What can you say about a woman who makes Dalton look like this? Denise is in so many ways the beating heart of Road House, as possessed by a film that isn’t watching its cholesterol. She is beaten by Brad Wesley and mocked as a pet off her leash by Dalton. Yet she possesses an indomitable spirit: coming on to Dalton by directly expressing her desire for him, struggling against Jimmy when he pulls her away to load her into the goons’ monster truck, listening to her favorite music despite Wesley’s disapproval, dressing like someone who’s actually pretty cool, hanging out with her girlfriends, helping out Carrie Ann in a barfight, and draping her removed dress across the face of the number-one tough guy in town.

There’s a vibrant and vital story to be told about Denise after the death of Brad Wesley, too. I’ve already daydreamed about her somehow inheriting his estate and empire in his will, preferably by duping him into signing a document by lying and saying it was a Jazzercise permission slip or something. But even if she doesn’t come away with his house and his money and his trophies and his JC Penney, imagine a Denise who’s free to be friendly with Dalton and Doc and the rest of the gang—no Wesley, no Jimmy, no Ketchum, no goons to worry about at all. She can live her life the way she wants to now. True, she won’t have Wesley to presumably provide her with the good life, but what kind of life was that anyway? It was hardly “good” if you value your physical safety and feel you should be treated like a human being. Good riddance to bad rubbish, and long live Denise, Jasper’s unsung hero.

If you’ve read all 253 Pain Don’t Hurt entries to date you’ll agree I’m no fan of Dalton’s response to Denise’s striptease. His condescension, if not outright cruelty, to a sex worker and abuse survivor is unconscionable given his philosophical mandate to be nice until it’s time to not be nice. Is this, is the removal of Denise from the stage and the presentation of Denise to her abuser, really such a time?

All I can say in Dalton’s defense is that this is a rare case of seeing the forest but neglecting the trees. The destruction of Red Webster’s Auto Parts marks a major escalation of hostilities in the war between Dalton and Brad Wesley. That would make this time to not be nice, barring any further considerations; Dalton fails to realize that Denise and her plight are such further considerations. Moreover, the aforementioned war has been waged entirely, on Wesley’s side, by third parties, namely his goons. Dalton correctly locates Denise’s dance in the context of Wesleyan aggression, however weird that aggression might be in this case; he treats her as he might treat a goon, albeit one against which he does not want to raise his hand, missing the obvious distinctions between Denise and the Tinkers and O’Connors of the world.

It should be noted here that at one point Dalton cracks a wry smile at Denise when she’s beaming at him from the stage, but while that smile might be seen to indicate warmth towards her, it’s not at all dissimilar from the grins he occasionally flashes at the likes of Ketcham or Pat McGurn when they start to get up in his business. To Dalton, a goon is a goon is a goon.

But if he is guilty of making this categorical error, he is by no means alone. “If you’re gonna have a pet,” he tells Wesley while gripping Denise roughly by the arm, “keep it on a leash.”

Denise yanks her arm away.

“You’re right,” Wesley says, conceding the point.

Then—as if summoning a pet—he calls this man’s name.

The patrons of the Double Deuce love their hats, yes they do. But perhaps no one loves their hat quite so much as the mustachioed gentlemen in the striped short-sleeved shirt visible on the right, as it transitions from headwear to a stylish blouse in the hands of Denise. To her I can only say kudos for this innovative application of Road House‘s most ostentatious and inexplicable fashion accessory.

The interesting thing here, though, is that this is not one of the black hats visible earlier in the film, but a white one. White hats are the symbol of moral rectitude in the Western, the genre to which Road House is most directly indebted. Here, Denise toys with the white hat before dispensing with it altogether. It’s her way of thumbing her nose at the good guys and their rules and their holier-than-thou attitudes. It does the heart good to see her thus empowered. Given Dalton’s behavior a few seconds from now, she deserves this all too brief allowance.

The images above are but a sampling of the striptease Denise performs for…who, exactly? The target is clearly Dalton, with whom she barely ever breaks eye contact, against whose lips she passionately presses her own while wrapping him in a sensual embrace. Knowing, as we do from the scene in which she propositioned him, that she is sexually attracted to Dalton raises the issue of whether or how much she is enjoying this performance for her own purposes and pleasure. Certainly when he rejects her at the end, referring to as a pet off her leash, the anger and hurt in her eyes is real, as we will see.

But the architect of the dance is Brad Wesley, her boyfriend and abuser. After destroying Red Webster’s business with fire, he attempts to undermine Frank Tilghman’s Double Deuce in a far less violent fashion, at first anyway: He turns it into a strip joint, with his woman as the star attraction. I’ve watched this movie more times than I can count and I’m still not sure exactly what his game is here. He knows Denise is attracted to Dalton, as he either beat her or directed others to beat her for him for the crime of coming on to the cooler. Whom is he trying to tempt with forbidden fruit here, her or him? Or is this his malign way of providing her with an outlet for her feelings? Does he want Dalton to give in? What exactly would that entail—simply allowing the performance to continue without interference, or an actual sexual liaison after the dance is over? Is he trying to drive a wedge between the cooler and his bouncers, figuring they will either see his authority eroded if he stops the dance or chafe at his enforcement of the rules insofar as they impede their view of this beautiful woman? Has Wesley thought this through at all, or is he just winging it?

And what of the dance itself? Denise’s gyrations are wild, nearly arhythmic. She swivels her hips and head from side to side like a woman possessed. She rolls on the ground and nearly spider-walks her way back up again. Only when she begins to undress do her movements come to resemble the tease-to-the-beat we expect of a stripper, perhaps because she is focused on using her arms, her dress, and an onlooker’s hat to alternately conceal and reveal her breasts. At that point the dance becomes smooth, traditionally sexy, seamless, like Dalton and Dr. Elizabeth Clay’s equally unusual lovemaking from earlier in the film. At that point Denise feels in control of her body, rather than the other way around. But in control some of the earlier wildness is lost. Is this the kind of tradeoff she’s used to making, when it’s just she and Wesley, with no one else around to watch, no one to help her off the stage he’s put her on?

As Denise readies her hostile takeover of the Double Deuce’s stage, she tousles her hair up, up, up, past its already significant poofiness to previously untold-of heights. She’s feeling herself, literally. Hers is the mane of a wild thing, set loose in the Deuce, another runner in the night. She’s sending a message about the dance to come without so much as a single gyration. It’s going to make your hair stand on end, and more besides.

As Wade Garrett watches Denise dance, he too preps himself by running his hands through his hair. But in his case, he ties it back in a half-ponytail, swept back and oddly severe, like a warrior in a fantasy television series. Somehow, his superior cooler-sense in action perhaps, he senses that there will be blood when Denise’s dance is through, and it’s better to fight without your greasy gray locks obscuring your vision and distracting you. Out of sight, out of mind.

Both of these remarkable individuals play a key part in what’s to come—the start of the final round of hostilities, the beginning of the end. It’s gonna get hairy.

There’s something a bit unnerving about the alacrity with which Cody and the boys acquiesce to Brad Wesley’s command that they “play something with balls.” Surely one of Dalton’s oldest and dearest friends could be counted upon to reject the orders of the man’s nemesis, even if the end result of following orders is a beautiful woman taking her clothes off to the rhythm of “Hoochie Coochie Man,” right? But no, there they are, rocking out with their proverbial cocks out, smiling and seeming to enjoy every minute of their shared performance. True, Cody can’t see what Denise is doing, but from the hoots and hollers of the audience it doesn’t take Hercule Poirot to deduce what’s happening up there on the stage. Cody even gets a happy little caress out of the deal for himself, as you can see above. Is it as simple as “the show must go on”? Does Cody have an ulterior motive? Are he and his curly-haired compatriots simply being Horny On Main? I don’t have an answer to this one, I’m afraid. Perhaps that’s just one of the ways in which this scene signals the start of the Bad Times to come.

And you thought the dynamic between Dalton, Doc, and Wade Garrett was odd. Fresh from homophobically insulting Red Webster, defending his protection racket as an act of civic pride, and offering to buy the fire department a round (“Well, with a fire like that, nothing they could do,” he reasons), Brad Wesley drops a non sequitur on the assembled staff and patrons of the Double Deuce: “Of course you can dance, honey,” he croaks.

The thing is? No one has asked him if they can dance. So unless there was some inaudible exchange, unless Denise can speak at a pitch too high or too low for non–Brad Wesley humans to hear, this isn’t acquiescence to an existing request. This is an order. It may be couched in courtesy, but it’s still a command.

Based on what we’ve seen of Wesley and Denise’s relationship, she’s probably used to being ordered around. She certainly knows what will happen if she disobeys. But look at her face as she glides past Dalton on her way to the stage, for what will be a show-stopping striptease. She’s beaming. She’s staring right at Dalton and she’s hitting him with a smile bright enough to cast shadows.

As well she might. We know she’s attracted to Dalton. We know that she caught a beating for acting on that attraction, unsuccessful though she may have been. We know that the likelihood of her being free to come on to Dalton again is nil. But here’s her chance to shake her moneymaker for Dalton’s enjoyment—not just under Brad Wesley’s nose, but at Brad Wesley’s behest.

He may think having Denise dance is a masculine power trip, a way to lord his potency over his enemy while simultaneously threatening the rules and order by which the Double Deuce runs. She may be getting something else out of it entirely. Perhaps that’s the best way to understand what is about to occur—and perhaps it’s the most damning thing about how Dalton responds.

The fox is in the henhouse. The rats are in the cellar. The weasels are in the corn. Using the conveniently timed explosion of Red Webster’s Auto Parts as cover, a large party led by Mr. Brad Wesley has infiltrated the Double Deuce. They expect the same things everyone does when they go to the bar: some drinks, some dancing, a little idle chatter. But they are arsonists and hired thugs, so naturally they’re not the sort of people who’d be allowed in the bar. Indeed, Morgan, Tinker, O’Connor, and Ketchum have all been expelled from the Double Deuce, bodily so in most cases. Only by distracting Dalton, Wade Garrett, and all the bouncers with the fireball outside could they even get in.

The presence of Wesley and his cronies is all but an admission of guilt, but it’s more than that. It’s a sign that Dalton’s control is slipping. He couldn’t stop these goons from getting in. As we’ll soon see, he doesn’t succeed in getting them out, either. Brad Wesley is calling, ordering, and firing the shots here, in that order.

The time to not be nice is here.

I love Road House, I really do. I don’t think that could be any more obvious at this point. But there’s a difference between a movie like Road House and a movie we’d traditionally describe as a great movie. “Famous bouncer” is a difference. “Four different car/car parts salesmen” is a difference. “Major antagonists killed off-screen” is a difference. “Does a hobbyhorse have a wooden dick” is a difference.

But the biggest difference, the difference that matters, is this: In a great movie, the shot of Denise putting her hand to her face to hide her bruises from her abuser’s employees and enemy would be a cornerstone, not a throwaway.

At least I assume it’s Grandpa Wesley; it’s hard to imagine Brad Wesley celebrating his matrilineal anything, even his kindly Pep-Pep. What’s for certain is that the black and white portrait on a table in his breakfast room (at least I assume it’s his breakfast room; a man of Wesley’s pretensions to feudalism almost certainly has a long oak table with high-backed chairs somewhere around that hideous house) is a portrait of his grandfather, as he announces without looking up from his breakfast when Dalton pauses in front of it.

“Looks like an important man,” Dalton says.

“He was an asshole,” Wesley replies.

This is one of my favorite stupid exchanges in the movie for a variety of reasons. Judging from the not just conciliatory but outright deferential tone Dalton adopts when he proclaims Grandfather’s importance—the “looks like” is just a turn of phrase, you can hear in his voice he’s quite certain it must be so—it’s quite possible that this was the last opportunity for peace in our time between the two most lethal men in Jasper, Missouri.

Despite enduring multiple physical assaults and murder attempts, despite seeing what Brad Wesley does to the woman in his life, this is Dalton attempting to meet Wesley where he lives, no longer just literally but emotionally as well. Surely, surely he can get this crazy old bastard to wax nostalgic about the lessons Papaw taught him, tough but fair no doubt, thunder in his voice but warmth in his heart, taught me the value of a dollar, when you forgive your enemies you create friends, you and me Dalton we’re not so very different are we?, you can hear it all play out in your mind just as clearly as Dalton could. Who would expect Wesley to grab hold of the proffered conversational life preserver long enough only to stick his ass into the middle and use it as a makeshift floating toilet before sending it bobbing on back? Not even the second greatest cooler in North America, I’ll wager.

Which is why I believe this to be one of the few occasions in which Dalton’s cooler-sense fails him.

Consider: His powers of observation, of sight and sound, of the sixth sense that can tell when trouble has walked through your door in knife-augmented boots, are unmatched at this point in the film.

Then consider: Here is the room he walked through in order to reach Brad Wesley.

What about this picture suggests to you that Brad Wesley uses the dead for decoration because he misses the time when they were alive?

“Will you shut that shit off?!” Brad Wesley yells. The “you” is unidentified, although Tinker and O’Connor snap to and head in the direction of the source of the problem. The problem is the upbeat ’80s dance-pop Wesley’s abused girlfriend Denise is blasting while she exercises, which she does with Fondaesque brio despite the bruises covering her face, neck, and chest, and the ensuing shame that causes her to cover up when Dalton sees. The source of the problem is therefore Denise, who’s playing the music in the first place. “I can’t listen to that crap,” Wesley explains to Dalton as his goons force his girlfriend to turn the brisk, bright, twitterpated tune off. “It’s got no heart!” Or balls, if you prefer, since that’s the body part to which Wesley later refers when he orders a command performance from Cody at the Double Deuce. During that performance, Denise is prompted to get on stage and strip, which she does with talent and enthusiasm. Then it’s Dalton’s turn to complain about Denise’s homage to Euterpe and Terpsichore. He refers to her as a dog who should be kept on a leash.

To the characteristically awful Wesley and the uncharacteristically mean-spirited Dalton, there’s nothing more aggravating than a woman enjoying art on anything approaching her own terms, even if it’s while working out to shake off the beating she received the night before, even if it’s taking off her clothes in front of a room full of baying strangers not for her own sake or her own financial health but to aid her abuser in his weird power trip. Music that lacks roots-rock authenticity, dancing that sexualizes the woman dancing with insufficient deference to the concerns of the man watching—these grave injustices must be stopped.

If Brad Wesley and James Dalton weren’t locked in a life-and-death struggle over a bar, they’d write one hell of a Black Mirror episode.

When Tinker and the Bleeder are sent to collect Dalton for an audience with Brad Wesley, they do so wearing bigass aviator sunglasses. It’s sunny out, I get that. But both these men have been badly beaten recently: Tinker by the bouncers at the Double Deuce, O’Connor by Dalton at the Double Deuce, and O’Connor again by his own boss, Brad Wesley, in the driveway of the very house to which he’s delivered his quarry. You can see a bandage sticking out from under the shades, in fact. Sadly he’s not the sort to wear concealer to cover up the bruise above his lip, but he’s trying his best to look healthy, together, and intimidating in front of two men who literally beat him unconscious on consecutive days. I get why: Abusers see weakness, and they hate it, and they exploit it, and it reminds them of the anger they felt when they inflicted the damage that caused the weakness and it makes them angry all over again, and god forbid word of what’s going on gets out.

I don’t mean to take this in such a heavy direction, but consider who else is in this scene.

That’s Denise, charming horny vivacious together Denise. The night before, she hit on Dalton with no regard for subtlety whatsoever: She saw what she wanted and went for it. From a personal emotional perspective it’s one of the most impressive things anyone does with anyone else in this farkakte movie, which frequently bears the same relationship to actual human interaction that Lego minifigures have to actual human hands. But it takes place in front of Jimmy, Brad’s bastard son [citation needed], who drags her strugging out of the bar, through the parking lot, and into a nearby vehicle. Jimmy gives the high sign to Ketchum and his squad of men who’ve ordered the Rooty Tooty Fresh ‘n’ Fruity at IHOP after church on Sunday move in to attempt to assassinate the man she just hit on by kicking his skull with a knife. Denise, it appears safe to assume, is brought back to Brad Wesley’s house, where he and perhaps Jimmy beat the living fucking shit out of her.

I’ll give Dalton this much regarding his conduct toward Denise, a definite character lowlight in many other regards: Seeing what Brad Wesley did to her seems to factor into his last-straw decision to react to Wesley’s overtures with open hostility. I say “seems” because he’s most visibly pissed off when Wesley brings up the fact that Dalton killed a man who’d discovered he was fucking his wife, and that could be enough. I’m just giving him the benefit of the doubt is all.

Anyway, you’ll notice no sunglasses have been afforded to Denise. No warning that Brad would be receiving company, either. She’s in the middle of an aerobics routine with music blasting when Tinker and O’Connor roll in with Dalton in tow, because getting beaten bloody by your boyfriend is no justification for an off day.

In conclusion, O’Connor and Tinker get off easy, and O’Connor gets murdered by the end of the movie. Throw some sunglasses on his corpse.

I think it’s only natural to look at this image of Dalton and Denise, Denise sidling up to Dalton to cheerfully and in fact thoughtfully proposition him for sex and Dalton preparing to rebuff her pretty much no matter what she says, and focus on the hair. Those two glorious manes, brown and blonde, male and female, yin and yang, equal and opposite, an Aqua Net Argonath. Do they not suit each other, complement each other, mirror each other? By the end of this film you’ve seen both of these people mostly naked and once you cross that threshold—well, brother, we’re all adults here, and given what’s gone on in the back room of the Double Deuce already I don’t see the percentage in beating around the bush—you want to see these two people fuck. I sure do!

But I want more.

Oh, things work out fine in the Dalton/Doc timeline, for sure. Not for Denise, who gets beaten by Brad Wesley and then does an aggressive striptease on his behalf and then gets ridiculed by Dalton and dragged away and never seen again. And of course not for Brad Wesley and his men, who all get murdered, so hey, maybe things work out fine for Denise after all. But for Dalton and Elizabeth, you know, they find true love, Dalton turns a personal corner and quits cutting and running and gets over his guilt and trauma from the last time he murdered a guy, they have a bunch of no-nonsense sex in there somewhere, the Double Deuce and Jasper are freed from the tyranny of Brad Wesley, and regardless of where you come down on Frank Tilghman the movie implies this is a good thing so let’s go with that.

But sometimes I imagine another world. In this world Dalton does go back to Denise’s place and fucks, it doesn’t kill him, he does even like it. First of all kudos to Denise for maintaining her own apartment or whatever, maybe she and the girls are roommates, it’s a fun situation like Sarah Connor and whatsername at the beginning of The Terminator, just independent women of the ’80s living their dreams, there’s a lot of snickering and giggling when Dalton and Denise offer perfunctory greetings to them while they watch The Golden Girls and then fall into her room together. Second maybe it accelerates the timeline vis a vis Jimmy, Wesley’s top goon and illegitimate son (source for this claim?), who tells Dalton to say Goodnight, Denise. Maybe Dalton actually does say “Goodnight, Denise” in response and it really humiliates and angers Jimmy the way Dalton’s mildest comebacks seem to snap the likes of Morgan and Steve like dry twigs, and so Jimmy participates in the fight that follows with Ketchum and the anonymous goons who look like they’re dressed for Sunday services at a midwestern evangelical church. Maybe this fight is a real backbreaker for Dalton and Jack and Hank and Younger now because it’s five on four and at least two of the participants are pretty dece at fighting or would be if Dalton hadn’t yanked one’s boot off and twisted his ankle and hauled him into the parking lot like a sack of potatoes, but regardless we later see Jimmy beat Jack and Hank and Younger and damn near Wade and Dalton too before Wesley calls it off, so it could get rough. And let’s say Denise finds that boot with the knife in it that Dalton threw, technically we never see where it lands, and she sneaks up behind Jimmy as he’s about to deliver the coup de grace on Dalton and just fucking brains him with it, you see the lights go out right in front of you, it’s kind of horrifying but this abusive psychopath had it coming. And the rest of the goons fuck right off and yes I’m sure Wesley would go absolutely ape shit considering his bastard (?) just got done by his girlfriend, but guess what Brad? She’s not your girlfriend anymore, nope, she’s busy having Dr. Elizabeth Clay who showed up just in time to watch Dalton fall into the arms of another woman treat his wounds. And it’s a touchy thing for a while, what with the police in Wesley’s pocket and now there’s kind of a love triangle developing, and Brad’s acting rashly now, he’s not timing the explosives right for Emmett and Red because it’s like Tinker or O’Connor placing them rather than Jimmy and for all I know maybe Strodenmire gets run over along with his car dealership this time because Ketchum can’t sleep because all he can see is Jimmy’s vacant eyes with his boot embedded in his brain and he’s doesn’t give a fuck who gets hurt anymore because it’s hard to feel anything. But who should ride into town to help Dalton put down this pack of mad dogs but Wade Garrett, just like he always has, and even if Red and Emmett and Pete are all dead this time around there’s still Wade to pull the trigger and save his mijo from becoming what he’s always dreaded, he’ll be his sin-eater and that’s fine, and the Double Deuce will be fine, and Jasper will be fine, and yes Wade comes on to Denise pretty heavy but wouldn’t you know it, this time around Dr. Elizabeth Clay is not spoken for, and the red fucking hot sexual chemistry between the two of them combusts and they’re fucking before you know it, everyone’s fucking up against walls, left and right, like rabbits, because death’s thick in the air, it’s in their brains like a disease, and this is how you treat it, this is palliative care because you need love to feel alive, don’t you, you need to have love and make love to show death it hasn’t fucking gotten you yet, and Dalton and Denise who escaped her abusers and Wade and Elizabeth who escaped that abuser before are still alive and they say as they fuck and love each other goddammit we still have time on this earth and we’re going to live, live, live, live, live, live, live, live, live.

We’re near the midpoint of the movie now and things have turned around for the Double Deuce. The thugs, thieves, dope dealers, and dudes who fuck high-schoolers have been purged—and that’s just from the staff. The bad element in the crowd has had its proverbial face smashed through the metaphorical table. The first attempt by the Brad Wesley organization to re-exert control by forcing the rehiring of sister-son Pat McGurn ended in a defeat so humiliating that Wesley beat up one of the already beaten men himself upon hearing about it. Carrie Ann has gone from getting groped and forced into fistfights to getting on stage and banging out blue-eyed soul versions of “Knock on Wood” with the Jeff Healey Band. There’s a neon sign now. The floor and walls are clean of dirt and graffiti. The dance floor is jumping. The damned chickenwire is down. It’s a new day.

Denise must agree. Not that we know her name is Denise at this point. She’s just the vivacious blonde with a sense of style who rebuffed a dude who asked her to get “nipple to nipple” a while back, and who looks at Dalton like J. Wellington Wimpy looks at hamburgers. Today is the day she makes her move.

No bizarre “nipple to nipple” euphemisms that are actually filthier than the real thing for Denise, oh no. Gliding over to Dalton’s usual post-up spot near the bar, she gets, well, nipple to nipple with him, rubs his shoulder, asks him why he avoids eye contact with her (“I’m shy”), and says “Would you be shocked if I said ‘Let’s go to my place and fuck’? Ain’t gonna kill you. You know, you might even like it.” Show me the lie, you know?

Dalton, who has an inscrutable but distinct sense of decorum that I’m still puzzling out 124 days into writing about him, seems unimpressed (or blind) and unlikely to accept the offer. But the matter is taken out of his hands. Appearing from out of nowhere, Brad Wesley’s chief goon Jimmy violently grabs Denise by the arm. Whipping her behind him and thrusting himself into Dalton’s face, he growls “Say goodnight, Denise,” and they leave.

But he doesn’t say “Say goodnight, Denise” while looking at Denise. He says “Say goodnight, Denise” while looking at Dalton, and I mean looking at him, staring right into his eyes like he’s trying to psychically bore two holes through his skull. He says “Say goodnight, Denise” as if he’s telling Dalton “Say ‘Goodnight, Denise.'”

Given Dalton’s penchant for cheap sarcasm when the opportunity presents itself, and given Road House‘s penchant for dumb jokes whether the opportunity presents itself or not, it’s hard to believe, but no, Dalton does not stare right back into Jimmy’s face and say “Goodnight, Denise.” But their loss is your gain. You can be Dalton’s voice in this moment. You can say “Goodnight, Denise.” Your quick wit will delight all who have the pleasure of your company. Goodnight, Denise.

Here in the Double Deuce, after Dalton’s arrival, prior to The Agreement and the subsequent bar-destroying brawl, things are proceeding as one assumes they always proceed. Denise, Jasper’s sole indication that there is a non-Jasper culture out there to which one can aspire, glides up to the bar to ask Pat McGurn (John Doe, cofounder of X, lest we forget) for a “vodka rocks.” Enter the Barfly, and this is actually how he’s credited, “Barfly,” played by Frank Noon. In a film teeming with barflies he is selected as the representative specimen. This absolute slob, I mean maybe the most gormless motherfucker in the whole film, this asshole sidles up to her and says “Hey, Vodka Rocks, what do you say you and me get nipple to nipple.” I hesitate to call this pickup line a euphemism, because it’s actually much more vulgar than describing the sex act outright. Getting nipple to nipple is a phrase that can only make one feel bad about having sex, or wanting to have sex, or being capable of having sex, or being part of a species that propagates itself by having sex. It embarrasses me anew every time I hear it. Goof coming out of his well armed with his quip to slutshame mankind. Point is it’s not happening for this turkey. Denise looks down in contempt, unconsciously mirroring the way Dalton, whose hair is only slightly less magnificent than hers, looks down in disapproval. Then she looks up and, this being Road House, shoots the guy down in the strangest possible way. “I can do that without you,” she says, before turning away and giving Dalton an appreciative once-over (more like a thrice-over actually, she is hot to trot for our hero) in the process. The reasonable interpretation of this rejoinder is that Denise can somehow aim her breasts at one another so that her nipples can touch, a pincer movement if you will. I choose to believe she thought fast and decided to shoot this goofy down by saying something even weirder than he did. Either way, and I hope you’re sitting down for this, he does not take rejection well. See Morgan back there? He’d been leaning on the bar in the background unseen until the dirtball mooselipped chickendick made a pass at Denise. (Do people make passes at other people anymore? When I was a kid Three’s Company and The Golden Girls had me believing that’s all anyone did as an adult. “He made a pass at me” is something I’ve never heard a human being say outside of a multi-camera sitcom. Anyway) The moment after “nipple to nipple” dribbles out of his mouth, Morgan pops into the frame from behind, like a fucking jack-in-the-box. It’s one of my favorite little moments of abject stupidity in the movie. On his worst day in the ring, Terry Funk couldn’t oversell a bump half as hard as he oversells Morgan overhearing someone hit on his secret boss’s girlfriend and getting mad about it. Of course Morgan is always mad. He’s an orneriness elemental. And he puts it to good use when Mr. Nipple angrily grabs Denise by the shoulder. Morgan grabs him by the shoulder, punches him in the gut, and tosses him into a table full of patrons, spilling him and them and the table and the drinks on it and several bystanders to the ground in the process. Why this doesn’t lead to an apocalyptic bar-wide battle royale is beyond me given that The Agreement ends in a nearly identical fashion, but at the very least it gives Dalton, serene and detached, an eyefull of Morgan’s modus operandi. This is clearly a bouncer who will need to be bounced. So! Beautiful, slightly weird woman. Ugly, very weird man. Angry, very angry bouncer. Knocked-over tables. Knocked-over patrons. Pat McGurn. The malign influence of Brad Wesley behind it all. Dalton has just gotten nipple to nipple with the Double Deuce. It’s not pretty.

I was a theater kid in high school, and yes, I am glad you were sitting down. As the president of the Drama Club, the only coed activity my all-boys Catholic high school had to offer, I usually had better things to do than nitpick blocking, from learning my own steps to realizing how unforgiving for teenage boys pleated dress pants can be. But I did have one pet peeve I remember to this day.

Pretty much every musical in the high-school repertoire has around three or four major characters who—whether because they’re too old, too young, don’t sing, don’t dance, aren’t residents of the town/actors in the company/members of the Conrad Birdie fanclub, or any number of other factors—don’t take part in the big dance numbers, or aren’t active in the events of a particular show case scene. However, they are often at least present at those times, typically clustered in little groups around the perimeter. What would always bug me was when two characters who’d never spoken to each other before in the show, and for whom because of narrative economy it would be a big deal for them to speak to each other, like worthy of a song and dance of their own, wound up standing next to each other, stage-whispering about Professor Harold Hill’s latest chicanery or whatever.

I think about that when I watch Denise, Brad Wesley’s kept woman, and Carrie Ann, the Double Deuce’s coolest employee, team up during the first big fight. They cower together to shelter from the action. They root and heckle and holler as a unit. They wrap protective arms around one another when the going gets tough. Denise cheers Carrie Ann on when she starts slugging one of the participants. She actually hands her a bottle to use as a weapon!

Do these characters have anything in common? Do they have any mutual friends? Do they ever speak to each other…I was gonna say again, but really the phrase I’m looking for is at all? Do they even come within five feet of one another? If you’ve read thirty-six essays about Road House and counting you’re no doubt familiar enough with the film’s approach to continuity to answer those questions. But there’s a gigantic fight scene going on, and they’ve gotta stand somewhere, and the director is probably too busy telling gigantic men which tables to fall through, so a few perfunctory “stand over there”s are all they got, and they improvised. If it helps, imagine they’re the juniors playing Mayor Shinn and Mrs. Paroo, silently emoting together while forgetting to cheat toward the audience during “Shipoopi.”

Who is Denise? Denise is Brad Wesley’s girlfriend, and the most stylistically sophisticated and culturally aware human being in the entire film. You can tell this at first glance, and glances are really all you get. Her lines are minimal: She rebuffs a vulgar proposition, makes one of her own, and…that’s it, I realize now. That’s all Denise gets to say.

But she makes an impression, I can tell you that much, and she does so long before she enthusiastically strips on stage at the Double Deuce with Wesley looking on approvingly, some time after he beats her off-camera for coming on to Dalton. Even when the bar looks like it might collapse around her ears at any moment, even when its atmosphere resembles a Tables Ladders and Chairs match more than a nightclub, she’s there with her girlfriends, leader of the pack, out on the town and dressed to kill.

Sure, she attends Wesley’s ludicrous backyard pool party/dance party/orgy/whatever it is. But when he’s not around and she gets her first good look at Dalton, the camera whip-zooms in on her dilated-pupil look of desire like Cupid’s arrow. It’s such a jarring moment in this straightforwardly shot film—easily the most cinematographically adventurous thing that happens—that in any other movie it would indicate the start of a major plotline.

But it goes nowhere beyond her asking Dalton to go to her place and fuck, an offer she cleverly cushions with a rhetorical flourish: “Would you be shocked if I said ‘Let’s go to my place and fuck?'” Yeah, it sounds like the writers don’t understand that “If I said you have a beautiful body, would you hold it against me” is a play on words. But her forthrightness is admirable, as is the fact that she still has her own place and isn’t relying on Wesley’s largesse. Like O’Connor, whom he beats for the crime of bleeding, she knows you can’t count on staying on Brad Wesley’s good side.

By the end of the movie that’s not an issue anymore. Freed from Wesley’s influence and the watchful eyes of his goons, she’d theoretically be able to enjoy more nights out with the girls, in a renewed and revamped Double Deuce that better suits them. But we don’t know. Denise’s final moment in the film is being ridiculed by an uncharacteristically ugly Dalton as a pet that Wesley should keep on a tighter leash. She’s afforded no payback for that slight, or for Wesley’s abuse. Imagine if she’d wielded one of those shotguns instead of, say, Pete Strodenmire, the guy we see in a grand total of one scene before his car dealership gets run over by a monster truck. That would be something, right?

But there’s nothing instead. Awkwardly covering her bare breasts, she gets dragged off stage, off camera, and out of the movie. Freaking Tinker gets a better redemption arc. Still, during that one shot, there’s the promise of a whole world in her eyes—her apartment’s decor, her girls’ nights out, her love for buoyant late-’80s dance pop, her desire for a relationship with Dalton worth risking Wesley’s wrath for, even if it’s only for a night. She is Road House‘s great mystery, its Mona Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam. Who is Denise? We’ll never know. But she’s in there somewhere.