalton, the ace “cooler” who’s hired by Jasper, Missouri, businessman Frank Tilghman (Kevin Tighe) to clean up his rough-and-tumble honkey-tonk, the Double Deuce. Director Rowdy Herrington’s 1989 film has achieved cinematic culthood, courtesy of both its inimitable headliner and its status as a product of its particular (and unduplicatable) era. On September 14, 2009, Patrick Swayze died of pancreatic cancer at age 57.Jake Gyllenhaal is a daring and magnetic actor, and Doug Liman has at least a few good features under his belt ( Swingers, Go, Edge of Tomorrow), but the duo’s plan to remake Road House is, on the face of it, one of the most misbegotten ventures in recent Hollywood history.Īccording to Variety, Amazon’s modern take on Road House will cast Gyllenhaal as a former UFC fighter who takes a job as a bouncer in the Florida Keys and “soon discovers that not everything is what it seems in this tropical paradise.” Absolutely not. On March 2, 2008, Jeff Healey died of sarcoma cancer at age 41. The club changed location later to 56 Blue Jays Way and was renamed to "Jeff Healey's Roadhouse." He also toured toured throughout North America and Europe and played with many legendary performers, including The Allman Brothers, Bonnie Raitt, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Buddy Guy, BB King, ZZ Top, Steve Lukather, Ian Gillan, Eric Clapton and many more. Discovered by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert Collins, Canadian blind guitarist and singer Jeff Healey had numerous acting scenes in the movie with Swayze, as his band was the house cover band for the bar featured in the movie.įor many years Healey performed at his club, "Healey's" on Bathurst Street in Toronto. Patrick Swayze starred as a bouncer at a newly refurbished roadside bar who protects a small town in Missouri from a corrupt local businessman. ![]() They met each other while making the "Road House" film in 1989, directed by Rowdy Herrington. ![]() Phenomenal musician Jeff Healey and actor Patrick Swayze are ceratinly among those that many people miss a lot.
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