I had the damnedest thing happened to me last night — I watched the new movie version of Road House on Amazon Prime, and I enjoyed it.

I’d been so sure of my plan to see it, hate it, and slam it in a review. Another remake in an endless stream of them, for one thing. And the old 1989 Road House has a special place in the action film pantheon, because it’s so delightfully god-awful it takes on a kind of Mystery Science Theater 3000 delirium. It’s a surreal thing to visit that movie again, bringing the generally hideous 1980s mainstream cinematic experience back with a rush.

Some movies that were major releases then were so literally ugly, so incompetently made, so grotesquely stupid, so ideologically heinous, they become things of sordid wonder and hilarity when seen afresh.