In the middle of whipping the shit out of Dalton with a spear, Brad Wesley makes this face. His eyes all but bug right out of his head. His mouth is set in some sort of weird battle rictus. His usually impeccably coiffed hair is just wild enough to look upsetting in context. All in all it’s probably the right way to look if you are Ben Gazzara, age 58, and you’re supposed to be a convincingly formidable adversary to a trained dancer/fighter/stuntman/actor 22 years your junior. Fortunately for us, director Rowdy Herrington agreed, and a lingering shot of this absurd face made the cut when this fight scene was put into its final form. It goes a long way toward selling Wesley’s end of the bargain.
For his part, Patrick Swayze spends a long time just dodging rather than striking, rolling around on the furniture, avoiding Gazzara’s swipes and stabs with the spear. When he finally gets back on his feet he’s hunched over, his bullet-wounded left arm pulled in toward his body, a posture that conveys the fact that he’s badly injured and possibly also just worn down from murdering four other guys in the past three or four minutes. After seeing Dalton go toe to toe with the likes of Jimmy and emerge victorious, Road House had yeoman’s work to do in order to convince us that Dalton’s battle against Brad Wesley would be anything other than an embarrassing squash, and by god the film almost pulls it off.
Tags: ben gazzara, brad wesley, dalton, fight scenes, patrick swayze, road house, rowdy herrington