It takes a bold film to remake the Jaws scar comparison/USS Indianapolis story scene as an excuse for Sam Elliott to expose his pubic hair to the viewing public. Road House is a bold film. We’re less than a minute into Wade Garrett reminiscing about a time in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1975, when he and Dalton got jumped by a guy with a bottle of Jack Daniels aimed at their heads. All it takes is for Dalton to mention the word “scar,” and before you can say Jack Robinson Wade is unbuttoning his jeans. “Oh, I’ll show you a scar,” he says, looking at Dr. Elizabeth Clay, whom he met a couple of hours ago. “I’ll show you one I’m real sentimental about, Doc.” Pop, zip, pull, push push in the bush. It happens as fast as a throat rip. Now even that bottle of Miller seems lewd.

What does the good Doctor think of all this?

You tell me.

I mean Jesus, her attraction to this man could not be more obvious if she stood up and unbuttoned her jeans. If I were Dalton I would not leave these two alone for a minute. If I were Dalton I’d reconsider introducing the two of them in the first place. Even when she asks about the origin of the scar—Her: “A woman?” Him: “Boy, was she.”—her mind is clearly and necessarily on the thought of a woman touching him mere inches away from his penis. Something tells me she’s mentally covered that gap once or twice already.

Kelly Lynch has spoken sweetly about her romantic chemistry with both Patrick Swayze and Sam Elliott in this film, and the highest compliment I can pay her is that I didn’t need to hear her explain it. It’s right there on the screen. She looks at Sam Elliott’s pubic hair the same way most women I’ve watched this movie with do. A man? Boy, was he.

It was the best of bars, it was the worst of bars, it was the age of being nice, it was the age of not being nice, it was the epoch of balls big enough to come in a dump truck, it was the epoch of opinions varying, it was the season of Wade, it was the season of Wesley, it was the auto dealership of hope, it was the separate and unrelated auto dealership of despair, we had Wagon Days before us, we had Wagon Days underneath us, we were all going direct to Jasper, we were all going direct the other way.

Critiquing the facial expressions a person makes during sex is…well, it’s like critiquing the facial expressions a person makes during a sneeze. How you react to what’s happening to your body is largely involuntary, and at any rate unselfconciousness is a valuable trait for sex since it’s easier to get where you want to go if you’re not fretting about the right way to get there. But hey, this is acting, right? So I don’t feel as churlish as I otherwise would to draw a distinction between these two Dr. Elizabeth Clay sex-face moments.

The pout, I find funny. It’s like “Ooh, this is sexy, I’m sexy, he’s sexy, this feels sexy, look at me being sexy.” Imagine Dalton doing it—he’d look even goofier than he does when he’s got his getting-down-to-business face on while stalking her around the room like a literal sex panther waiting to strike. I don’t fault her for it! Sometimes people sincerely feel this way during sex, and make “sexy” faces to show both themselves and their partner that what’s going on is hot stuff. It’s not like she’s wrong if that’s what she’s doing. It’s just a little pose-y, a little Whitesnake video-y, a little Playboy Channel-y. In those respects it’s of its time.

The laugh, though? Hooo boy. That’s the good shit right there. If you’re laughing out of sheer delight during sex, something has gone very very right for you, that’s one thing. The other thing is that this allows us to perceive the Doc, and Dalton too once he starts grinning in response, as being in on the joke. She knows it’s kind of ridiculous to go to a dude’s barnpartment, look at your psychotic ex-husband’s mansion across the way, talk about your uncle raising you and your parents dying and your marriage collapsing, go for a guy’s junk before so much as kissing, get hoisted in the air to mount him while he stands up, get slammed up against the wall, and get slammed up agains the wall. Ya gotta laugh, folks!

So she does, and the moment is beautifully, erotically unselfconscious. It opens up the path to the scene’s climax (though not the participants’), in which Dalton holds her up and shuffles them both over to the bed with his pants half-down and a licensed medical practitioner around his waist, a move they both know is equal parts silly and cool. It’s an echo, in its way, of the way Carrie Ann gazes with slackjawed lust upon Dalton’s behind. That was her private moment; this is a moment Elizabeth is experiencing with Dalton, and it’s so much fun she’s got to share it with him. She can’t help it. It just bubbles up inside her, until release.

A friend—one of the friends with whom I first saw Road House, now that I think of it—once told me back in my comics-critic days that I was effectively three critics in one. There was, he said, the guy who loves horror, the guy who cares a lot about properly staged action sequences, and (the briefest abashed pause here, if I recall correctly) the horndog. This felt pretty fair to me at the time. Add long takes to the mix and you’ve pretty much nailed my interests as a critic of film and television as well. Which is why it may surprise you (and him!) to learn that until two days ago, I had no idea that Kelly Lynch got her tits out during the sex scene from Road House.

Afterwards? Sure. I mean, they’re pretty hard to miss. As is her butt, and Patrick Swayze’s butt before it, and Sam Elliott’s pubic bush after it, and the topless dancers, and Denise’s strip tease, and Horny Steve and His Regular Saturday Night Thing, and (if we’re simply counting sexy bodies prominently displayed, not nudity specifically) Swayze’s glistening torso, and even Well-Endowed Wife’s pair of attitudes. This is not a film that wants to hide its horniness as a general rule.

But here’s how I know this is an effective sex scene: For a decade and a half I never gave Doc’s breasts so much as a glance. I was riveted by her face, limned by the moonlight; by Dalton’s face, gazing into hers; by her hands, exploring Dalton’s muscular chest through his, uh, beige sweater vest over white t-shirt combo; by his hands, covering hers, guiding hers, lowering them downward. It wasn’t until my partner pointed them out that I noticed them at all, and even then I wasn’t sure I’d caught what she’d said until I reviewed the footage.

But the sex scene from Road House casts a weird spell that way. Until three days ago, I believed that the initial penetration occurred before the pair kissed. The abruptness and intensity of the coupling and the tension of that near-miss kiss simply overwrote my memory of the real thing, which is that they prepare themselves for penetration before kissing but actually do exchange a short hard kiss before going through with it.

Go ahead, try to come up with another sex scene you can think of where its suggestive power outstrips its reality on screen this completely. It’s hard, right?

It looks uncomfortable, like it would strain his back and abrade hers. It looks lackadaisical, like two grown adults couldn’t be bothered doffing the oceans of loose-fitting fabric in which they’re garbed before starting. It sounds awkward, since the verbal foreplay in which the participants engage consists solely of the woman discussing her ex-husband and her uncle. It sounds incongruous, with all of the above soundtracked by the platonic-ideal lust and soul and yearning of Otis Redding’s “These Arms of Mine.” It feels abrupt, as their hands move to each other’s belt buckle and underwear before their lips meet, when a kiss has only been teased. It feels brazen, as she takes him inside herself/he puts himself inside her after the briefest gesture in a kiss’s direction. It’s intimate, this decision to make love while deliberately eschewing certain forms of intimacy as if superfluous to the intimacy already established. It’s silly, so much so that first she and then he laugh in the middle of it from the sheer sexy ridiculousness of it all. It’s hot, watching this process unfold from zero, seeing two beautiful people get horny, knowing what’s happening to his body and to her body as a result, watching them do what bodies in those conditions are designed to do. It’s right there in front of us, the camera bringing us up close against their faces, their hips, their hair, their hands, his undulating body, her grasping legs. It’s Patrick Swayze and Kelly Lynch having sex standing up against a wall made of huge rocks. It’s the sex scene from Road House. It stands alone.

The Doc is no fan of barfights. Good heavens no! Not even the ones that take place in parking lots outside the bar and thus run less risk of concussions on tables and whatnot. I mean, look at her! Here she is, sauntering up to the Double Deuce in her finest gingham clubwear, absolutely shocked and appalled and a little bit disgusted and a tiny tad outraged to see that a bar so well known for its barfights that she cracks jokes about it to patients who’ve incurred injuries there is hosting a barfight. Treating the wounded is one thing, but watching the wounding is quite another, apparently! Anyway in about a minute she’ll make googly eyes at the winning combatant and tell him he’s what she’s looking for, so she gets over it. You could probably chalk up the disconnect to Rowdy Herrington directing Kelly Lynch like a showdog rather than a human actor, you can probably hear him say “You’re disgusted, you see it and you can’t believe it, you’re wincing it’s so painful even to look at” and her thinking well it’s a living and giving him that ooooh face with all she’s got. But that is the coward’s way. Here at Pain Don’t Hurt we attribute agency to accident and thus we can interpret this as Dr. Elizabeth Clay blanching at the sight of the source of her income stream. Given that she was once married to Brad Wesley it’s not a half-bad interpretation, when you get right down to it. Dr. Elizabeth Clay is a student in the art of ignoring the obvious until it’s too late to look away.

“horny” has killed more people than all the volcanos on earth combined —@dril

“I just think I’m looking at a dead man, though.” —Carrie Ann

By the standards established by these eminent students of the human condition, I would like to report at least three murders committed by Dr. Elizabeth Clay in the very first moment we see her on this fateful night. There’s the galoot in the wifebeater, Bobby Axelrod, and another guy right behind her who’s about to pay the iron price for having the best seat in the house. Worth it!

Despite being terminally horny, I don’t often write about it anymore because it seems…I dunno, both distasteful, coming from a person in my privileged position, and superfluous, since now every single human being above the age of about 16 with an Internet connection is writing things like “I want Timothee Chalamet to rip out my esophagus and toss me into a nearby body of water to float downstream face-down” every two seconds. I made an exception for Carrie Ann in what is and remains the hottest goddamned moment in any move I’ve ever seen, of course. In a more abstract way I talk about how attractive Denise and Dalton are, although Denise doesn’t hit me where I live so to speak, and I’m too tediously straight to feel legit randy towards even Patrick Swayze in his prime.

But I am unashamed to say that my first thought every time I see the Doc make her grand entrance in the middle of Dalton’s parking-lot brawl against Boot-Knife Ketchum and the Goon Guys Present The Sounds of Barbershop is a spit-take, a low whistle, that springy series of noises when a machine malfunctions in a Looney Tunes short, va-va-fucking-va-voom.

My second thought: Why is she wearing a picnic blanket, and why does her hair look like what happens when you lose the ponytail accessories for an old Barbie doll? Because man alive, that is an odd dress, and that blonde lizard frill sticks out like it broke free of her earlier French braid on its own steam. It’s wild.

It’s to the Doc’s testament that she can make it work. Her body is nearly as nuts as Dalton’s is, that much we can gather, and we’ll get a better look at it later still. Both she and Kelly Lynch, the actor who plays her, are both very pretty women, with a face that seems severe until she smiles, at which point it’s open and warm and kind of adorable. There’s a bit later in the film where Dalton razzes her and she kind of open-palm smushes his face, and that goofy sweet horseplay makes sense the moment she grins.

But the dress commands the eye in the end, and it’s what makes her entrance so striking. Even among the hooting and hollering heteros with whom I first watched the movie, the drunken “Hel-looooo nurse!“s were quickly followed by “What the hell is up with that dress?”, but you’ll notice the order of the two exclamations. When you see this extremely accomplished person—her accomplishments are all we know about her at this point—arrive in clothes that make this loud a statement, you wind up not caring much that the statement is borderline incomprehensible. You just think “How can I meet and entertain and hopefully impress this person without fucking up? She’s a surgeon in a gingham mini for chrissakes!”

Considering how badly Dalton bobbles the first date (though as it turns out he doesn’t bobble it half as badly as it seems at first blush) this appears to have been his primary response as well. It’s unnerving, I’d imagine, to have just finished kicking the asses of four men sent to murder you and then still find yourself several score professional and sartorial steps behind a person who just showed up to take you on a date. Your rules won’t help you now.