The 1988 stunt Patrick Swayze was banned from performing: “Was really mad”
Although he sadly passed away too young, Patrick Swayze was a defining movie star for nearly all of his career and was determined to be an action star for real.
Swyaze had such inherent charisma and an aptitude for inventiveness that there was never an obvious route for his career to go, which made it all the more exciting. While at first it seemed like he was going to be the next heartthrob and romantic lead because of how charming he was in Dirty Dancing, it was only a few years later that he would prove himself worthy of being part of the decade’s action renaissance.
Road House is beloved as one of the most ridiculous action films ever made, starring Swayze as James Dalton, a professional bouncer and martial arts expert who takes up a new job of protecting a roadside bar in Missouri, which is preyed upon by corrupt businessmen and ruthless criminals. While everything about the premise is absurd, the fact that everyone in the film is taking it somewhat seriously helps make it more entertaining; it’s too well-made to be considered a ‘so bad it’s good’ movie, but it’s also so obviously silly that it’s fun to buy into the calculated drama.
Swayze underwent extensive training so that he could perform all the fight scenes; for him, it was a cathartic experience, but he was allowed to perform only eight of the nine. A scene in which Dalton dismisses an enemy off his motorcycle with a flying kick was deemed too dangerous for a non-professional stuntman to perform, and required a double to stand in for him.
According to Rowdy Herrington, the director of Road House, Swayze “was really mad at me that he couldn’t knock the guy off the motorcycle”.
While the motorcycle kick is one of the most memorable kills in the film, it didn’t harm Swayze’s reputation that he wasn’t the one performing the scene; at this point, any audience who was engaging with the film had reached an understanding of how wild and over-the-top the action was going to be.
Road House may not have won over critics when it debuted, but it has stood the test of time as one of the ultimate action films of the ‘80s. While many action films of this time were simply iterating on the formulas that were set up by Lethal Weapon and Die Hard, Road House did its own thing.
Swayze’s commitment to the film paid off in the long run because he was given an opportunity to star in another action classic when Kathryn Bigelow cast him in Point Break, which similarly had a completely absurd premise, yet was too well-directed to simply dismiss as a ‘guilty pleasure’.
Keanu Reeves, who co-starred with Swayze in the film, certainly picked up his philosophy of doing as many stunts for real as possible. In the years that followed, he developed a reputation for being more committed to learning actual martial arts and fight training than any of his contemporaries, a fact that certainly helped boost his popularity during the success of the John Wick films.
