Action – general DVD – History may relegate Patrick Swayze to the dust heap of Hollywood has-beens; but with his lead turn in Rowdy Herringtons Road House, he stakes his claim to cinematic immortality. Swayze, clad in cowboy boots and skin-tight jeans, is Dalton, a former New York University philosophy student and martial arts expert who (we kid you not) works as a “cooler” (head bouncer) at a rough-and-tumble honky-tonk in Jasper, Missouri. This place is so tough that the house band (led by blind blues guitarist Jeff Healey) plays in a cage to protect them from flying bottles and hurled bodies. None of this fazes Dalton, who manages to: keep the unruly rednecks in line without mussing a strand of his blow-dried hair; clean up the town, which is under the thumb of a wealthy thug (Ben Gazzara); and get down with a hot blonde doctor (Kelly Lynch). Along the way he dodges monster trucks and mouths lines like “Pain dont hurt” while stitching up his own wounds, Terminator-style. Is this schizophrenic mishmash of westerns, gangster films, and kung fu movies ludicrous? Completely, and thats what makes Road House so much fun. Swayze, taking the role of soulful hunk to heart, plays the whole thing utterly straight: Hes the ultimate strong-silent screen archetype of the Reagan 80s. Bad movies just dont get any better than this. – Road House at Barnes and Noble

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