3/4  Great inspite of the cheese.
In reality, this is a very cheesy movie. However, it's also a great macho, butt-kicking flick. The acting is bad and the story is cliche but it's still one that you can watch over and over. There's something for the guys and the gals (a... (read full)

3/4  Road House Quick Review
It's probably the best bar movie ever made..., you know, next to Casablanca.

4/4  Road House Quick Review
I will NEVER be ashamed to love Road House, because deep down EVERY guy loves this movie. How many times have you been channel surfing and gone, "OH! ROAD HOUSE! SWEET!" Plus, Swayze ripping out a guy's throat is ALWAYS awesome.

1.5/4  Road House Quick Review
Destined to remain a staple of those "remember the 80s" shows, Road House is pure cheese with bad acting, dialog, plot with lots of fighting and titillation but hardly any substance.

2/4  Road House Quick Review
I saw this last night on Spike and it was not nearly as good as I remember. Damn! Some 80's action movies age badly, and this is one of them. Oh well, some will still appreciate and enjoy the nostalgia.

2.5/4  Road House Quick Review
I am ashamed to like this movie because the acting is crappy, the plot isn?t anything special and the action scenes are cheesy. Still, it has good qualities: it is entertaining, lots of boobs and Patrick Swayze as a bouncer is just funny.

4/5 Trouble In The North Woods
  by Lionel Bourg (Natchitoches, LA---USA)
ROADHOUSE(1948)---Richard Widmark, Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Celeste Holm
This is a very good film noir, with everyone involved turning in first-rate performances. Widmark plays the owner of the title establishment, Wilde is his childhood friend and manager of the roadhouse, and Lupino is a singer hired by Widmark to work in his joint. Widmark also nurses fantasies of having more than a "working" relationship with Lupino. Celeste Holm plays Wilde's "right-hand girl" at the roadhouse and she has a pretty thankless part as the girl who everybody takes for granted. In typical Hollywood fashion, this was the role that Holm was assigned immediately after winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in, GENTLEMAN'S AGREEMENT---go figure!!! This is Lupino's movie all the way---she really steals the show from her two male leads. She's tough as nails and is nobody's fool. I've always thought that Lupino was very underrated as an actress and this film is strong suppport for that argument.

Anyway, after some verbal sparring and some very sexually charged exchanges, Wilde and Lupino fall in love, which does not please Widmark's character at all. The final third of the film is devoted to Widmark's reaction to the situation and his attempt to "punish" the two lovebirds. Widmark is terrific as the "nice guy turned psycho". He is in fine form as the deranged, giggling nut-job we know and love. This was one of Widmark's last roles as a mental case. A couple of years later, Widmark began to insist on being given other types of roles and began showing his versatility in 1950 in PANIC IN THE STREETS. Of course, in that same year, he played a "foaming at the mouth" racist in NO WAY OUT!!!

Anyway, I digress. ROADHOUSE is a very good movie and I highly recommend it---as a noir, as a vehicle for Lupino, and for Widmark's excellent performance.


4/5 delightful surprise...thank gosh...after boring Moontide.
  by Christopher S. Smallwood
bought Moontide and Roadhouse at the same time. Sorry, but Moontide was so dull! I almost didn't watch Roadhouse. BUT Roadhouse was wonderful! Lupino great...and wonderful costumes for you few Noir fans who like that..I DO... and story all around really good. Wonderful to see Celeste Holm, who is so refreshing and normal, in contrast to all the other characters. Lots of good one liners...
but...as an older viewer...and somewhat free of drama in my ripe age of 46...I couldn't help think---wouldn't Cornel have been much happier with Celeste??! But then it wouldn't be Noir would it?
4 stars because Double Indemnity is 5 stars.

4/5 Film Noir in an Oddly Rustic Setting, with an Unusual Female Lead.
  by mirasreviews (McLean, VA USA)
"Road House" is a film noir from the height of the noir cycle with a strangely rustic setting: a stone and wood roadhouse -restaurant, lounge, and bowling alley- named "Jefty's" after its owner, located somewhere up north, near the Canadian border. Jefty Robbins (Richard Widmark) owns the place and hires Lily Stevens (Ida Lupino), a singer from Chicago with whom he is smitten, to entertain in the bar. He thinks it will double their bar receipts, but his business manager Pete Morgan (Cornell Wilde) thinks Jefty paid too much and tries to get Lily to leave. Lily has a contract and is not to be swayed, so she stays, and she's a hit at the bar. Jefty pursues her with increasing vigor, but Lily rebuffs him. And she clashes with Pete...until Jefty goes out of town.

Nightclubs are a classic film noir setting, but they don't usually have moose heads on the walls or exposed beams in the ceiling. Or bowling alleys. "Jefty's" is in a small town, where the other recreations are hunting and swimming in the river. Jefty's cabin in the woods is an even more rural location. Richard Widmark does his signature psychologically nuanced bad guy, with which he made some memorable film noir between 1947 and 1953. Here he borrows a bit from his famous Tommy Udo performance in "Kiss of Death" (1947). Ida Lupino's Lily Stevens is an interesting version of a noir woman. She has all the makings of a femme fatale. She's cool, cynical, and sharp-tongued. But she makes the choices of a protagonist, not a villain. She's a tough drifter, the kind we usually see as a male character, crossed with a lonely woman with traditional values.

But when the bad girl is actually a good girl, that makes the good girl a thankless role. The traditional good girl is the cashier at the roadhouse, Susie Smith, played by Celeste Holm, just off of her Academy Award win for Best Supporting Actress in "Gentleman's Agreement" (1947). Susie is a nice, bright woman who pines after Pete, selfless and respectable until the end. She always wears a coat or bulky clothing to make her look heavy next to the slight Lupino. Susie's a fine woman, but not destined to get the guy or the attention in this film. "Road House" has great cast all around, though, and the odd location adds to the intrigue.

The DVD (20th Century Fox 2008): Bonus features are one featurette, an "Interactive Pressbook" with close-ups of the Exhibitors Campaign Book so that we can read the articles, 4 Still Galleries (124 images), and an audio commentary. "Killer Instincts: Richard Widmark and Ida Lupino at Twentieth Century Fox" (19 min) interviews a collection of film historians about the careers of Widmark and Lupino and their work in this film. The audio commentary is by film noir historians Eddie Muller and Kim Morgan. They discuss the actors, character interaction, and compare the film to the original version of the story, which was darker. I wish they had done more scene-by-scene analysis. This one is less informative than most of Muller's commentaries. Subtitles available for the film in English, French, and Spanish.

4/5 Widmark Goes Psychotic Again!
  by Craig Connell (Lockport, NY USA)
This was a very interesting character study of three people: "LIly Stevens" (Ida Lupino), "Jefty Robbins" (Richard Widmark) and "Pete Morgan" (Cornel Wilde).

The two guys are attracted to Lupino, who prefers good-guy Wilde. The scorned Widmark then gets his revenge. This film was a year after Widmark played sadistic killer "Tommy Udo" in "Kiss Of Death" and his character in this movie isn't too far removed from Udo. In both films, Widmark provides the spark when the story needed it.

That's not to say the rest of the cast isn't good, too. Ida Lupino always played interesting roles, but Widmark playing these psycho villains is just fascinating and stands out.

I'm glad to see this film noir finally now available on DVD.

5/5 Lupino rocks!
  by J. C. Jordan (San Francisco, CA USA)
Ida Lupino was sexy; she was hard as nails but you can't help but melt to her throaty torch songs. But Richard Widmark owns the end of this movie- with the maniacal laugh, the crazed eyes and the high-pitched growl- he could make your blood chill.