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.

I have to ask you about Road House. You’re one of the first credited actors on the film and originally had a much bigger role. What happened?
Road House was great. Road House got me into my new car and it moved me into a new apartment. It was a four-week job that turned into 11 weeks. I had a great role. I got to fight with Terry Funk and a couple of other guys. I had a really good time. The day after the wrap party, [the director] Rowdy Herrington called me. He said, “Keith, I’ve got three and a half hours of movie that I’ve got to cut down to 2:15, so I’m sorry, buddy, but you’ve got to go.”

What was your reaction?
What do you say? I’m like, “Oh, shit, okay.”

At least you got your car and your apartment. 
Not only that, but I got fifth billing on a single card. And I still get residuals. I also got to meet Sam Elliott, who I admired greatly. We got to do another movie [2001’s Pretty When You Cry] years later.

—Greenleaf Star Keith David on The Thing, Mr. Rogers, Road House, and 40 Years As a Character Actor – Jennifer Wood, Vulture

Well, we now have a definitive explanation for The Tragedy of Ernie Bass. But it’s one that raises more questions than it answers. Okay, Keith David’s character was cut for time. This much we can accept. But director Rowdy Herrington told him “I’ve got three and a half hours of movie.” Where is that extra hour and fifteen minutes now? If The Wicker Man can be pieced together from reels scattered across two continents, if Nightbreed can be resurrected after the Universal Backlot Fire and two decades of neglect, then by GOD we can get a full three and a half hour version of Road House. We deserve it. Keith David deserves it. The world deserves it.

The man in the red shirt is Keith David. You may remember him from his roles in John Carpenter’s The Thing and They Live, two of the best science fiction and horror films ever made. In each he plays the main foil to the protagonists—rough-hewn salt-of-the-earth working-class white-guy types, with tough-as-nails attitudes and impressive heads of brown hair, who find themselves unexpectedly drawn into conflict with forces larger than themselves. Road House, you’ll note, stars Patrick Swayze as a rough-hewn salt-of-the-earth working-class white-guy type, with a tough-as-nails attitude and an impressive head of brown hair, who finds himself unexpectedly drawn into conflict with a force larger than himself.

Naturally, in Road House, Keith David plays a bartender whose sole line of dialogue is “Whiskey’s running low.”

That’s not quite all there is to the role. His name, uttered by both Tilghman and Dalton in this scene, is Ernie, and getting named is an honor precious few supporting characters in this film enjoy. He’s mentioned by name more than all the other bouncers and bartenders and waitresses still employed by the Double Deuce at this point in the film combined, save for Carrie Ann, who says her own name and gets it yelled at her by Pat McGurn. Everyone else? Bupkis.

What’s more, he’s listed with a surname in the closing credits. This too is more than can be said for virtually anyone in the movie. Jimmy, for example, went by “Jimmy Reno” during filming—you can find interview clips with Patrick Swayze in which he calls that character by name, it comes up frequently in interviews with actor Marshall Teague, and it’s in the IMDb listing—but is merely “Jimmy” in every official respect. Dalton himself only gets a mononym unless you inspect his medical file.

Most strikingly, Keith David appears in the opening credits. He’s billed fifth, after only Patrick Swayze, Ben Gazzara, Kelly Lynch, and Kevin Tighe, and just before Kathleen Wilhoite. The actors who play Emmett, Red, and Denise all get lumped together in a single triple chyron, which is fair enough. Sam Elliott gets a “And SAM ELLIOTT” to conclude the cast listing, which is appropriate. Jeff Healey slides in later on via an “Featured Music Performance by The Jeff Healey Band” slug. Other characters you think might reasonably get listed up front—Jimmy, Tinker, O’Connor, Ketchum, Morgan, Pat, Jack—aren’t there at all. Ernie’s fellow bartender, who’s there since the beginning, is entirely uncredited.

If you’ve watched David deftly dance between antagonist, supporting character, and stealth protagonist in The Thing, or if you’ve watched his world-building alley fight with “Rowdy” Roddy Piper in They Live, you probably have some questions about all this. God knows I do.

As best I can ascertain, partially from half-remembered poorly sourced comments in various Road House posts across the internet, and partially based on my own conjecture, is that Ernie Bass was originally a much more prominent character, the bulk of whose storyline wound up on the cutting room floor. I suspect he was a famous bartender, whom Dalton brought in to elevate the Double Deuce’s standing further still—surrounding himself with a surrogate family of old friends which also included Cody, his bandmates, and Wade Garrett. While the material was cut for time, contractual obligations kept David in the picture and in the credits.

A questionable decision, to be sure. Were David cast in a fighting role he’d be an invaluable asset to the film, and even as simply a gnomic presence dispensing basso profundo wisdom behind the bar he’d be a huge get. Instead? He hands Dalton a coffee with a nod of acknowledgement. He tells Tilghman “Whiskey’s running low.” He hands Dalton a phone. He looks at Wade Garrett. He looks at Wade and Dalton together. Exit Ernie Bass, pursued by an editor.

This is Keith David. In 1982, he played Childs in John Carpenter’s The Thing. Childs is the primary antagonist for the main character, R.J. MacReady, played by Kurt Russell. I mean, everyone is everyone’s antagonist, but Childs is the person who’s the most openly suspicious of MacReady and hostile to the way he sort of naturally slides into a command position. It’s too much to say the two men must learn to work together to have any hope of defeating the shape-shifting alien that has infiltrated their remote Antarctic outpost, since there’s no learning involved, but they must work together, that’s for sure. The extent to which they do or don’t is, in the end, the final question asked by the film. David plays the character like a pot of water set to boil at any moment; his chemistry with the less demonstrative but no less gruff and argumentative MacReady is considerable, and essential to the success of the movie, which is one of the greatest horror and science-fiction films ever made.

In 1988, David reunited with carpenter for They Live, in which he played Frank. Frank is the primary antagonist for the main character, Nada, played by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. Again, everyone is everyone’s antagonist in this film, another stone sci-fi/horror classic about distrust and paranoia in a world where alien invaders can look just like you and me. Beneath the anti-consumerist, anti-capitalist, anti-cop, anti-corporate-media agitprop for which it has become justly famous, They Live takes The Thing‘s survival-horror cabin-fever claustrophobia and simply expands it outward, until the entire planet is the remote outpost on which the last sane men and women are trapped. Having slipped on a specially treated pair of sunglasses that enable him to see the true faces of the alien overlords and the mind-numbing subliminal messages they’ve implanted in every TV screen, billboard, and printed page, Nada is one such sane man, but he can’t fight back alone. He needs Frank, a guy even bigger and tougher than himself whom he met while they made just-above-starvation wages at a construction site, to put on the sunglasses and see for himself, so they can join forces and fight the real enemy. Frank, understandably, thinks Nada is out of his mind. The only way he’ll wear the damn glasses is if he is beaten up badly enough to literally be unable to stop Nada from putting them on his head. This is what happens, during an ugly, sloppy, seemingly endless one-on-one brawl in an alleyway that lasts for six full minutes. It’s just Roddy Piper and Keith David whaling on each other, over and over, for roughly the length of “Hey Jude.” In the end, Frank is made to see the truth, and the two combatants become allies. It’s one of the greatest fight scenes ever filmed.

In 1989, David joined director Rowdy Herrington and star Patrick Swayze for Road House, a film that is to men punching other men in the face and torso what the children’s book series Clifford the Big Red Dog is to big red dogs named Clifford, in which he plays Ernie Bass. Ernie is not a bouncer. Ernie is a bartender. He says “Whiskey’s running low.” I think maybe he says hello to Dalton at some point but I’m not sure. He does not fight anyone, at all, ever. Not one punch. Not even a raised voice. Who knows, though. Maybe he helps guard Jasper, Missouri from the forces of evil by Dalton’s side after the end credits roll. It’s possible, anyway. Why don’t we just wait here for a little while. See what happens.