I’ve paid close attention to the “Roadhouse Blues” scene because it’s the Road House Universe’s ideal state. It comes right after the centerpiece scene, in which Dalton switches from being nice to not being nice, from treating it as a job to treating it as something personal. It features “Roadhouse Blues” by the Doors, essentially the film’s title track. Dalton spends practically the entire scene smiling, indicating all is right with him. There are no fights, no arguments, no interlopers. The whiskey’s running low, but it’s not running out, and Dalton’s going to take care of it with that phonecall of his. Frank Tilghman’s actions bear special scrutiny, as discussed, but that only emphasizes the scene’s importance. After all, even he admits he has the place just the way he wants it. Everything going on here is important.

So what’s with all the gaucho hats?

Not one, not two, but three separate revelers are wearing wide, flat-brimmed black hats as they dance and carouse. The young lady in green is easy enough to miss until the woman in maroon and the gentleman in the bolo tie leap out of the screen at you as the camera whirls around them while they dance and you’re like “wait—are these…different people dressed like Zorro?” The answer is yes, they are. (Technically Zorro wears a Cordovan sombrero, which is of a different provenance and region than the gaucho hat, but the two have blended together over time in the public imagination so I’m using the terms interchangeably. I hope you’ll pardon this slight license. Clarity trumps strict accuracy sometimes, that’s just how it works. It’s a job. It’s nothing personal.)

Why are three different people wearing black gaucho hats, though? Is this a cue that Dalton is a Zorro-esque figure, wealthy due to the proceeds of his in-demand cooling services yet still a man of the people, going outside the law to defend them from the depredations of bandits and landowners? I think that’s possible. I think it’s also possible that the costume department had a lot of these because someone was like “It’s kind of like a Western” but cowboy hats were decided against and this was the compromise. I think it’s possible that the hats were considered on-trend, as a little research indicates Yves Saint Laurent was incorporating them into his line at the time. I think it’s also possible that there’s no rhyme or reason to it whatsoever, and that a crucial tone-setting scene in the film Road House just so happens to have three people wearing black gaucho hats right in front of the camera. Bodacious cowboys such as themselves will always be welcome here, high in the Jasperdome.