X

Great sites

Anything Hollywood

Atomic Popcorn

Banned in Hollywood

Bits & Pieces

Blockbuster Buzz

Book mistakes

CanMag

The Daily Column

Daily Stab

Defamer

Double Viking

EHOWA

The Evil Beet

Film Drunk

Filmofilia

Filmspotting

Foundry Music

Game mistakes

Geek Tyrant

Gone Hollywood

Hollyscoop

Hollywood Outbreak

I Am Bored

I Love Bacon

Joblo movie news

Movie Banter

Movie Buzz

Movie spoilers

Movie timeline

Other crap

Screenjunkies

Sky movie reviews

Something Really Funny

Tengossip

Trailer Addict

Unreality Magazine

Virtually Existing

Quotes

Elwood: They're not gonna catch us. We're on a mission from God.

See more...

Mistakes

At the end of the movie, just before crashing through the Daley Building, the driver's side rear window is rolled down, then it is up again just before (and as) the car falls apart. See more...

Trivia

When the Blues Brothers sing "Jailhouse Rock," there are several shots of a long-haired prisoner who eventually leaps onto the table to dance. The performer is Joe Walsh, guitar player for The Eagles. See more...

Picture

Movie Mistakes blog

Popular blog posts:

Top 15 biggest Harry Potter film mistakes

The biggest mistakes in the Harry Potter movies

15 biggest mistakes in Titanic

The 20 biggest Friends mistake pictures

10 Twilight mistakes in pictures

The Blues Brothers (1980) - 18 corrections

Directed by John Landis, starring Carrie Fisher, Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi (add more)

Genres: Action, Comedy, Music, Musical

Comments made in brackets are corrections from other visitors. To submit your own corrections for mistakes, just click "edit" under an entry, then choose "correct entry". You can also submit corrections for corrections, if you think a mistake has been unfairly removed.

Mistakes
Trivia
Pictures
Quotes
Corrections
Questions
Submit
At the beginning of the big chase, the good ol' boys are driving a long Winnebago. When their driver says he has a problem, we see their view as they weave through the surrounding police cars. There is no way a vehicle this long could weave through cars that close at such a high speed, without colliding with any of them. [And yet the movie's stunts were all real, no CGI involved. Evidently, if they weaved through the cars without hitting them, it actually happened.]
Edit Corrected by rswarrior Time
In the pursuit scene, the Blues Brothers are coming out from one tunnel, and they are about to crash into a police car. After they intercept it, the police cars are hitting it and there is no driver inside. [The car was parked there as a road block, then the driver got out in case the car gets rammed. Normal safety procedure.]
Edit Corrected by John W Rosa
In the scene where the band is visiting Ray's music shop to buy some equipment, there is a dancing scene. In one of the scenes that show Jake and Elwood dancing, there is a rather large, black box just popping out of nowhere. If you play it slow, you can see that that single part was cut together from two different shots. [I have watched this scene several times looking for this. The only black box I can see in this scene is the bottom of Ray's Rhodes piano. It's the model known as the "suitcase" piano, which has an amplifier and speakers in the bottom, as opposed to the "stage" model which had chrome-plated legs and was open underneath. The Stage piano had neither amplifier nor speakers onboard.]
Edit
On the cover, when Jake is resting his hand on Elwood's shoulder, his tattooed name is on his right hand. But in the very beginning of the movie, when Jake is waiting to collect his things from the man at the corrections office, he is tapping his fingers on the counter and his tattooed name is on his left hand. [DVD artwork is not part of the film, and not a valid mistake.]
Edit Corrected by John W Rosa
At Bob's Country Bunker Bob said that the band had drunk $300 worth of beer. Estimating $2 for a bottle of beer, this would mean the group of 10 men drank 150 beers among them - more than enough to get them seriously drunk. Despite this everyone seemed to be completely sober during their after-show conversation in the parking lot. [It's a joke the filmmakers inserted in this scene. It is consistent with other exaggerated and "impossible" scenes in the movie showing how tough the main characters are; they are shot at with a flamethrower without bothering to notice, sleep through the demolition of the building they are in, duck missiles and keep on walking, etc. Not to mention the incredible "backflip" they manage with their car.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
When the band performs at Bob's Country Bunker, they travel in 2 cars carrying 5 people each. But when Jake and Elwood tell the guys to go ahead, they would have to fit 8 people plus all of the equiptment in one car. [That's an ongoing joke in both this film and the sequel. It's featured most prominent in "Blues Brothers 2000", where you actually get to see the inside of the car with the entire band crammed inside.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
In the scene where Jake and Elwood go to the Chez Paul restaurant to find Mr. Fabulous, he looks up, the shot changes to a close up, and he looks up again. [He could have done a double take between shots, but even if he didn't, it's a common filmmaking technique to show a single action more than once from different angles.]
Edit Time
Near the end of the movie when Jake and Elwood are getting ready to walk out on stage, you can see Jake start to spin the chain in his right hand. When they walk out you get a quick shot of him with it still in his right hand. Then when you see him again, he has it spinning in his left hand. [He had time to switch hands between those two shots. Just because you don't see it happen, doesn't mean it can't.]
Edit
Religious institutions are not subject to property taxes. [Not exactly true. You can be denied exemption if you are truly not a not-for-profit organisation and for a myriad of other reasons. Here are some religious organisations that recently lost tax exemption status in Illinois: http://www.taxpertsltd.com/tax_exempt_update.php]
Edit Corrected by Rlvlk
When Carrie Fisher uses the flame thrower to blow up the propane tank next to the phone booth Jake and Elwood are in, there is no way the phone booth would have rocketed straight up because phone booths are bolted down to prevent theft. [The bolts are proof against theft, not against large scale explosions.]
Edit
When the Blues Bros are racing to the tax assessor's office towards the end, there is a quick shot of the speedometer of the bluesmobile. Right when they cut to it you hear dubbed engine sounds and a manual transmission upshift. The bluesmobile had an automatic transmission. [The kind of transmission makes no difference to the engine noise - the clutch is still engaged on an automatic, and the gears STILL change.]
Edit Corrected by Andy Benham
Elwood never takes off his sunglasses at any point in the movie. Jake never takes off his hat. [In the DVD version, Elwood quits his job without sunglasses.]
Edit
Immediately upon leaving Bob's Country Bunker, Elwood and Jake encounter the Illinois state troopers that had previously stopped them. The bar was in Kokomo, which is in central Indiana. [There is a Kokomo in Illinois.]
Edit
When Jake and Elwood visit the Penguin and Jake gets thrown down the stairs and the door slams, you can see the "ceiling", go in and out because it is actually a piece of canvas. [Given the horrible condition the building is in (and the neighborhood around it) it would be safe to possibly assume that the canvas was a "temporary fix" of sorts, perhaps to catch crumbling plaster from the ceiling.]
Edit
The man who sold Jake his stuff, he's saying: "One Timex watch, broken." If it's broken, how did Jake know the time when they both were in the gas station? [First of all, he did not "sell" Jake his stuff. He was a prison guard who gave back to Jake the things he had with him when he arrived at Joliet. Secondly, several days pass between the two scenes. Plenty of time to get a new watch.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
After their performance at the Palace Hotel Ballroom, Elwood announces "It is 106 miles to Chicago..." They speed the entire way to Chicago. This should only take at the most two hours. When they arrive at the office building, it is well into the morning. [It probably would take at the most 2 hours to drive 106 miles to Chicago if Jake and Elwood take the fastest route there. However, with the entire Illinois state police force after them, its reasonable to assume that numerous roadblocks would have forced them to take a much longer route instead.]
Edit
At their performance 106 miles north of Chicago, the brothers acknowledge the presence of Illinois law enforcement officers. At 106 miles north of Chicago, the place would be well into Wisconsin. [Yes, but seeing how eager the police authorities are in capturing the Blues Brothers (approving the use of unneccessary violence, for instance), they would not be likely to be very bothered about jurisdiction issues either.]
Edit Corrected by Twotall
Carrie Fisher shoots 5 rockets from a 4-barrelled rocket launcher. [There is a fifth barrel in the center of the launcher.]
Edit Time