The Lost Patrol (1934)

They (the Film Gods I presume) say there are 7 basic story lines that have been handed down since man first began to tell stories.  If that is true then the plot behind THE LOST PATROL (1934) surely must be one of them.  In THE LOST PATROL, a British patrol becomes lost in the desert.  But the premise of a group of people lost, getting picked off one by one by an unseen enemy, could happen in so many different premises: a haunted house, a space ship, the wilderness, an island or the western frontier. 3:10 TO YUMA (1957 and 2007), SOUTHERN COMFORT (1981), THE FLIGHT OF THE PHOENIX (1965), ALIEN (1979), ALIENS (1986), AND THEN THERE WERE NONE (1945), and SAHARA (1943) are just a few of hundreds of films with this simple plot. The entire FRIDAY THE 13TH horror series owes its roots to THE LOST PATROL with horny teenagers replacing British soldiers.

THE LOST PATROL deserves attention as it is director John Ford's first noteworthy film.  Ford, who would become famous for his collaboration with John Wayne in Westerns such as STAGECOACH (1939), FORT APACHE (1948), and THE SEARCHERS (1956) had been a director during the silent film era but PATROL is one of his early successful sound films.  Although Ford did direct films set in other time periods, the Western is where he's most regarded. THE LOST PATROL is one of his few period films not set in the Wild West or World War II. Based on the story Patrol by Philip MacDonald, screenwriters Dudley Nichols and Garrett Fort wrote the screenplay. A silent version just called LOST PATROL also based on MacDonald's story was made in 1929.

Director Ford opens THE LOST PATROL with such a simple action. Lieutenant Hawkins (Neville Clark) leading a British patrol on horseback across the Mesopotamian desert (now present day Iraq) in 1917 is shot and killed by an unseen Arab assassin. Hawkins was the only one who knew their mission and destination. The Sergeant (Victor McLaglen) takes over command as bullets fly. The Sergeant and his patrol ride over sand dunes until they spy an isolated oasis: palm trees, water, and an abandoned mosque. As the patrol buries their lieutenant, the Sergeant tries to maintain order and discipline amongst his men as they figure out their next move.

We get to learn a little about THE LOST PATROL as they remove their Pith helmets and we see who some of the men are. There is Sanders (Boris Karloff), the religious fanatic; Morelli (Wallace Ford), who thinks he's bad luck; George Brown (Reginald Denny), the cynic; and Quincannon (J.M. Kerrigan), the Sergeant's loyal friend. As the men recuperate from their dire circumstances, they reflect upon their mortality, their wives and girlfriends back home, and their dreams if they ever make it out of this hellish Garden of Eden.

The oasis turns out to be anything but paradise as the lost patrol battles heat, sandstorms, Arab snipers, and each other. Pearson (Douglas Walton), an idealistic young soldier, is found dead the next morning at his post and the horses missing. Next, Hale (Billy Bevan) climbs up one of the palm trees for a better look when he's picked off by the sniper. In a desperate move, the Sergeant has the men draw lots for a suicide mission for two of the patrol to go on foot for help. Cook (Alan Hale) and McKay (Paul Hanson) draw the mission. The patrol watch them walk into the shimmering heat, disappearing like mirages. A day later two horses return carrying the mutilated bodies of Cook and McKay.

THE LOST PATROL'S men begin to lose their sanity.  Abelson (Sammy Stein) wanders aimlessly into the desert. Sanders tries to kill the Sergeant and has to be restrained. Just when the band of soldiers have almost lost hope, an English bi-plane passes over and circles the besieged oasis, landing nearby. A rescue looks imminent but the rescuing pilot (Howard Wilson) also succumbs to a sniper's bullet. The Sergeant removes the machine gun from the plane as the British troop dwindles down to just the Sergeant.  The Arab marauders finally reveal themselves in a final battle as the Sergeant tries to hold off the desert invaders until the brigade arrives.

Themes that director John Ford will use throughout his career pop up in THE LOST PATROL. Ford likes to pit Man vs Nature as the patrol battles the elements: heat, wind, and sand. At times, nature is harder on the patrol then the unseen snipers. Other Ford films that pit Man against Nature include 1937's HURRICANE (storm), 1940's THE GRAPES OF WRATH (wind and dust), and even THE SEARCHERS (the four seasons). Ford photographs panoramic, expansive vistas and shows man as small, insignificant ants against the backdrop of massive buttes and mesas.

Director Ford also reveals his love of military conventions for the first time in THE LOST PATROL. Ford often focused on the everyday life of units, patrols, troops, and all the pomp and circumstance that comes with it. In FORT APACHE, he stages a fancy military ball where the dancing is as choreographed as a troop inspection. In RIO GRANDE, he shows the life of a military family and the toll it takes on marriage and relationships. Ford's Calvary Trilogy equates family and a cavalry troop as interchangeable.

In THE LOST PATROL, the men are all individually different (class, experience, age) but the unit brings them together. PATROL should be a grim survival film but director Ford romanticizes the patrol's predicament with humor and patriotism. Composer Max Steiner's score is always uplifting (and his opening theme will be reworked later in 1943's CASABLANCA). As one man after another falls, the Sergeant makes sure that each man's sword is placed upright in their grave, six shiny swords gleaming in the desert sun, silver monuments to the dead. Ford also implies in THE LOST PATROL (and later FORT APACHE) that it's not always the top commander who holds the unit together but one of the subordinates (like the Sergeant in PATROL).

Speaking of family, director Ford would accumulate a family of actors he would use over and over again throughout his prolific career (including some actual family members). The only one in THE LOST PATROL who would continually pop up in future Ford films is the lead Victor McLaglen who plays the Sergeant. It's fun to see a young, strapping McLaglen in PATROL as I was more accustomed with the older, heavier McLaglen from RIO GRANDE (1950) and THE QUIET MAN (1952).  In a case of art imitating real life, McLaglen actually served with the Irish Fusiliers in Mesopotamia (Iraq) during World War I when PATROL takes place. McLaglen was Ford's leading man in Ford's early films like THE LOST PATROL and 1936's THE INFORMER before Ford would cast a young John Wayne in 1939's STAGECOACH and the rest is history. But McLaglen would just move on to colorful supporting roles in Ford films, usually playing an Irish rogue of some sort (even though McLaglen was born in England, of Scottish ancestry).

Another actor not normally seen in a John Ford film or a non-horror film is Boris Karloff cast as the deeply religious soldier Sanders. It's nice to see Karloff who normally played monsters (FRANKENSTEIN) and mad scientists (HOUSE OF FRANKENSTEIN) in an adventure film. Sanders seems on the verge of having a mental breakdown at the beginning of the film.  He's always with his Bible and after reading one of its passages, believes his desert assignment is God punishing him. But he goes mad in the so-called Garden of Eden and runs into the desert with a makeshift crucifix to sacrifice himself to the enemy in a Christ-like action.

The rest of the supporting cast is uniformly fine. Reginald Denny as the enigmatic George Brown reminds me of a young William Holden. Denny had matinee idol good looks. Brown reveals he comes from money and that he enlisted using the alias George Brown. Brown probably didn't have to fight and he's clearly disenchanted with what he thought was a noble cause.  Brown is the only man who deserts the patrol and we never learn his fate although he leaves a note with Sanders that he's trying to circle around the enemy.

A favorite supporting actor of mine Alan Hale has a small role as Cook, one of the doomed British soldiers. Hale, a gregarious performer, would have been a perfect addition to Ford's repertoire of actors but Hale would instead partner with director Michael Curtiz and actor Errol Flynn in several films instead including THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD (1938) and SANTE FE TRAIL (1940). Wallace Ford (no relation to the director) as Morelli is one of the films more sympathetic characters. He's the guy audiences would like to see survive -- funny, self-deprecating, and honorable but THE LOST PATROL does not play favorites. Ford would have a long career in film and television.

One of the many reasons I like John Ford films is he was one of the first directors to film on location.  For his Westerns, he favored Monument Valley in northern Arizona and southern Utah.  Most films in the 30's were filmed in studio sound stages or on back lots.  THE LOST PATROL'S exteriors are shot in Yuma, Arizona and Buttercup Dunes in southern California where according to IMDB the temperatures reached 150 degrees (if Ford was seeking realistic Mesopotamian temperatures he succeeded).

THE LOST PATROL is a good opportunity to see an early work by director John Ford as he began to develop his style and themes that would carry him to great success over the next thirty years. I wouldn't declare THE LOST PATROL a classic but the film has one of the classic plots that writers and directors continue to use today.

Road House (1989)

Nothing says the 1980's like tight jeans, leg stockings, the music of A Flock of Seagulls, mullets, or a Members Only jacket. Whether it meant to or not, ROAD HOUSE (1989) starring the Swayze aka actor Patrick Swayze was the swan song or encore of the 1980's (you decide) and a bridge to a new decade  -- the 90's. Normally, I would have no interest in the Swayze. I wanted no part of his big hair, gyrating hips or muscular torso.  But my girlfriend at the time (now Mrs. CrazyFilmGuy) wanted to see DIRTY DANCING (1987) and I had run out of excuses. It turns out DIRTY DANCING was a nice film and the Swayze could do it all: dance, act, and sing.  That film turned my wife into a Swayze fan but I still wasn't a convert.

When ROAD HOUSE first came out, I still wanted no part of the Swayze even though this film had no dancing or singing (at least not by the Swayze). It just had fighting. Bar room fighting. Brawling. Bare knuckles. But a few years ago, I saw in the paper that a local comedy theater group was performing ROAD HOUSE (it has also been done Off-Broadway and as a fightsical).  That caught my eye. For a comedy troupe, even a local one, to honor a film by spoofing it, I knew there was only one reason. I call it the Aura of Swayze.

So I buckled down and watched ROAD HOUSE earlier this month. The Swayze already is a movie cult figure, regardless of what I think. Women the world over still swoon over his Johnny Castle in DIRTY DANCING and men can relate to his Zen bad guy Bodhi in POINT BREAK (1991). Add to the Swayze's resume the mysterious, psychology major Dalton (first name, last name - we just don't know), the best, baddest bouncer west of the Mississippi. There's just something about the Swayze. He's no Olivier or Hoffman. But he's so earnest in his acting. Every scene he's in, he gives it his all, 100% intensity, whether it's a fight scene or just driving a car or buying groceries.

ROAD HOUSE is directed by the aptly named Rowdy Herrington. The bar/club that Dalton works at is never called the Road House (the title is a nod and a wink to the Doors song Roadhouse Blues one of several songs blind blues singer Jeff Healey and his Band perform at the fictional Double Deuce club). It's an unusual film for producer Joel Silver who found success with big action films like LETHAL WEAPON (1987), PREDATOR (1987), and DIE HARD (1988). ROAD HOUSE has action (exploding houses, Monster Trucks crushing smaller cars at a used car lot, the Swayze tackling a man off of a moving motorcycle) but it's mostly redneck fighting, a healthy dose of bare breasts, and the Swayze.

ROAD HOUSE kicks off at a different club called Band Stand as Frank Tilghman (Kevin Tighe) shows up to persuade Dalton (Patrick Swayze), the best cooler/bouncer in the Midwest to leave his current job and come join his new up and coming club the Double Deuce. Faster than you can say parachute pants, Dalton accepts the offer.

When he arrives in Jasper, Missouri, Dalton discovers the Double Deuce is in need of a makeover. The Deuce is a rundown road house, full of hard drinking rednecks and peckerheads. It's the Wild West with a barroom brawl every few minutes, one OSHA incident from being shut down. The current employees either deal drugs or like bartender Pat McGurn (X's John Doe) swipe from the till. Dalton cleans house, removing the troublemakers and teaching the remaining staff and bouncers how to deal with the clientele. But Dalton runs afoul of the local rich kingpin Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara) who extorts from the local businesses for his protection like Red Webster's (Red West) auto parts store and controls all the liquor distribution in town.

As the Double Deuce begins to make a profit, Wesley sends in his #1 goon Jimmy (Marshall Teague)and his boys to remind Dalton and Tilghman who's boss. Dalton and his bouncers win the first round but Dalton is injured. A trip to the local hospital introduces Dalton to Elizabeth Clay aka Doc (Kelly Lynch) the hottest looking emergency room doctor south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Dalton even carries his own medical records to assist her. Wesley tries to buy Dalton's loyalty but Dalton isn't a man to be bought. He lives by his own rules, his own code. When Wesley sends his goons around a second time to stir up trouble at the Deuce, Dalton's mentor and buddy Wade Garrett (Sam Elliott) shows up in the nick of time to help Dalton distribute some round house kicks and solar plexus punches.

Wesley puts the hammer down on Dalton.  He blows up the house Dalton is renting from neighbor Emmet (Sunshine Parker). He has his thugs torch Red's hardware store. I was wondering where the local authorities were to arrest Wesley but then I remembered Wesley has the police in his back pocket as well. It's only inevitable that Dalton and Jimmy face off in a martial arts battle to the death, shirtless, torsos glistening with sweat, trying to make us forget the beach volleyball scene in TOP GUN (1986) or as I like to call it Maverick versus Iceman. Dalton has his showdown with Wesley at Wesley's compound, a battle to the death in Wesley's trophy room, big game heads mounted on the walls. What other film will you see a giant stuffed polar bear crush a man? But Dalton will not become Wesley's latest trophy.

At its simplest (and ROAD HOUSE isn't very deep), ROAD HOUSE is an old fashioned modern western with Dalton like the cowboy hero SHANE (1953) arriving into a new town (in this case the Double Deuce) and cleaning up the filth and scum that have taken it over. Dalton carries with him a troubled past (he killed a man in Memphis). Dalton tries to stay out of trouble but trouble has a way of finding him. Wesley is like the corrupt cattle baron, using his wealth and power and henchmen to extort the local businessmen and terrorize the town. Instead of a climactic gunfight between two gunslingers, Dalton and Jimmy duke it out a more modern way with fist, feet, and fingers. ROAD HOUSE'S finale is satisfying as the townspeople (represented by four businessmen Wesley extorted or terrorized) band together to help Dalton defeat Wesley and his posse. Everyone may have 80's hair and clothes but deep down, ROAD HOUSE is a western.

What often sends a film like ROAD HOUSE into the realm of cult classic are quotable (although not always profound) lines of dialogue. Screen writers David Lee Henry and Hilary Henkin provide ample examples. Dalton's rules to his team: "One, never underestimate your opponent. Expect the unexpected. Two, take it outside. Never start anything inside the bar unless it's absolutely necessary. And three, be nice." Dalton's philosophy on his trade: "Nobody ever wins a fight."  Dalton's quotes don't always make sense but would you question a guy who can rip your throat out with his fingers? Bad guy Jimmy may regret opening up too much to Dalton during their climactic battle: "I used to fuck guys like you in prison." A running joke in the film (borrowing a similar line from 1981'S ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK) is people's pre-conceived perceptions of the famous bouncer Dalton. "I thought you'd be bigger." Writers Henry and/or Henkin must have worked in a bar or club and saw and heard some of these incidents first hand.

ROAD HOUSE has an eclectic supporting cast. Kelly Lynch as Dalton's love interest Doc is a nice choice. Lynch caught my attention in Gus Van Sant's DRUGSTORE COWBOY (1989) which came out the same year. She had dark brown hair in that film. Lynch was the It girl in the early 90's, showing up in several films. Originally a fashion model, Lynch's career never quite took off although she was a better actress than most models i.e. Lauren Hutton. Sam Elliott as Wade Garrett is Dalton's father figure, a symbol of what Dalton could become if he doesn't get out of the bouncer business. Elliott always brings an element of cool to his performances (check out MASK or THE BIG LEBOWSKI).

At times, Ben Gazzara plays bad guy Brad Wesley like Bing Crosby possessed by a Dixie gangster. At other times (like frolicking with young babes at his pool), Wesley appears like a sinister Hugh Hefner. It may be hard to watch Gazzara who starred in director John Cassavettes edgy independent films like HUSBANDS (1970) or THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE (1976) selling out in such a high profile B movie but an actor has to work right? Gazzara seems to be enjoying himself.

I remember Kevin Tighe as Roy Desoto, firefighter/paramedic and the other half to Randolph Mantooth from my childhood TV drama EMERGENCY. Tighe had a renaissance after that show playing mostly villains in films like EIGHT MEN OUT (1988) but it's nice to see him play a good guy again as the Double Deuce's owner Tighlman. And although Swayze, Lynch, and Elliott all have some big hair in ROAD HOUSE, I proclaim the winner to be the gorgeous Julie Michaels as Denise, Wesley's current girlfriend and femme fatale who stokes the fire with an outrageous strip tease at the Double Deuce.

ROAD HOUSE plays up the Swayze's success in DIRTY DANCING and the Swayze's sex symbol status, finding every opportunity it can to have Swayze's shirt off.  Director Herrington stages a slow dance between Dalton and Doc that feels DIRTY DANCING-ish. Music obviously plays a role in ROAD HOUSE with Jeff Healey (playing Cody) and his Band providing music at the Double Deuce (there's a nice opening performance by the Cruzados with Tito Larriva at the Bandstand too).  Rock star John Doe (from one of my favorite bands X) has a role as Wesley's troubled nephew Pat and Red West who plays a guy named Red was part of Elvis Presley's inner circle and bodyguard for awhile.

There's no question ROAD HOUSE is cheesy. But everyone in the film seems to understand that the story is all in good fun. And I found myself rooting for the Swayze, who doesn't seem to take himself too seriously. ROAD HOUSE doesn't fall into the pantheon of great films like CITIZEN KANE or LAWRENCE OF ARABIA but if you're looking for some light entertainment that won't tax your brain and has some quotable lines you can try out in real life, ROAD HOUSE might be the kickass film for you to check out.