Road House

Directed by: Rowdy Herrington

RS: Not Rated

1989 Action

If I were to snap-review the action movie Road House, starring Dirty Dancing's Patrick Swayze as a nightclub bouncer, I would have to nail it as relentlessly brutal, sexist and stupid. I could add, in its favor, that Road House has a subversive, self-mocking subtext. This does not excuse the excess. But it does show how creative talent can still manifest itself while shamelessly selling out in the anything-for-a-buck Hollywood of the Eighties.

Back in the Fifties, clever directors often used B movies to sneak in a message: Robert Aldrich invested the thriller Kiss Me Deadly with intimations of atomic apocalypse; Nicholas Ray energized the western Johnny Guitar with Freudian symbolism; and Don Siegal laced the horror flick Invasion of the Body Snatchers with a satire of Joe McCarthy-era conformity.

Rowdy Herrington, the director of Road House, isn't nearly as imaginative. But he shows a refreshing willingness to rebel against the conventions of genre films. You expect as much from a guy named Rowdy. A former gaffer (lighting technician), he made his debut as a writer-director last year with Jack's Back, a nimble thriller about a modern-day Jack the Ripper who warbles, "I did it my way," in the shower after each grisly murder.

The low-budget Jack's Back brought out Herrington's playful side. The mainstream Road House finds him more cautious. Gorgeously photographed by Dean Cundey, who received an Oscar nomination for Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Road House may be the spiffiest-looking B movie ever made. But the film's high gloss cows Herrington. As a hired hand, he can't cut loose. He has a job to do.

That job is to stoke the star-making machinery for Swayze, whose two post-Dirty Dancing releases -- Tiger Warsaw and Steel Dawn -- were surprise box-office fizzles. So Herrington offers up his mostly shirtless star like a prize broccoli, letting the camera examine him for size, shape and texture. In one scene, a woman visitor to Swayze's bedroom gapes in awe at the sight of his bare butt. I haven't seen this many adoring body-beautiful close-ups since Sly Stallone directed himself in the last three Rocky pictures.

Astonishingly, in a role that calls for lots of impassive staring, Swayze evades the narcissism trap. A former member of the Eliot Feld ballet company, he blends a dancer's natural grace with an actor's knack for letting an audience in on a laugh. Swayze realizes his part is hooey, but he's determined to find the humor in it. Sometimes he even succeeds.

When it's fun, Road House plays like a wicked sendup of macho masturbatory fantasies. When it's intolerable, which it often is, Road House plays creepily like something made by and for horny fourteen-year-old boys of all ages. The story borrows from Cocktail, in which Bryan Brown taught Tom Cruise the manly rules of bartending. In Road House, it's Wade Garrett, an appealingly gruff Sam Elliott, who instructs Swayze in the art of bar bouncing. Mastering whatever skill is involved inevitably leads to a testosterone high and unlimited sexual opportunities.

Swayze is Dalton, the top bouncer in the biz now that the bottle has slowed down Wade. Dalton rarely loses his cool. His basic rule is: "Be nice until it's time to not be nice." Even when an overexcited customer digs a knife into his arm, Dalton remains unfazed. Taking a cue from Rambo, he calmly stitches his own wound in the men's room.

The owner of the Double Deuce, a raucous rock club in rural Missouri, hires Dalton to clean up his place for decent folks. The Double Deuce attracts a decidedly unsavory clientele of druggies, boozers and brawlers. One lout offers his lady friend's breasts for fondling at twenty dollars a pop. The stiletto-heeled female frequenters of the club, who clearly have let their Ms. subscriptions lapse, are inordinately fond of removing their tight frocks in public and making lewd advances. "Wanna fuck?" asks one bimbo who sights Dalton. She's the mistress of the evil town patriarch, hammed to the hilt by Ben Gazzara. We are a long way here from the days when Bacall simply asked Bogie if he knew how to whistle.

Dalton never succumbs to cheap come-ons. He holds a degree in philosophy from New York University and prefers to snuggle up with literature. (I do not make these things up.) Then Dalton meets Doc, played with welcome intelligence by Kelly Lynch. Doc is not like the other girls; she wears flats and gingham, and besides, she's a real M.D. Even the skeptical Wade is entranced: "That gal has got entirely too many brains to have an ass like that," Wade notes admiringly. Dalton falls hard; he even lets Doc stitch his latest stab wound when we know he could have done the job himself. Yet when Dalton and Doc get down to sex, they fall prey to the kinky habits of the town. Either they're going at it standing up, slammed against a wall or on slanted roofs. No one in this town craves privacy, a normal bed or the missionary position.

Watching these moments, knowing that a woman (Hilary Henkin) collaborated with David Lee Henry on the screenplay, affirms two things: (1) The filmmakers are having devilish sport with male chauvinists; (2) The film's most likely audience -- precisely those male chauvinists -- is the least likely to get the joke. But the scenes of women being debased go on way past the point of parody. And the sadism, featuring gore-drenched stabbings, shootings and throat rippings, grows increasingly repellent.

The grotesque soon drowns out the giggles. It ceases to matter that the wily director and cast work beneath the surface to ridicule these dumb studs and sluts. They're still reinforcing dangerous stereotypes for sick male puppies. No one can own and disown a movie at the same time. To borrow an ornery line from old Wade, "That dog won't hunt."

PETER TRAVERS
RS 553