Roadhouse
No way, this is a prequel to The Big Lebowski. Jackie Treehorn himself, a mobster in some podunk town, graduating to a bona fide porno empire in Malibu. And The Stranger is in it too, with long flowing hair!
Our protagonist is a tough guy head of security for some bar. “For a bouncer, I thought he would be bigger”. Yes, that’s a dick joke, get used to it.
The titular roadhouse (the Double “Douche”) is overrun with bikers, cheap hookers, and daily brawls caking the floor with beer, blood, and spit. The sawdust doesn’t cut it anymore, the owner hires the protagonist to clean up the place, for an enormous amount of money.
He stays there for a night, and it’s pandemonium. Chickenwire protecting the band from beer bottles and all kinds of shit flying, pool cues being snapped in someone’s back, drug dealing and pimping out in the open. The protagonist surveys the land, gets accommodated and immediately starts working: fires the drug dealer, kicks out the worst bouncers, and pep talks the rest into polite but firm rule enforcement.
This takes a while, but it works, the worst elements are pacified, the chickenwire is removed, the bar gets gentrified very fast. It seems the worst problem in not some rowdy “40 years old teenagers”, but a big time mobster collecting protection money all over town, with a team of dumb muscle.
Everyone that refuses to pay gets ruined: the car parts store is burned down, the used car dealer is wrecked with a monster truck. The bar is the final holdout, that requires more finesse. They start small, pushing at the edges.
The protagonist met a doctor that took a look at his toned upper body and wanted more of that sweet kung fu ass. She mentions her previous marriage was not working out, but it turns out the ex was that mobster.
The edges of the love triangle live right next to each other, so the mobster can only seethe as his ex pulls a reverse cowgirl on the new guy outside his window.
The mobster tried and failed to buy him out, sending goons is not good enough, he can take them, with the help of his pal from Memphis. The mobster needs to take his personal hooker to fail to seduce the protagonist, then waves a gun around.
The pressure keep raising: the mobster outright threatens the lives of the pal and his girl, on the phone, and he actually goes through with his threats to the pal, Sam Elliot is gone! The protagonist goes on a rampage, more houses blow up, but the mobster goes down, the town is saved! Ale all around!
Near the climax, during the struggle between the protagonist and the main enforcer, it’s a goddamned gladiator fight, the protagonist literally rips the other guy’s throat out. With his bare hands. I thought Memphis was just a story. Damn, sucka!
This is filled with crazy oneliners. “Does a hobby horse have a wooden dick?”. “No good faggot draft-dodger”. “A polar bear fell on me” as the last words.
And the explosions, oh god, the explosions. Every arson attack results in a massive explosion that blows up entire houses.
The mobster enforcers drive around in a monster truck, doing a conspicuous “stakeout”. Hilarious.
Keith David plays a bartender, but he doesn’t fight people for a very long time, no wrestling moves, no Nada.
Can’t believe I watched two films with Kelly Lynch in a row, by accident.
I bet the remake with Gyllenhaal and Daniela Melchior is better.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.