DVD Review: Road House

For my money, the best reason to watch Road House is Richard Widmarks psycho. He does great psycho. The rest is a decent story.

Jefty (Widmark) owns the titular Road House somewhere near the Canadian border, and Pete (Cornel Wilde) boyhood friend runs it for him and cleans up his woman messes, which seem to happen fairly frequently as Jefty likes to go to a big city and bring back entertainers to work his saloon. On his last trip he brings back Lily Stevens(Ida Lupino), who definitely has more street smarts and maybe more testosterone than the pair of them.

Jefty is in love and plans to ask Lily to marry him, as soon as he gets back from a hunting trip as there is five feet of wall space in the joint that doesn’t have a stuffed animal head on it. Pete and Lily fall in! love.

Against Lily’s advice Pete comes clean with Jefty, who freaks out and claims Pete stole the weeks receipts from the bar, getting Pete two to ten in the slammer. Jesty cons the Judge into paroling Pete into his custody so he can put the screws to the lovers. A recipe for disaster and disaster ensues.

Celeste Holm play sweet Susie who is cashier at the club, in love with Pete, and present mostly to be abused and/or ignored. Susie gets my vote as the nicest character, and would have gotten it for smartest, but she’s still there.

Leading the specials are commentary by film historians Kim Morgan and Eddie Muller who know their onions and are having so much fun it’s hard not to go along.

I wouldn’t rank this among the greats but it is a C+ or maybe a B-.

Order Road House from Amazon.

Lee Crawford

For more reviews from Lee, and the rest of the Crimespree crew, check out the index of reviews.