Road House (Fox Film Noir)

I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Ida Lupino was a revelation of inner strength and beauty. What would this movie be without Richard Widmark? For that matter, what would many movies be without him? Can we say boring together. Richard Widmark is always priceless. The consummate bad guy that you just love to hate. I could watch this movie over and over and over.

Wonderful Film Noir movie. Four great performances from Ida Lupine, Richard Widmark, Cornel Wilde and Celeste Holm

The two new additions to the Fox Film Noir series are really fun and interesting. Neither could be called strictly noir, but with lots of noirish elements, both films will reward with a first or second viewing. Road House (1948) was dubbed a "sordid slashing melodrama," by one critic, and has Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde and Richard Widmark in a love triangle dripping with lust, betrayal and violence, as well as Celeste Holm along for the ride. Widmark continues his slightly-off, mostly insane characterizations that started with Kiss Of Death, and Lupino plays a bar canary who warbles Mercer's "One for My Baby" with B-girl authority. Moontide (1942) also stars Lupino and is illuminated by the performance of the great French actor Jean Gabin. Deeply moody and atmospheric, with a sense of doom and fate playing over all of the action, the film, set on the docks of a Pacific seaside town, seems like a dream half remembered. Co-starring Jerome Cowan, Claude Rains and Thomas Mitchell, it's a strange---but very compelling---movie.

The basic story of Road House is the love triangle, but Cornell Wilde, Richard Widmark and especially Ida Lupino give the story a royal treatment. The atmosphere creates the 'noir' feel. Lupino is the best under playing her femme fatale role. WIdmark as always is the heel, but this movie is no pat rendering of the basic themes.

Not to be confused with the trashy 1989 Patrick Swayze mullet fest that shares the same title, this was the fourth and final genre pic from director Jean Nugulesco, who had previously helmed The Mask of Dimitrios, Nobody Lives Forever and Johnny Belinda.

Noir icon Richard Widmark stars as the mercurial Jefty Robbins, who owns a road house called (wait for it...) "Jefty's". He has hired his longtime pal Pete Morgan (noir beefcake Cornel Wilde) to help with day-to-day management. The fussy, protective Pete feels that his main function is to be the voice of reason and steer the frequently impulsive Jefty away from making potentially reckless business decisions. When Pete is dispatched to the train station to pick up Jefty's "new equipment" Lily Stevens (Lupino), a hardened chanteuse who starts cracking wise from the moment they meet, he becomes convinced that this is one of Jefty's potentially reckless business decisions. The tough, self-assured Lily laughs off his attempt to offer up the advance money "for her trouble" and then steer her onto the next train heading back to Chicago. Now, you and I know that these two are obviously destined to rip each other's clothes off at some point; the fun is in getting there.

Although the setup may give the impression that this is going to be a standard romantic triangle melodrama, the film segues into noir territory from the moment that the Widmark Stare first appears. Suffice it to say-when you see the Widmark Stare, it is very likely that trouble lies ahead. As his character becomes more and more unhinged, Widmark eventually employs all his "greatest hits" (including, of course, The Demented Cackle). His performance builds to an operatic crescendo of sociopathic bat$#!+ craziness in the film's final act that plays like a precursor to Ben Kingsley's raging, sexual jealously-fueled meltdown in Sexy Beast.

Widmark and Lupino are both in top form here. Wilde is overshadowed a bit, but then again his "boy toy" role isn't as showy as the others. Celeste Holm is wonderfully droll as one of Jefty's long-suffering employees. Lupino insisted on doing her own singing in the film; while she was not a technically accomplished crooner, she actually wasn't half bad in a husky-voiced "song stylist" vein (she really tears it up on "One For My Baby"). The film sports an excellent DVD transfer and amusing commentary from noir experts.