The Blues Brothers (1980) - 52 mistakes

Revealing: When Jake and Elwood are driving through the mall, they leave by driving through some store, if you watch as the people run to get out of the way, a black man with an apron on runs right into the camera.

Continuity: In the beginning of the movie, when Jake and Elwood jump the drawbridge they show a shot along the passenger side of the car as Elwood floors it to make the jump. Watch the rear tyre. The driver slams on the brakes as they approach the raised portion of the bridge.

Audio problem: In the scene at the Palace Hotel Ballroom, when the Blues Brothers are singing their 2nd tune (Sweet Home Chicago), you can hear both Jake and Elwood on the soundtrack but Elwood is dancing down the middle aisle without even a microphone in his hand and his mouth is not moving. There is also a shot during the same song where Jake's singing and pauses do not line up with what we see visually. When he sings "baby don'cha you want to go-oh - -" we see his mouth stop moving, then when he pauses, his mouth is still singing. As a matter of fact, the entire number has mistakes like this and mistakes of continuity.

Continuity: At the end of the church scene, James Brown is shown placing the microphone back on its stand. Then it cuts to a wide shot of James pacing the stage, mic in hand.

Continuity: The first bridge in the movie is rising very fast. When they drive on the bridge, it stands lower than before, and the jump they make, is over a small area, although you see later that the bridge is completely up.

Revealing: When Jake sees the light and shouts, "The band!", he flips through the church and back to Elwood. When he stops, he is almost as tall as Elwood. This is because the stunt double is not nearly as short as John Belushi.

Continuity: In the shopping mall car chase scene, the police cars that tips over has got siren lights at the top but when they tip over and slide along the floor and spin, on the inside view of the car, you can see the lights have been taken away for the car to slide better. On the outside view of the car sliding you can see the lights on the top of the car.

Visible crew/equipment: In the gospel church scene, where James Brown is whipping up the congregation, at one point, where the camera is pointing down the nave of the church from what would be the altar end, a technician can be seen scurrying, at the back of the church, from the left to the right aisle.

Revealing: When Jake, Elwood and the cops are buried in rubble from the hotel, you see one of the cops dragging himself out of the debris has two bricks sitting in the brim of his hat. That's either a very strong hat or very light bricks...

Continuity: In the deleted scene where Elwood goes into the manager's office to quit, right before he walks in the door he sets his briefcase down, it is slightly crooked and in the center of the floor. When he goes to leave it is sitting straight and further to the left.

Continuity: When we see the Nazi's falling in their car one shot shows the car from above falling into an area without any buildings around the docks. When the car lands however it is in a built-up area of the city. [Due to the lack of available special effects, the crew had to actually drop a car from a helicopter onto the area shown without any buildings because of safety issues. The landing of the car in the city area was edited into the scene, the rest of it was real.]

Continuity: In the mall chase scene, when the police car flips over, you can see the antenna break off the side of the car. When they cut back to the car again, you can see it break off once more. Then, when they show that the car has stopped spinning, the antenna is completely intact.

Continuity: 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.

Revealing: During the last chase scene, pursued by the Nazi's, the Bluesmobile stops short of running off of the bridge. You can see the steel guide rails behind the front wheels which will help the car get its front wheels back on the bridge when he slams it into reverse.

Continuity: In the beginning of the movie, when Jake and Elwood jump the drawbridge you see the gate arms are down. When the car lands on the other side the gates are up.

Visible crew/equipment: When they're driving on lower wacker drive in the end, you can see the shadow of the camera. The camera is on the hood of the car. It's visible in the scene where they almost hit a cyclist.

Continuity: When Elwood and Jake "See the Light" at the church, they begin dancing wildly at the far end of the aisle - yet in a static shot of the dancing later on, the Blues Brothers are seen standing still at the end of the church, just as they did before Jake saw the Light.

Continuity: When the Blues Brothers go to persuade Matt and "Blue" Lou to rejoin the band, and they have just ordered their signature meals from Aretha Franklin, she goes to Matt in the kitchen to moan. Matt is cooking two burgers of some kind, but in a shot of Aretha 30 seconds or so later (when Matt says not to talk that way around his old lady), the burgers have moved and multiplied.

Revealing: In the mall where the police car is spinning around on its roof (when the cop says, "They broke my watch"), you can see there's a separate circle of floor just larger than the car's roof, upon which it is rotating.

Continuity: When the three ladies of the Soul Food Chorus get up to sing "Think" with Aretha Frankin, their food is sitting on the counter; ten seconds later in a wide shot, it has gone. (This is undoubtedly so that "Blue" Lou can do his thing on the counter.) When the ladies sit down again and get a nasty look from Aretha after Matt and Lou have left, their food is back again.

Continuity: During the church scene at the beginning of the movie, when Jake is doing cartwheels down the aisle, you can clearly see suspenders attached to the back of his pants. In the next scene, they are gone.

Continuity: As the Bluesmobile screeches to a halt on the sidewalk at the end of the long chase, it leaves obvious tire trails on the sidewalk. But in the very next shot (when the car breaks apart), the trails are gone.

Continuity: At Chez Paul, when Jake and Elwood first meet up with Mr. Fabulous, who is talking on the phone, there is a shot of them walking down the hallway towards him and you can see that Mr. Fabulous is looking right at the two brothers. In the next shot, his head is down and he then looks up at Jake and Elwood.

Factual error: When the Blues Brothers are trying to escape the Illinois Nazis, they are on a freeway heading through a construction site. They break through several barricades, jam on the brakes, and stop just before they go off of a bridge. They slam the car into reverse and flip through the air to escape. The Illinois Nazis go over the bridge. The bridge is in Milwaukee, WI. The tall white building in the background is the US Bank building in downtown Milwaukee, WI. As the Nazis fall to earth, they fall past a building in downtown Chicago, IL before going through the street on impact. The Nazis fell from Milwaukee, WI to Chicago, IL.

Revealing: In the beginning scene when they jump over the drawbridge there is more than a foot of space at the bottom of the rising bridge. No car, no matter how big, could have cleared that space without flipping over. Also when they land on the other side you can see a "flap" at the bottom of the bridge which would allow the car to drive over it.

Continuity: During the scene at Bob's Country Bunker, when the band is playing Rawhide, a bar patron starts dancing on top of a table with a beer in his hand. In the background of the second shot of him, John Belushi is on the stage and has just picked up the bullwhip. In the next camera cut Belushi walks to the end of the stage and picks up the whip again.

Factual error: The sign "Chicago city limits" is facing across the street instead of parallel to it, as city limit signs always are.

Continuity: In the first scene where we see Carrie Fisher, during the 'Peter Gunn' sequence, she pulls out a bazooka with four barrels and fires one missile at the Blues Brothers. Then in the next shot (looking down on her car), she fires another four missiles without reloading.

Continuity: When the Blues Brothers escape from the road construction at the bridge and the Illinois Nazis, Elwood flips their car so it lands behind the Nazi leader's. When the car starts to flip, though, it does so while driving backwards, so it should land with its backside first and Elwood would have to reverse in order to drive back, but it comes down with its front first. Also, as it shoots over the Nazi car, it comes driving off a ramp, and not crashing down at the end of a somersault.

Continuity: When the Blues Brothers park outside Mrs. Tarantino's house, the car's front wheels are almost level with the path to her front door. When they start the car to drive off a bit later, it is parked further back with its front bumper level with the path.

Continuity: When Jake and Elwood are running form the police for the first time, they do a 360 degree spin in the middle of an intersection. The car is spinning clockwise but when the camera focuses on Jake the scenery in the back is spinning as if they were going counter-clockwise.

Revealing: In the last scene where we see multiple police cars pile up under the road system, at one point you can see the boards that allow some of the cars to drive on top of the lower cars.

Audio problem: When the band is playing at Ray's music store, Murph is playing a tambourine totally out of synch with the music.

Audio problem: Near the end, when the officers are getting out of the van, they are shouting "hat, hat," but their lips aren't moving.

Audio problem: In the soul restaurant, when the Aretha Franklin song "Think" is about to end, watch the mouth of the fat lady behind her and you will see that her lips don't match her song.

Continuity: After we've heard why it's so great to be an Illinois Nazi, there's a wide shot of Jake and Elwood's car in a queue, and a policeman walks past the driver's door. In the next shot, the cop hasn't yet walked past the door, and instead of doing so, he stops when the Blues Brothers ask what's going on.

Continuity: Where Curtis is getting Elwood and Jake a drink of Jack Daniels, when he gets the bottle it's nearly full, but ten seconds later, after he has got some drinking glasses and starts to pour, it's almost empty.

Factual error: As part of her quest to kill John Belushi, Carrie Fisher shoots at the brothers with a flamethrower. She is earlier seen reading the manual for the "M-79 Flamethrower." The M-79 is a grenade launcher - the one Schwarzengger carries in "Terminator 2."

Continuity: When the multitude of police are shooting through the door at the end of the film, there are loads of bullets shot at the door, then there are only a couple dozen bullet holes then there is a bunch of bullet holes.

Other: After the state troopers collide with Bob's pickup truck, both vehicles crash into a fire hydrant improbably located alongside a deserted country highway.

Revealing: When Elwood drives the Blues Mobile backwards from the half-finished bridge, just before it flips you see something on the underside of the car. It's either a coiled spring or a tube with an explosive charge used to flip the car over.

Continuity: At Bob's Country Bunker, Jake takes one of the beers and drinks it. When he grabs another beer, there are the same number of beers there were before (without subtracting the beer he took before).

Revealing: During the end concert when Cab Calloway introduces Jake and Elwood, Willie the drummer isn't even hitting the drums - most noticeably the ride cymbal.

Other: When Elwood breaks the window of the ladies room (using his hat and fist) and they both climb in, it's not until he says "'Scuse us" that anyone starts screaming, even though some women are right near the window.

Continuity: Just before the Mystery Girl blows up the building in which Elwood resides, a police car with lights on its roof pulls up outside. When the building actually explodes just over a minute later, you see that the police car parked outside no longer has any lights.

Revealing: After Jake topples down the stairs in the desk, the broken remnants of the desk are actually planks of balsa wood cut in the general shape of a desk. The amount of the debris changes from shot to shot.

Continuity: When Carrie Fisher is shooting at Jake and Elwood in the tunnel under the Palace Hotel, she hits a water pipe and water sprays everywhere in a mist. In the next shot of Jake and Elwood lying in the mud, there's no spray visible behind them at all. When Jake stands up a few seconds later, the spray is back, but is more directed now.

Continuity: In Chez Paul's restaurant, when Elwood and Jake first sit down, the waiter in the top right of the wide shot walks around a seated man in a dark suit; four seconds later, in a closer shot of them putting their napkins on, the waiter walks round the man again.

Factual error: The palace that The Blues Brothers do their big show in is supposed to be in Indiana. The flags that fly outside the hall are Ohio's state flag.

Continuity: When the Country & Western band chases Jake & Elwood, they start out of the bar parking lot in a full sized RV, but when they wreck shortly thereafter, it's a pickup truck with a camper.

Continuity: Near the end of the movie when the brothers are preforming "Sweet Home Chicago", they do a lot of spins and turns. The very last spin they do puts Jake towards the audience and Elwood towards the band. Then the camera angle is changed and Elwood is towards the audience and Jake is towards the band.

Revealing: If you look at Elwood when he sings Rawhide you can see that Dan Aykroyd was replaced by someone thinner and taller.