Chateau Lloyd

Today's nostalgia offering is Road House, another Patrick Swayze vehicle from 1989.

It falls into the odd intersection of revenge fantasy/bar film, but what truly sets it apart is Patrick Swayze's butt.

Actually, it features just about every part of the man on screen, which is an amusing juxtaposition with the usual "boobs and butts" (also rendered as "tits and ass") content of the era.

I take an increasingly dim view of that sort of thing, but at least Road House is an equal opportunity offender.  By this point, Swayze was at the top of his game as a box-office draw, and seeing him as the super-cool elite bouncer who also dances with the lovely women and regularly dispenses with the need for clothing shows just how much masculinity has changed in the decades since then.

In a plot twist reminiscent of Days of Thunder, Swayze falls for the very attractive emergency room doctor who treats his knife wound.  Naturally, she falls for him because look at that glorious bod!

The soundtrack is familiar to fans of Dirty Dancing, and it alternates between 80s compositions and classic 60s tunes designed to set the mood.

There is something like a plot involving a greedy local businessman who tries to run Swayze out of town, but it's one of those tropes that allow the minimum acceptable level of character development.  Like so many movies of this type, the plot can only proceed because none of the protagonists are carrying a revolver, which would have resolved the thing in half the run time.

I've touched on that before, but there is a long-standing trope about good guys being painfully reluctant to act, which in turn allows the bad guys to inflict maximum carnage on the innocent until the hero reaches the breaking point.

From a modern informed legal perspective, in almost every case, the provocations are well across the line of reasonable self-defense.  When I watch these with my friends, we like to call out the moment where the good guy (or gal) could legally plug the bad guy.

Anyway, if one wants to see an almost entirely naked Patrick Swayze (and also some almost entirely naked women), this is the film for you.