MOUNTAIN: Are you gonna fight, dickless?

WADE GARRETT: I sure ain’t gonna show you my dick.

MIKE NELSON, RIFFTRAX: I don’t think that was even on the table! I…It wasn’t one of the options!

This brief exchange between Mountain (Tiny Ron) and Wade Garrett (Sam Elliott), and the response to it by Michael J. Nelson (Mystery Science Theater 3000), can’t be improved upon. In two lines you have all the hallmarks of Road House‘s bad-good writing style: hostility so severe it reads as a non sequitur, pointlessly escalated profanity, disconnected logic, attempted aphorisms that have never before or since been uttered by human beings. This exchange is Road House.

But to boil it down to dialogue is to miss what makes it even more Road House. Immediately after telling Mountain he is not going to show him his penis, Wade Garrett punches Mountain, you guessed it, right in the nuts. He then kicks him hard in his right knee, sending the giant tumbling to the ground with an oddly subdued “Oh, shit!””Goddamn, that hurts, dudn’t it?” Wade asks rhetorically, smirking while running his hand back over his hair. He’s not going to prove he isn’t dickless, but he’s sure as hell gonna make Mountain wish he was.

But wait, there’s more! Remember earlier in the film when Dalton told Jack “Gimme the biggest guy in the world: You smash his knee, he’ll drop like a stone?” QE motherfucking D.

So: needless profanity, needless hostility, gibberish idiom, illogic, dick joke, violence, cooler technique. Truly, this moment has it all.

I kid, I kid the goons, and why not—they’re constantly getting their asses kicked. But look at our man Mountain here. Mountain knows that he and his comrades-in-arms have been sent to the Double Deuce with a very specific mission: Stop any and all liquor shipments. Mountain does not abandon this mission the moment Dalton throws hands. No, Mountain picks up a case of Tia Maria, throws it to the ground, turns, picks up a second case of Tia Maria, and throws it to the ground. Then and only then, after Dalton has rung the bells of Morgan and Tinker and O’Connor singlehandedly, does he turn his attention to Dalton.

Granted, once you’ve see what happens to him when he does attack Dalton—he lifts him clean off the ground in a bear hug, only to have his face bashed in by a pair of reverse headbutts—you’ll start wondering if maybe there wasn’t a third case of Tia Maria that wanted smashing. And if you pay close attention you’ll notice that by decking Morgan right into the back of the truck, toppling pretty much every remaining case of booze it contains, Dalton himself did more damage to the shipment than Mountain. But I’d consider that last bit a loss leader. Better to lose a few bottles in the process of leveling men who’d present a constant threat than to spare them but also spare the saboteurs. To flip that logic around, perhaps Mountain should have worried about the cooler first and the wine coolers second.

Be that as it may. Brad Wesley so rarely gets his money’s worth out of his “boys,” not that this dissuades him from sending the same clowns out to get got over and over again. This is Mountain’s one and only mission, and I think he acquits himself admirably, to a point. A good goon is hard to find, and he would have been a good goon, if it had been somebody there to beat the shit out of him and his buddies every minute of his life.

Irony is a valuable weapon in the arsenal of any cooler. Take Dalton, for example. When Tinker, O’Connor, Mountain, and Morgan roll up and force the liquor delivery guy to stop wheeling out crates of booze—”This bar is closed for business!” booms the Bleeder, proud to pick a fight he can win for once—Dalton hits them with all the faux-graciousness he can muster. “Can I buy you guys a drink?” he asks, expecting the answer no. Morgan, who has clearly been spoiling for a tantrum ever since Dalton gave him the boot, responds by petulantly smashing a bottle on the ground. “Guess not,” Dalton replies, and the fight is joined.

Both Morgan’s toddler destructiveness and the savagery of Dalton’s initial fusillade against his assailants—he makes mincemeat out of all of them until Morgan smashes a bottle against his head rather than the ground—go to show how much energy and emotion can be hidden under the veil of wordplay. The fig leaf of sarcasm allows a man to interact with other men despite the fact that they will soon attempt to beat one another unconscious with their bare hands, wound each other with shattering glass, and generally wreak havoc on one another’s bodies until one side or the other is unable to do any further damage. “Can I buy you guys a drink?” is one last sardonic attempt to conceal violence beneath civilization’s veneer, but the eternal struggle between cooler and goon cannot be contained forever.

Here come the goons again
Pounding on my head like a memory
Pounding on my head like a new emotion
I want a shirt with an open chest
I want to talk like bleeders do
I want to dive clear of your boot knife
Do you bleed too much too?

O’Connor talk to me
Like bleeders do
Walk with me
Like bleeders do
Talk to me
Like bleeders do

Here come the goons again
Kick me in my head like a tragedy
Tearing out my throat like a new emotion
I want to bleed in the open wind
I want to kiss like coolers do
I want to dive clear of your knife boot
Do you bleed too much too?

O’Connor talk to me
Like bleeders do
Walk with me
Like bleeders do
Talk to me
Like bleeders do

Ooooooh
Ooooooh yeah
Here they come again
Ooooooh
Hey hey hey hey hey hey hey

Here come the goons again
Pounding on my head like a memory
Pounding on my head like a new emotion
(Here they again, here they comes again)
I want a shirt with an open chest
I want to talk like bleeders do
I want dive clear of your boot knife
Do you bleed too much too?

Wade Garrett is not the only miscreant to grace the dirt lot of the Double Deuce with his presence on this fateful day. Right behind him apparently—I wonder if they were stopped behind him at a stoplight at some point, not realizing what was to come—is a pickup truck full of Brad Wesleyans. There’s O’Connor and Tinker of course, who I guess haven’t gotten their asses kicked recently enough and need that sweet chin music. There’s Mountain, the gigantically tall guy last seen cavorting poolside at Wesley’s mansion; he’ll accomplish approximately that much in the fight that ensues.

Finally, there’s Morgan, the inveterate hothead tough guy played by wrestling god Terry Funk, returning to the Double Deuce for the first time since he collected his severance and was told to consider barber college and pronounced Dalton “a dead man.” (He too was last seen cavorting poolside, with his pants around his ankles no less, but he acquits himself a bit better than his towering counterpart.) You’ll recall him scoffing at the idea that Dalton has “balls big enough to come in a dump truck”; I don’t know if irony is the right word for him being a goon big enough to come in a pickup truck, but there’s something there. I dunno, we’ll workshop it.

Anyway the highlight of the moment isn’t the hero shot of all four goons rolling deep towards Dalton as he stands at the service entrance, supervising the delivery of liquor from a distributor he apparently convinced to run Wesley’s blockade. It’s Dalton’s reaction to said goons.

No confident smile this time. No squaring up, either. He looks at them through sun-squinted eyes, his shoulders rise as he inhales deeply, and then he just…sighs, silently. If you ran his body language through Google Translate you’d get Welp, here we go again, I guess.

It’s the most noncommittal thing he does in the whole film, which otherwise invests his every word and deed with energy and purpose. All his energy and purpose is directed elsewhere at the moment—at Doc, his lover, whose scent probably lingers on his body, and at Wade Garrett, his mentor, whom he called to take care of this whole liquor-blockade thing. These clowns? He’ll fight them, sure, but only because they leave him no choice. He’d just as soon they turn around and drive away. There’s only one way this is gonna end, and until then it’s just workaday drudgery. Sigh. Okay, fellas, whose face do I break first.

Ketchum is a forgettable goon. That’s just facts. I know who he is because I’ve watched Road House a million times, and you know who he is because you’re reading this series of daily essays about Road House. But it took me a long, long time, and many, many viewings, to put Ketchum together, as it were: that he drives the monster truck any time it shows up; that he’s the guy who tries to kick Dalton in the head with the knife in his boot and gets his ass kicked instead; that he’s the man who kills Wade Garrett, as evidenced by his retrieval of the knife used to kill him and insertion of that knife into a custom sheath on his hip; that he’s the last goon to tangle with Dalton hand to hand; that his name is Ketchum.

Alone among the goons present for the climax of the film, no one even says his name in the movie, a privilege afforded to Pat McGurn, Morgan, O’Connor, Tinker, and Jimmy. I’ve made a fuss about this over the past few months, alleging that it’s one of the reasons he’s so forgettable. But I’ve been thinking about that assertion lately, because I don’t think it has to be that way.

Consider the orcs.

Remember these handsome fellas? Sure you do. That’s Lurtz, Grishnakh, and Gothmog, from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. No one says their names in the movies. No one says any orc’s name in the movies. For that matter, Lurtz is a made-up name for a brand-new character the filmmakers introduced, and Gothmog is simply their best guess as to what a Mordor commander from the books whose species isn’t even specified by Tolkien might be like.

But if you’ve watched those movies recently, or if you find them memorable at all, you probably recall them as the uruk-hai leader with the Ariana Grande hairstyle whose head gets chopped off by Aragorn after a big fight, the raspy-voiced weasel who tries to hunt and kill Merry and Pippin before Treebeard squishes him, and the leader of the orc assault on Minas Tirith with the big puffy pink face. You remember how they look, how they sound, and what they do, because Jackson and company made a big point of giving them memorable introductions, isolating them with distinct camerawork (closeups, angles, whatever the case), and having them do their most memorable stuff right there for all to see. Lurtz was created to give the uruk-hai chasing the Fellowship a distinctive leadership figure so the film’s climax would work as such. It’s a far cry from the aggressively nondescript Ketchum first showing up as a non-speaking background character wearing face-masking sunglasses during the Bleeder scene and eventually killing Road House‘s secondary protagonist off-screen.

For that matter, it’s a far cry from these fellows.

Karpis and Mountain are also never named. They’re only shown in close-up in couple of scenes apiece; in Mountain’s case, one of those scenes is a pool party (in which Karpis appears in the background). Neither of them make it to the film’s final reel but it’s not because they get killed—they simply stop showing up, because that’s how Road House rolls.

But you remember them, right? They each have a distinctive look, with Karpis’s clothes from the Bun E. Carlos collection and Mountain’s sheer size. They each do something interesting: Karpis stares down Dalton, and Mountain dances like an idiot and later Sam Elliott tells him “I sure ain’t gonna show you my dick” before taking him down. The camera makes a point of both of them: Karpis stares right into it in closeup, while Mountain becomes the focal point as it follows Wesley and Denise into the pool party.

When it comes to differentiating your goons, bothering to say their name during the film helps, especially if you name half a dozen comparable characters during the film and run the risk of drowning the unnamed one out. (That doesn’t apply to LotR.) But you need the look, you need a distinctive action, and you need a memorable trick with the camera to make the look and the action click in the viewer’s mind. It’s a bit unfair to compare Rowdy Herrington’s work with Ketchum to Peter Jackson’s work in The Lord of the Rings, which is better at this than any other film I’ve ever seen. My point is simply, what’s in a name?

Nine quarters, says the sign that appears in the middle of Dalton’s pivotal conversation with Wade Garrett, right after he blows off the threat presented by Brad Wesley. Right away we can see that reality has warped a little, that a glitch in the matrix has appeared. As well it might: Dalton has just underestimated his opponent and failed to expect the unexpected, a violation of his own First Rule. And for that, a price must be paid.

But what if there’s more to it than that?

It was not I who set myself on this path, but reader @RoddySwears. It was he who noted the numerological significance of the established price. Nine quarters. Two dollars and twenty-five cents. $2.25. 2 + 2 = 9.

What could such a specific prophecy mean?

Then I realized.

The Nine are abroad.

You can’t make a JC Penney without breaking some eggs. That’s where these fellows come in. Organized crime boss, mall developer, and job creator Brad Wesley employs a small army of goons, thugs, henchmen, minions, and muscle to do his dirty work around the town of Jasper, Missouri. Blowing up an auto parts store, blowing up an old man’s shack, and running over a car dealership with a monster truck are just the most glamorous aspects of the gig: These guys’ main function is to punch people in the face, and get punched in the face in turn. The following is a brief survey of the Wesleyans with speaking parts. You’ll be seeing more of these gentlemen for sure, but this should bring you up to speed.

Morgan

Ornery brute. Originally a bouncer at the Double Deuce. Fired by Dalton because he doesn’t have “the right temperament for the trade.” Doesn’t take it well. Played by pro wrestling legend Terry Funk. Strengths: Looks and acts like a guy who could kick someone’s ass. (Not for nothing did he prompt the “It’s still real to me, dammit!” incident.) Weaknesses: Syllable emphasis.

Pat McGurn

Vicious weasel. Nephew of Brad Wesley. Originally a bartender at the Double Deuce. Fired by Dalton for skimming from the till, sparking the Wesley/Dalton feud. Played by punk legend John Doe. Strengths: Convincingly sleazy mustache. Weaknesses: Uncle’s Boy.

Jimmy

The main man. Wesley’s favorite. Rarely far from his boss’s side. Martial-arts master who fights both Dalton and Wade Garrett to near-standstills. Gets the film’s most famous non-Swayze line: “I used to fuck guys like you in prison!” Played by Marshall Teague. Strengths: Smoldering eyes, witty banter, maniacal laugh, actual fighting skill. Weaknesses: Sore throat.

O’Connor

Middle management. Basso profundo beanpole who leads the expedition to restore Pat to full employment at the Double Deuce, among other crucial tasks requiring minimal competence. Played by Juilliard graduate Michael Rider. Strengths: Business casual wardrobe. Weaknesses: He’s a bleeder.

Tinker

Lummox. Portly core component of the Wesley team. Frequent partner of O’Connor. Partial to trucker hats and suspenders. Played by John Young. Strengths: Comes closer to actually killing Dalton than almost anyone else, inflicting the knife wound that leads to Dalton meeting Dr. Elizabeth Clay; perhaps for this reason he is the only member of the Wesley Organization to find forgiveness and redemption. Weaknesses: Polar bears.

Mountain

The tallest. Towering doofus who serves primarily to dance amusingly during Wesley’s pool party and engage in brief but memorable dick-based repartee with Sam Elliott. Played by Check It Out! with Dr. Steve Brule fry cook Tiny Ron. Strengths: Hell of a dancer, very tall. Weaknesses: “Give me the biggest guy in the world: You smash his knee, he’ll drop like a stone.”

Ketchum

Serious business. Wesley’s most all-American thug. Trusted with the most hardcore tasks. Almost entirely forgettable despite performing several of the film’s greatest acts of villainy unless you’ve seen the movie enough to write about it every day for a year. Played by stuntman Anthony De Longis. Strengths: boot-mounted knife, regular knife, monster truck. Weaknesses: …wait, who are we talking about again?

Karpis

Man of mystery. Piercingly handsome guy in a smart-looking suit worn with rakish dishevelment. Present in background when Wesley’s chopper lands during the character’s introudction. Present in background when Wesley throws a pool party. Wordlessly witnesses Wesley’s punishment of O’Connor for failing to secure Pat’s job. Tosses Red Webster’s store to keep him in line and says “Life is good” as his one line. Vanishes completely from the film after these four scenes. Lives forever in my heart. Played by Joe Unger, aka Sgt. Garcia from A Nightmare on Elm Street. Strengths: Looks like he plays rhythm guitar for Dr. Feelgood or the Strokes circa the $2 Bill show, dangerously sexy. Weaknesses: Barely in the movie, named “Karpis.”