Road House (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo in Blu-ray Packaging) (1989)

Forget "Dirty Dancing": Patrick Swayze's career peaked in this and the similarly underrated "Point Break." It doesn't quite reach the stratospheric heights (or is it depths?) of Arnold Schwarzenegger's deservedly legendary "Commando," but "Road House" is still the stuff of which B-movie legend is made. Starring Swayze as the head bouncer at a rowdy Southern bar called the Double Deuce, "Road House" derives its appeal largely from the ingenious idea of having a bunch of rednecks for villains. You get to see Swayze's Dalton, perhaps the only Mercedes-driving, philosophy-majoring bouncer in history, take on a seemingly endless succession of slack-jawed inbred troglodytes as he tames the Double Deuce and ensures victory for truth, justice, and the American way.

The Double Deuce is one of the those bars where it seems half the patrons are on parole, but that doesn't stop them from throwing fists at the proverbial drop of a hat. I've always believed that bar fights held vast, untapped potential for the action genre, and this movie more than delivers the goods in that department. There are about five solid bar brawls in "Road House," with glass flying around, Dalton employing his martial-arts expertise against dimwitted thugs in tight jeans, and blind guitar whiz Jeff Healey providing some rock-solid background music. Suffice to say, if you're looking for a fair and dignified look at life in the South, you won't find it here. A trip to the Double Deuce promises to be as nasty and brutish as Hobbes's state of nature, and a lot more fun to watch.

And even for those who can think of nothing that beats Patrick Swayze as an action hero, it gets better: they got Sam Elliott, one of America's most underrated actors ever, to play Dalton's long-haired, hard-living friend Wade! With an unkempt white mane and that unmistakable Southern drawl, Wade dispenses plenty of rapier wit along with some ...-whippings before outliving his usefulness. You also get to see Ben Gazzara, slumming it as the snake-like villain Brad Wesley, somehow manage to maintain a semblance of dignity in a movie that seems committed to insulting your intelligence every chance it gets. And as Dalton's love interest, Kelly Lynch adds little in the way of plot advancement or dialogue, but she does provide some nice scenery... buying it.

To avoid any confusion, by rating this movie 5 stars I am NOT suggesting that it is in the same league as GLADIATOR, THE LORD OF THE RINGS (trilogy), GONE WITH THE WIND or any other top-calibre flick. However, this film doesn't try to compete with the likes of top-rated movies, and that's the beauty of it.

The story is based on a top-notch bar bouncer (Patrick Swayze) who is compelled to call in his old mentor (Sam Elliot) for an especially tough project. Instead of just busting heads and throwing hoodlums out of the bar, these guys end up having to save the whole town!

This is a B-movie all the way. In my opinion, it COULD be the greatest B-movie of all time. In short, despite being stupid it is also immensely entertaining. The plot is contrived. There are aspects of it that are way, way beyond being remotely believable. It seems the whole movie was inspired by pushing the envelope on the concept of the bar brawl.

Despite its limited plot, the DVD is surprisingly watchable. I've seen it at least 4 times and it's always fun to re-watch. Patrick Swazye's considerable acting talents are wasted in this farce, but that's OK. The film contains a nice sampling of gratuitous nudity, and Kelly Lynch is not exactly hard on the eyes.

So, if you want to watch a movie with minimum seriousness and maximum action, hang a left into the Roadhouse tonight. You won't be disappointed.

Buy Road House (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo in Blu-ray Packaging) (1989) Now

Road House mania has finally hit in 2006! Not only has this movie, which has been to late night TBS what Whoopi Goldberg is to Hollywood Squares, finally been reissued in a special edition, but now Mike Nelson from MST3K has released a RiffTrax for it! Road House was long acknowledged as a target that Nelson and the 'bots wished they could skewer on MST3K and he finally got his wish.

Listen, Road House is great. Tinker, Sam Elliot (voice of the beef council) and the oh so creepy owner of the Double Deuce are some of the best characters to ever populate small town Missouri. But watching it with Nelson's RiffTrax playing in the background took the unintentional (i think?) comedy of Road House to an entirely new level. Nelson is both knowledgable and funny, the kind of guy you wish your friends were as clever as. If we are ever blessed with a 20th anniversary edition of Road House, I would hope that Nelson's riffing can be included, because I can't imagine watching this movie again without it.

Check it out:

Read Best Reviews of Road House (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo in Blu-ray Packaging) (1989) Here

At this point, I'm sure pretty much everyone has seen the movie so I won't go into the details about why this movie is so fun and rewatchable. Overall, this is a good blu-ray release as far as content. The blu-ray is bare bones, however this release includes the DVD that has all of the extras from the last DVD release(yes, it has Kevin Smith's and Scott Mosier's commentary track).

Now for the bad. The packaging is awful. The case looks like a normal blu-ray blue plastic case until you remove one of the discs and reveal the spaces or holes in the plastic. And the best part? The holes are right where the disc is resting in the case, which means if any blunt or sharp object hits the case, it will go through the thin plasic sleeve cover and the paper cover and damage the disc. I imagine amazon will have a lot of damage returns with this one since they are sending it in a bubble lined envelope (it really needs to be shipped in a box). My blu-ray cover was punctured in the front and the DVD was slightly damaged by a very visible scratch. Fortunately the disc still played just fine, but now the Road House front cover has a small hole right on Patrick Swayze's neck line. Lovely. I won't be returning it since the same thing will probably happen again (possibly worse) and both of the discs play anyway.

The eco-friendly packaging was a HORRIBLE idea. Since I like my discs to have some kind of protection, I'll be putting the discs in a different case and tossing this eco-friendly junk. They might as well send these in a thin paper sleeve. It's ridiculous.

Want Road House (Two-Disc Blu-ray/DVD Combo in Blu-ray Packaging) (1989) Discount?

I love the movie. It's bad, but a good kind of bad. Especially if you watch the movie with the Rifftrax commentary. But they made some odd choices with this release. First is the packaging that is designed with holes. Tolerable if you're careful, but I can see some mishaps. The other is the way they decided to do the extras. See, it comes with the Blu-Ray version and the DVD version. Not sure why. Perhaps they want you to lend it to a friend who doesn't have Blu-Ray. I dunno. Or perhaps they were just too lazy to put the extras onto the Blu-Ray disc and had a whole bunch of DVDs left over from last release. That's right. There are no extras on the Blu-Ray disc but the DVD has all the extras from the DVD release. Hmmmmmmmmmmm....

Let's see...

Blu-Ray Disc:

-Full-Length Film in 1080P

-Lossless Audio

-Smart Menus

-Theatrical Trailer

-Other Trailers

DVD "Bonus" Disc:

-Full-Length Film in SD

-Director Commentary

-Commentary with Kevin Smith and Scott Masier

-Documentary

-Featurette

-Trivia

-Multiple Language Tracks

Yep, that's right. If you want commentary (commentary aside), you have to watch the movie in standard definition because for some reason, they could not be bothered to move such features to the Blu-Ray disc itself.