Road House 2 and the Possibly Haunted Road House Remake
* Road House 2: Last Call is the unnecessary but semi-watchable B-movie “sequel” to the Patrick Swayze classic. It went straight to video in 2006. It stars Johnathon Schaech, Will Patton, and Jake Busey.
* Schaech plays Shane Tanner, the DEA agent son of Dalton, Swayze’s character in Roadhouse who only needed the one name. Schaech is an actual actor doing action pretty well, one of those “I’ve seen that guy before” types who’s no Swayze, but comes off pretty cool.
* Schaech played the lead singer in That Thing You Do. He was once married to Christina Applegate. He probably won’t get a star on Hollywood Blvd, but that’s not a bad life.
* Will Patton plays Shane’s Uncle Nate. Nate’s an affable bad-ass who owns a Louisiana road house called the Black Pelican that’s right on the swamp. Drug dealers want to force him to sell the place because it would give them a shipping lane to smuggle their meth.
* In one scene, a gator comes upon a canoe with meth, tips the canoe, eats the meth and then goes on a crazed meth-smuggler eating rampage. It’s terrifying.
* That last part never happened. It’s just my pitch for Roadhouse 3: Meth Gators
* The Black Pelican may be right on the swamp, but it seems less sweaty and dangerous than the Double Deuce, the Missouri bar in Road House. The Black Pelican just seems like a spacious bar for twenty-somethings who don’t let mediocre blues music get in the way of a good time.
* Ellen Hollman plays Nate’s love interest, Beau. Beau fights and shoots well because a female lead named Beau is obviously a tom-boy who grew up to be hot. The action is pretty good but they play the slow-motion card a little too much.
* The jokes are not good. There are no memorable one-liners. No one over age eleven is going around quoting Road House 2.
* Ben Gazzara played main villain Brad Wesley in the original, a rich sociopath who keeps taking and taking until somebody who only needs one name finally stops him. Brad Wesley exudes smug menace. In Roadhouse 2, Jake Busey plays main bad guy, Wild Bill. Jake Busey was creepy in Contact but Wild Bill is about menacing as a stoned koala.
* There's a drinking game of a script full of references to the original. They seek to remind you that Road House 2 is a “sequel” even though no one’s around from the original and the location has changed.
* Patrick Swayze was supposed play Dalton in Road House 2 but according to IMDB, he left over “creative differences.” He was probably sure he would get his way because it would be impossible to make a good sequel without him. He was half right.
* The DVD was released in 19 counties including Bulgaria and Argentina. If I ever travel to those countries, I want to stay with people who’ve seen Road House 2.
* The phones are the real star of the movie—flip phones with weirdly short show-antennas and cordless landlines with antennas big enough to joust with. Also, every character has a My Space account and the bad guys and good guys send each other taunting My Space mix playlists in increasingly diabolical ways.
* I made that last part up because that would have been so 2006. It’s also a reminder that My Space was way better than Facebook because you could make playlists. It’s also my pitch for a Road House 2 prequel.
* There is supposed to be a remake of Road House starring Rhonda Rousey. It was announced back in 2013 that Rob Cohen (Fast and the Furious, xXx) would direct, which means that whoever put that deal together thought Road House was a big, dumb action movie. Cohen was later replaced by the guy who directed The Notebook, which must mean somebody thought Road House was a love story. And maybe it was—but for Dalton and Wade, not Dalton and Doc.
* When the pro wrestler Terry Funk (who played bad-guy Morgan in the original) found out Rhonda Rousey was starring in a remake he got mad and cussed and not because he didn’t think Rousey had the chops to pull off the tricky balancing act of a Roadhouse/Notebook mashup. Funk’s rant is on video here.
* Terry Funk almost seems motivated enough to pretend to be the ghost of Patrick Swayze and haunt the set of the Road House remake. Which would explain reports of Rhonda Rousey not being able to act well enough to keep the job. Something must have rattled her. Classically trained actresses don’t just forget how to act, do they?
* To this point, there hasn't been a set for the Road House remake. This thing hasn't started filming. The Notebook guy decided to go make an MMA movie starring Blake Lively instead.
* In related news, Rhonda Rousey is reportedly making a movie about having sex with Ryan Reynolds. Early buzz is that the movie is terrible, but that Reynolds grunts in a passable Canadian accent.
* Patrick Swayze’s preparation for the movie Ghost almost certainly included talking to and hanging out with actual ghosts. Could he be haunting the pre-production of the new Road House? Not Scooby style, but for real?
* Patrick Swayze was unable to haunt the set of Road House 2. Because he was still alive. No excuse for not haunting that Point Break remake though.
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