“Road House 2”: All About the Forgotten 2006 Straight-to-Video Sequel Starring Johnathon Schaech

After the Patrick Swayze original and before the Jake Gyllenhaal remake, Johnathon Schaech wrote and starred in ‘Road House 2’

Fans of Patrick Swayze’s 1989 Road House are checking out the new Jake Gyllenhaal–led remake, but what about that sequel that came before?

Road House 2: Last Call, written by and starring Johnathon Schaech, arrived in 2006 to extend the Road House cinematic universe — with none of the talent from the original film.

Centered on Shane Tanner, son of Swayze’s since-murdered James Dalton, the movie replicates its predecessor’s story of a New Yorker taking over operations of a Southern bar and rooting out its criminal underground as a “cooler” (a.k.a. bouncer).

Schaech’s undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent Shane “tries to save his uncle's (Will Patton) bar from a group of drug runners intent on taking over,” per a synopsis.

Related: 'Compelling' Patrick Swayze Is Why Original Road House Endured Despite 'Bad' Reviews, Says Director (Exclusive)

Schaech, along with costars Jake Busey (son of Gary Busey) as Bill "Wild Bill" Decarie and Patton, “kick action into high gear,” as the Road House 2 trailer teases. Actor and martial artist Richard Norton plays the story’s seedy antagonist Victor Cross, while Ellen Hollman kicks butt as the sultry Beau Hampton. 

The story follows Shane’s attempts to manage Louisiana bar the Black Pelican, inherited from his injured uncle, while solving his father’s murder. (Spoiler alert: Little does he know the drug runners and crime lords targeting Shane’s uncle are also responsible for the offscreen death of Dalton.)

“When I made Road House, it was supposed to be a remake,” Schaech, now 54, told Film International in 2018. As with other direct-to-video creations of the time, he added, the powers that be instead “made it a sequel.”

Helming the film was director Scott Ziehl, whose filmography includes another sequel with little relation to its source material: 2004’s Cruel Intentions 3.

In the 1990s and 2000s, distributor Sony Pictures Home Entertainment produced several direct-to-video sequels capitalizing on familiarity with original titles. These included 2006’s Hollow Man 2 starring Peter Facinelli and Christian Slater, and 2005’s Single White Female 2: The Psycho starring Kristen Miller.

Related: Jake Gyllenhaal Pays Tribute to Late Patrick Swayze Ahead of Road House Remake: 'I'll Never Forget His Kindness'

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As IndieWire’s Tony Maglio wrote of Road House 2 earlier this month, “The only way for Ziehl to even compete with [director] Rowdy Herrington’s Road House was by drastically upping the stakes, and he wastes exactly zero time doing so” soon into the sequel, which begins with “a montage of guns, hard drugs, alligators, butterfly knives, and bags of cash.”

Maglio joined a chorus of critics whose reviews upon the movie’s 2006 release can mostly be classified as pans. Critic Scott Weinberg, writing for DVDTalk.com at the time, called the “mindless, silly mess” of a sequel “a pretty stupid expenditure of 84 minutes.” He added, however, that Schaech was a “not-too-shabby B-movie hero” and praised Hollman’s athleticism as a fighter.

Per ScreenRant, Road House 2 wasn’t always meant to feature none of the talent from its predecessor. Miles Chapman, who co-wrote its screenplay with Schaech and Richard Chizmar, said on a 2020 episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast with Adam Ferrari that the filmmaking team approached Swayze about "doing an Obi-Wan Kenobi in the bouncer world kind of thing” and mentoring the younger main character.

Swayze’s pancreatic cancer diagnosis came a year after the release of Road House 2. The Dirty Dancing star died at age 57 in 2009.

Related: Jake Gyllenhaal Steps Out for Road House Premiere and Screening at SXSW

Notably, the new Gyllenhaal-led Road House premiered on Prime Video via MGM, a distributor that apparently has no plans for a theatrical release. The only Road House entry to compete for box office dollars was the 1989 original, which grossed an impressive $61 million against an estimated $15 million budget.

Fun fact: adapter-director Timothy Haskell created a sold-out homage to the source material Off-Broadway in 2003. Road House: The Stage Version of the Cinema Classic That Starred Patrick Swayze, Except This One Stars Taimak from the 80's Cult Classic "The Last Dragon" Wearing a Blonde Mullet Wig featured martial arts master Taimak Guarriello.

The new Road House, directed by Doug Liman and starring Gyllenhaal, Conor McGregor, Jessica Williams, Post Malone, Lukas Gage and B.K. Cannon, is now streaming on Prime Video.

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