It’s a layup, I realize, to take your old-man-with-a-big-white-beard character and put him in red long johns for pajamas. Because it makes him look even more like Santa Claus, see? But in a way I fear that this deep in the weeds with Road House we’ve lost sight of some of its simple pleasures: butts, boobs, dudes getting punched in the face, people getting thrown through tables, explosions, a monster truck, a town full of nothing but codgers and yokels. Can we not add “Emmett dresses up like Santa Claus when he goes to sleep” to the list? Can we not savor the site of Dalton and Dr. Elizabeth Clay rescuing St. Nick from a fiery inferno? Can we not enjoy the fact that after being bodily removed from a building in the process of exploding like the Hindenburg, Emmett’s only concession to Dalton’s query about his health is to quip “I’d be fine if you’d get off of me”? You can’t keep this right jolly old elf down, try as you might. The same is true of Road House. There’s always something marvelously dumb just around the corner, if you’re willing to look.

Jimmy Reno has exactly four minutes to live when he sets off the initial explosion in Emmett’s home. Four minutes to the second. What an emotional journey that must be for him. The tension and thrill of being a sneak in the night. The firebug awe of the detonation. The bonus, unlooked for, of the secondary explosion, even bigger than the first. Stopping his getaway motorbike to laugh uproariously at Dalton, Doc, and Emmett, reveling in their powerlessness compared to his fiery prowess. The sudden shock of being knocked off his bike by a flying man. The determination to kill this man. The back and forth of their battle. The pain of incurring blows and the satisfaction of inflicting them. The sadistic delight of reminiscing about his time as a prison rapist. The moment when it all changes and he realizes he’s in trouble, deep trouble. The desperate decision to pull a gun and settle things for good and all. The rushed in-the-moment thinking that occurs when you feel you’re at immediate risk of death. The pain in his throat. Oblivion. From lighting up the night with his malice to floating face-down dead in a river, in the time it takes the Beatles to do the “na na na nanana na” part of “Hey Jude.” Take a sad song and make it wetter.

Emmett’s house explodes twice: first from the explosive set by Brad Wesley’s lieutenant and bastard son (WE WILL NOT BE ACCEPTING QUESTIONS AT THIS TIME) Jimmy, and second, presumably, when the house’s oil tank or moonshine distillery or meth lab or something catches fire and goes boom. It’s a comically large explosion even by the standards set by Red Webster’s Auto Parts, which of course was a larger building and filled with natural accelerants. In the image above you can see Dalton, Doc, and Emmett fleeing as the explosion reaches its height; that should give you so me sense of the preposterous scale of the thing.

Sometimes when I play Minecraft with my children I’ll build an entire structure out of TNT blocks, just so it’ll blow up bigger when I light it on fire. It’s easy to wonder if Emmett did the same with his sad little house, waiting for the day when his sins, whatever they are, came due for repayment.

Shirtlessly smoking
His surgeon, she’s standing nearby
Awaiting a word
Gasping at glimpses
Of bottomless buttocks
He runs, wishing he could fly
Only to leap when the house blows sky-high

Wordlessly watching
He waits by the window
For Wesley
That’s the JC Penney guy
Anxious for Emmett and arson explosions
He worries
Did Wade wish him goodbye? Or call him mijo?

They are one cooler
They are two alone
They are three together
They are for the road house

Bound from the barn loft
And bounce by the hay bales to rescue
Your beardy landlord first
Dalton is diving
He’s down to defend from the danger
Maybe rip out throats
And choke them with their blood

They are one cooler
They are two alone
They are three together
They are for the road house

This is Dalton when he has nothing to do but fume. His muscles are taut, arms crossed fussily across his abdomen. His head juts forward, neck straining, jaw tight as he vents his frustration and rage. There’s nothing else for him to do right now—just vent, impotently, at his girlfriend. His body is like one huge knot.

This is Dalton in action. His landlord Emmett’s house has just exploded and he’s leaping to the rescue from his second-story window. But he moves not like someone who needs to brace himself for a fall, but gracefully, soaring rather than falling. His arms are wide, his legs angled just so, his hair flowing in the breeze. Faced with a physical problem, he moves toward a solution like a dancer hitting his marks. This is Dalton as he is meant to be. His body responds to the call of duty just as much as his mind.

“I’ve always wanted to try you. I think I can take you.” That’s what the Knife Nerd said to Dalton in the very first scene of the film, when Dalton breaks up a fight at the club he worked at back in New York. The sexualization of combat was already clear in the man’s choice of words, a language of dominance and submission that glistens and gleams each time it’s used. It happens again and again. “Your ass is mine, boy,” Jimmy tells Dalton when Wesley calls off their fight in the Double Deuce, just for example. And a few seconds from where we now stand it will accelerate to explicitly sexual speeds.

Dalton inadvertently sets the dominoes in motion. “I know exactly who Brad Wesley is,” he snaps at Dr. Elizabeth Clay after she warns him he has no idea what Brad Wesley is capable of. “I’ve seen his kind many times. He keeps taking, and taking, until somebody takes him.” Dalton believes he’s man to do this—to take Brad Wesley, and thus best him. There’s a weird lacuna in the phrasing that invites questions: takes him…where, exactly? takes him down? takes him on? takes him in? You almost can’t help but sub in the sexual connotation of the phrase, since we’re offered so little by way of an alternative. This shirtless mass of muscle and sinew and fine feathered hair wants to take his enemy. You connect the dots.

Dr. Elizabeth Clay is not taking Dalton’s shit. That’s the throughline for nearly every word she says during this scene. On Brad Wesley: “You don’t know him.” On the inability of the people of Jasper to stand up to Brad Wesley: a sarcastic “But you can stop him.” On Dalton’s assertion that he never loses: “But what are you gonna win?” She continues: “Who’s this for, anyway? Are you doing it for them?” She answers her own question: “I don’t think so.” She pulls off this rhetorical trick again for the coup de grace: “You think you’re gonna save these people from Wesley?” At the top of her lungs, her voice shredding, her face a grimacing mask of fury: “WELL WHO’S GONNA SAVE THEM FROM YOU?”

BOOM.

At that precise moment, the building visible through the window behind her blows up. It’s the most fortuitously timed act of arson in the annals of Jasper, Missouri, I’d have to imagine. The bomb Jimmy the goon used to blow up the house of Emmett the old man is like an inflammable exclamation mark at the end of the Doc’s rant. It’s as if the ideas she’s bringing up are too dangerous even to give voice to. The world ruptures around them in gouts of flame. She’s a pyrokinetic Cassandra with one message to deliver: In the contest of Dalton vs. Brad Wesley, the only winner is the conqueror worm.

“Brad Wesley picked me,” Dalton tells Dr. Elizabeth Clay, “and when he did, he fucked up. I’m only good at one thing, Doc: I never lose.” The thing to pay attention to here is that Dalton has rarely, if ever, sounded like more of a loser than he does right here and now. His tone of voice is clipped, nasal, truculent. His body language and facial expressions are those of a man who, contrary to what he’s saying, feels he has an enormous amount to prove, and is trying to bluster his way into confidence that he can do so. He’s also, it should be said, being a huge dickhead to the one that he loves and who loves him. She’s there simply to ask him not to put himself in a life-threatening contest of wills with her insane ex-husband, and he’s taken this as an opportunity to whip out his dick and measure it in front of her.

Something’s got to give.

Dalton is dripping with sweat when Wade Garrett visits to confront him. Dalton is perfectly dry when Dr. Elizabeth Clay visits to confront him a few hours later. This raises questions, considering that he’s wearing (or not wearing) the exact same thing in both scenes. Does his hair naturally revert to a feathered mullet pompadour when dry? Did he let his body air-dry naturally? Did he shower, and then put back on the same pants? Where does he shower, anyway? There’s no bathroom visible in his barn loft. Does he hose himself off in the nude for bathing purposes, and use some unseen outhouse for his bathroom needs generally?

Whatever the case, his dried, blown-out appearance in the second scene is belied by his demeanor. He’s no more in control here than he was when he was gushing sweat from every pore while yelling at his mentor. True, he doesn’t try to punch Doc in the face full-force, or at all, but he’s just as petulant and broken-sounding as he was with Wade. The situation with Wesley, the admonishments from Wade and Elizabeth, the plight of Red and Strodenmire—it’s all too much regardless of whether he’s toweled himself off. You can cleanse the boy of his flopsweat, but you can’t cleanse the boy of his flopsweat, you know what I mean?

One of the reasons it’s easy to tell that Dalton isn’t holding a cigarette at the start of his confrontation with Dr. Elizabeth Clay, despite the appearance of one in his hand by the end of it, is the positioning of his arms. They’re crossed above his stomach, and stay that way as he turns toward her, ranting and raving about how he’s seen the likes of Brad Wesley many, many times. I can’t say that I’ve seen the likes of Dalton many, many times, at least insofar as I’ve never argued with a shirtless man who walks around with his arms crossed like he’s in a straitjacket. It looks very, very weird, especially when combined with his petulant tone of voice and jut-jawed, neck-straining body language.

But Dalton is in a straightjacket, isn’t he? One of his own making. He refuses to quit the town because of his feelings for the Doc and his anger towards Brad Wesley. But he also refuses to listen to the Doc, who’s telling him to forget his anger towards Brad Wesley and just get the hell out of there. He’s staying behind for the sake of someone who wants him to leave. His motives are crisscrossed, just like his arms.

While Dalton is busy ranting and raving, smoke starts wafting up from below the frame. Dalton’s got passion in his pants and he ain’t afraid to show it, but though you’d be forgiven for thinking that’s the source of the smoke, I’m afraid the truth is more prosaic: a continuity error sees him smoking a cigarette toward the end of the conversation but not at the beginning. At no point does he move anyplace where he could conceivably have picked up an (already lit) cigarette after appearing at the window without one in his hand—trust me, I’ve looked. That said, isn’t it marvelous that at some point during the filming they thought what this scene needed was for Dalton to be shirtless, sulky, and smoking? The trifecta, if you will? Given what’s about to occur—without spoiling it, Dalton will soon find he has pressing business elsewhere, without the time to extinguish a cigarette on the way to attending it—the “give him a cigarette” decision could well have led to him accidentally burning down his barn. But by god we want our hero to be a tough guy, and tough guys smoke. Shirtless. In their dancing pants. While they whine. While their girlfriends yell at them. In their (highly flammable) barn loft apartment.

Childish, petulant, angry, sulky, and frightened, Dalton is no longer himself—or is it that he’s become too much himself? Either way, gone are the minimalist barbs that undid verbal sparring partners like Morgan and Horny Steve earlier in the film, “opinions vary,” “is she?”, and so on. When he detects Dr. Elizabeth Clay’s presence in his apartment, apparently his cooler-sense tells him that this time she’s not there to unzip her pants and get junk-on-junk without kissing first. Rather, she’s there to tell him to put a stop to the blood feud with her ex-husband Brad Wesley by getting the hell out of Dodge. What is his preemptive-strike quip this time around? “Little late for a house call, don’t you think?” Because she’s a doctor, get it? Not his best work.

But listen to his delivery and there’s more emotion and meaning in the line than you might realize. When he says “don’t you think” he emphasizes think, hitting the terminal -nk like a light slap to the face. It’s his way of displaying his neck frill and saying to the Doc what he said to Wade Garret: “Leave me alone.” He doesn’t particularly care what she thinks.

Frankenstein’s monster must always turn on his creator, and with one punch directed at Wade Garrett’s face, Dalton renders himself monstrous. Look: You can see his fear of what he’s becoming all over his face. It’s not just that he tried to strike his mentor down, though one can only imagine what he would have felt and done had he succeeded. It’s that the violence within himself, the violence he has kept at bay for years by obeying the Three Simple Rules and walking the Dalton Path, the violence he lets out only when it’s time to not be nice, the violence that has haunted him since Memphis—that violence is besting him, growing beyond his control. The dam sprang a leak and it is only through good fortune and Wade Garrett’s own skill that he was able to plug it back up before drowning. Will others be so lucky?

Dalton thinks—Dalton knows, I suspect—that the answer is no. This is why, when he gainsays Frank Tilghman’s assertion that Brad Wesley is afraid of him, he’s only telling half the story. Dalton is afraid of Brad Wesley because Brad Wesley is not afraid of him—because without that fear Wesley is free to act in such a way as to bring out the side of Dalton that Dalton is afraid of. It’s that side of him that scares him worse than anything.

Perhaps he can see himself mirrored in Wade Garrett’s eyes in this moment. Perhaps he sees what is happening to him as clearly as we do. The horror, the horror of knowing what you’re capable of, and feeling powerless to stop it.

You can skim through your copy of Road House after writing about Road House for over two hundred and eighty days straight and still catch the occasional detail you’ve never noticed before. Case in point: Red Webster’s mailbox. Just in case you were looking for one of the other R. WEBSTERs in Jasper, I suppose, Red has tricked his mailbox out with hubcaps. Not content with owning and operating an auto parts store, Red brought his work home with him, then made it a part of his home. It makes you wonder if the other luminaries of Jasper society have done the same. Is Frank Tilghman’s mailbox festooned with broken tables? Does Pete Strodenmire’s say “WELCOME TO WAGON DAYS”? Does Dr. Elizabeth Clay’s come in the shape of a colonoscopy x-ray? We may never know; in fact I’ll go so far as to say we will never know; but the beauty of Road House is such that the doors to these possibilities are opened and never shut.

For all his erudition where matters of bouncing and cooling are concerned, there are some expressions of emotion that are beyond Dalton’s ability to articulate. His feelings toward Wade Garrett at this moment are such emotions. When Wade, who’s just told Dalton he loves him, bids him farewell, Dalton pauses just long enough for the older man to leave, then attacks his heavy bag with a vengeance, a flurry of kicks and strikes. You can see right away that the salvo is unsustainable, and that this man, who’s already worked himself up so much that even his teeth appear to be sweating, must needs relent in his attack. You figure a quick cut away from the action will be the film’s exit from this scenario.

But instead, Dalton reaches out, wraps his arms around the punching bag, and leans in, letting it partially support his weight. We all need someone we can lean on, but Dalton has allowed that someone to exit his life. He wants to beat the living shit out of him for it, but he also wants nothing more than to collapse into his understanding and embrace, let them buoy him, keep him from slipping under.

If you care about Dalton it’s a hard moment to watch. He’s wrong to feel alone—Wade still cares about him, and so does Doc, and so do the likes of Emmett and Red and, in his bizarre way, Frank Tilghman. But he does feel alone nonetheless. So he’s hugging a punching bag, in lieu of assaulting the bag or hugging a human being. It’s a poor substitute for either, but in this moment it’s all he has.

“No, we don’t wanna do this,” Wade Garrett says as he takes Dalton by the hand as only a fellow cooler can: by stopping the punch the younger man just aimed at his face. Toughness and tenderness in a single gesture.

But there’s more.

“I wanna tell you something else,” says the old man: “You taught me as much as I ever taught you.” The teacher has become the student. The Way of Wade Garrett, shaped by the Dalton Path as it shapes the Dalton Path. Applied Philosophy 101.

But there’s still more, and it means more than anything.

“I love you, mijo.”

At last, at long last, the subtext is text. More than a teacher, advisor, mentor, friend. Mijo means “son.” A father’s love, bestowed mere seconds after the son tried to kill the father. There is no love greater.

“I’ll see you.” Wade Garrett departs, leaving his mijo, his Dalton, to contemplate his words, and to succeed or fail in the quest he has chosen to take on. He is armed in Wade Garrett’s love, now.

We will soon see what happens when that love is taken away.

Wade Garret is calm. Cool. Collected. Most importantly, clothed. After the events of the past two days he’s ready to blow this popsicle stand (whether or not Brad Wesley brought the Good Humor Man to Jasper is unknown) and head on down the road. He wants his amigo, his mijo, to come with him. “You don’t need this,” he says, referring to Brad Wesley, to Jasper, to blown-up auto parts stores and run-over auto dealerships and aggressive stripteases.

“Don’t tell me what I need!” Dalton growls as he hits the heavy bag like a man possessed. “If you wanna go, go, get the fuck out of here and leave me alone!”

There’s a juvenile growl that creeps into his voice in that last phrase. The sound of a child desperately telling a bully to cut it out, a teenager yelling at his mom to get out of his room, Karen from GoodFellas reverting to girlhood and shouting “You don’t know how I feel!” at her mother when she complains about Henry Hill’s late-night gallivanting. Dalton, too, reverts to childhood around his mentor.

If Wade were thinking more clearly he’d know that this would happen, he’d know that telling Dalton what to do when he’s like this all but guarantees the opposite outcome. But I think it’s less naïveté that animates Wade’s words and more a grim premonition of the future should he and Dalton stick around. Horny Marines and drunken yokels they can handle. Brad Wesley and his goon army have proven themselves to be a whole new order of trouble. Faced with overwhelming firepower, the Way of Wade Garrett is to walk away, before it’s too late.

Alas.

It’s all gone to shit, hasn’t it. It’s all gone to shit, and it goes ill with the king. Just two days prior Dalton was up all night with Wade and the Doc, drinking beers and showing off scars and looking at pubes and asses and generally having a grand old time. Then Brad Wesley, finally, took the results of the Breakfast Conference to heart. He blew up Red Webster’s store. He had Denise dance provocatively at the Double Deuce. He sicced Jimmy on Jack, Hank, Younger, and Wade. He ran over Strodenmire Ford with a monster truck. War was declared and battle came down.

Where does this leave Dalton? Not being nice, yes, that’s obvious. But in what way? How can he vent the fury he knows can be lethal if he’s not careful? By taking his fucking shirt off, that’s how. By taking his fucking shirt off and sweating so much it looks like someone applied a thin coat of vaseline and beating the living shit out of his homemade punching bag. Better that than the alternative—or is it?

Gone are the days when shirtlessness signaled calm, tranquility, peace with himself and his surroundings. He’s not getting out of bed bare-assed and having a smoke while his new friend brings him breakfast. He’s not performing tai chi on the shore as old men gaze in admiration. He’s not fresh from coitus with the doctor he loves. He is anger, he is rage, he is fire and life incarnate, he is the darkness within, and he is not wearing a fucking shirt. Not on this side of the Third Rule, no.