You’re not supposed to see Keith David throw a punch in Road House. His part was all but excised from the film due to running-time concerns. His sole line of dialogue is to warn Tilghman that the whiskey’s running low. He’s one of the great action stars of the ’80s and the most action you see from him is handing Dalton a phone.
But soft! What light from yonder barroom breaks? While Dalton is polishing off one of the many cut-rate Brad Wesley goons—about whom more later—who infiltrated the Double Deuce during Red Webster’s fire alongside the usual suspects, there in the background, his fists obscured by a pillar, is one Ernie Bass, bartender-warrior, throwing hands with some dimp with a mustache and a dress shirt with no tie. Not the most formidable opponent, perhaps, not even in a world that contains O’Connor. But who knows what chaos the butterfly effect could have caused had the character played by Keith David not stepped into that particular breach?
And what about O’Connor and Tinker and Ketcham and Morgan, the traditional goons who accompanied Brad Wesley to the bar on this fateful night? Jack, Hank, and Younger don’t take care of them; they’re all too busy getting smacked in the skull with a pool cue by Jimmy. Wade Garrett doesn’t take care of them; he fights lesser goons until he’s summoned to a one-on-one bout with Jimmy in which he is badly outclassed. (It breaks your heart to see, truly it does.) Dalton doesn’t take care of them; he too is to busy fighting goonlets to do so, and then he intervenes in the Jimmy/Wade fight just before Brad Wesley calls the whole thing off.
There’s every reason to believe that while our attention is elsewhere—as indeed it is even in the few frames where Ernie is visibly fighting, our eyes drawn to the foreground action involving Dalton and a chibi-goon—Ernie wrecks shop, clearing out Wesley’s Slab Four all on his own. Keith David vs. Terry Funk…ah, what might have been. Our imaginations must fill the gap.
Tags: ernie bass, fight scenes, goonlets, keith david, lesser goons, road house, the double deuce