Mike Nelson of Mystery Science Theater 3000 fame calls this the cheesiest movie ever made. I’ve seen much worse, but by no means does that excuse it from the title. Despite Dirty Dancing, it’s not too hard to see Patrick Swayze as a tough guy. He was swinging both fists in The Outsiders and hosed down a ton of commies in Red Dawn. In Road House he combines that history with his hunky Dirty Dancing reputation to make a ridiculous movie that is everything you could want from a movie made specifically for guys. Sex and violence is on the menu for Road House and you get it in spades. You also get a lot of high reaching foolishness that wants you to believe that Dalton is some kind of wandering do-gooder as the movie hints at themes typical of westerns, but a little more geared toward Kurosawa samurai flicks.
Dalton is a warrior poet, you see. He reads high literature and spews a line taken straight out of The Seven Samurai (“No one wins a fight”). He also punches a lot of people in the face and walks around naked when he’s not practicing some improvised tai chi on the edge of his simple-man home. The whole thing is completely ridiculous but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it.
To be honest, I have no idea how long the Rock and Shock con has been going on, but I first went to it back in 2004. While it’s no Chiller Theater or a Weekend of Horrors, it’s probably the best con of its kind in the north east. It manages to draw some great guests and the vendor area grows every year. Thanks to this show, I’ve managed to sate the autograph hound in me and get over my “celebrity” fear since my ill-fated meet up with Tom Savini. That’s a story for another time, though. Poker Industries is always on hand, as is Pix Posters. The Horror Channel was strangely absent last year, but they had been in attendance at other in the past to assure con goers that they were launching shortly on their own dedicated channel. In the past, the guest list has included the cast of The Devil’s Rejects, Betsy Palmer, Jeffrey Combs and George A. Romero, but this year is genuinely a cause for celebration, the big announcement this time around is none other than Rowdy Roddy Piper.
If there’s one sub-category of exploitation that grips me tighter than my love of gory, trashy horror movies, it’s the urban vigilante movie and following the success of the original, 1974 Death Wish, there was certainly no shortage of this shit. Jan Michael Vincent did Defiance, Robert Ginty did The Exterminator and William Lustig directed Vigilante. Since the mid-70′s when Bronson picked up the Paul Kersey role and rode it to infamy, the vigilante action movie spoke to the urban condition which seemed to worsen right up until mid-80′s when beefed up, oiled action stars like Stallone and Arnold redefined the cheap action franchise. It’s a wonder that even in the mid-1980′s, where it seemed that anything goes, that Death Wish 3 managed to become the most popular entry into the series.
