Fred's Top Five Guilty Pleasure Movies

I just don't have the drive to come up with something compelling to write about on this 4th of July. Certainly there's a ripe topic to blog about, but I just can't bring myself to get serious on a holiday that also falls on a Friday.

However, I feel I can jot down a few thoughts on some movies that I officially place in what I would call my guilty pleasure category. AMC has been showing one of them this week and I have to admit it: I've taken in large quantities of Patrick Swayze's Road House more than once.

So with no further delay, I present my Top Five Guilty Pleasure Movies

1. Road House (1989)
Swayze plays a bouncer named Dalton who apparently has a nationwide reputation as being the best of the guys who keep law and order inside rough and tough saloons. Dalton's job is to help clean up a joint called The Double Deuce that's located somewhere "outside of Kansas City." It's a mythical place that has no police anywhere within the area code. There are ridiculous bar brawls that wind up turning into a war between Swayze and Ben Gazzara (playing the local chief gangster) and his henchmen. And the bad guys are outnumbered. Swayze kills every single bad guy, but one, with his bare hands. And yet when the cops finally DO show up in the final ten minutes I take it all the mayhem was done in "self defense." Swayze spends the last few minutes swimming in a pond with Kelly Lynch.

(Fred Guilty Pleasure Rating: 4 and 1/2 polygraphs out of 5)

2. Point Break (1991)
It's a full Swayze opus with Patrick playing a surfing dude with an Obi Wan Kenobi complex. Swayze leads a group of surfing bank robbers who fuel their never ending summers as a gang called "The Ex-Presidents." They don the masks of former presidents for each holdup. Keanu Reeves plays an FBI agent who goes undercover to bust these guys. The plot is meaningless, but here are two of my favorite points:

- Reeves plays a former quarterback for Ohio State named Johnny Utah, who was the star of The Rose Bowl. I'm sorry, a Big Ten team winning the Rose Bowl?
- Reeves is left behind in a plane when Swayze and the gang bail out to freedom. Frustrated that he can't bust the robbers, Utah does what any FBI agent would do: he jumps out of the plane without a parachute. So what if it's only the second sky dive of his life? Utah manages to freefall and catch up with Swayze (the evil Brody) before he opens his chute. ("Vaya con dios, Brody)

Classic. (FGP Rating: 3 and 3/4 polygraphs)

3. Commando (1985)
Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Matrix, a former special forces-type guy from some kind of barely defined U.S. Army unit. The rest of the plot doesn't matter, but what I want you to know is that I kept count while watching this movie for the first time on HBO in 1986 of the number of bad guys who get killed. Matrix eliminates 135 people in one hour and 29 minutes on the screen. That includes the final fistfight with the bad guy, in which the evil Bennett gets thrown into some kind of electronic apparatus that actually makes him stronger during the brawl.

Best Arnold line: "I like you Sully. You're a funny guy. That's why I'm going to kill you last."

(FGP Rating: 4 polygraphs)

4. In Like Flint (1967)
This is the second James Coburn outing as a James Bond 007 knockoff American secret agent named Derek Flint. He has to stop a group of women who have conspired with a U.S. Army general to take control of a nuclear missile-laden space station in orbit. The plot would force all men to give up their government leadership positions and let women rule the world. The Flint movies make the Roger Moore 007 films look like Three Days of the Condor.

(FGP Rating: 3 and 1/2 polygraphs)

5. The Specialist (1994)
Sylvester Stallone and James Woods play former CIA operatives who were contract killers using specially targeted bombs in Central America. After a falling out, Stallone and Woods take their war to Miami where Stallone plays a contract bombing killer for hire. I didn't realize there was that large a market for bombing hit men, but whatever. The only reason to watch is for Woods, who chews more scenery as the villain than you would think, is humanly possible.

(FGP Rating: 3 polygraphs)