The Blues Brothers

Continuity mistake: In the scene where they go to Elwood's apartment, Elwood puts on a 78 RPM Decca Louis Jordan record. The record is entitled "Saturday Night Fish Fry". But the song that plays is "Let The Good Times Roll".

The Blues Brothers mistake picture

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:42:45)

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:23:50)

Visible crew/equipment: In the gospel church scene, where James Brown is whipping up the congregation, at one point as Elwood is dancing at the front of the church after Jake has "seen the light", 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. (00:19:05)

Revealing mistake: 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. (00:31:40)

The Blues Brothers mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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... (00:42:05)

Revealing mistake: 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. (00:22:10)

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:31:15)

The Blues Brothers mistake picture

Continuity mistake: 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. (01:02:50)

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. (01:54:20)

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:09:25)

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:31:50)

Continuity mistake: 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. (01:17:50)

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:09:10)

The Blues Brothers mistake picture

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:09:30)

Continuity mistake: When we see the Nazis 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.] (02:05:45)

Continuity mistake: 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. (02:11:50)

The Blues Brothers mistake picture

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. (02:08:05)

Revealing mistake: During the last chase scene, pursued by the Nazis, 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. (02:10:45)

Elwood: It's 106 miles to Chicago, we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses.
Jake: Hit it.

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Trivia: This movie set a long-standing Guinness World Record for the largest number of automobiles ever destroyed in a movie, 104, including 60 refurbished and reinforced police cars wrecked (most beyond repair) in the various chase scenes. This record held until the belated sequel, "Blues Brothers 2000," (1998) deliberately set the new record by wrecking one additional automobile for a total of 105.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: It possibly depends on what one counts as "destroyed." Sources suggest there were 104 cars destroyed in BB, with 105 in BB2000. The record has been broken several times since and now stands at 532. It'd be great to see evidence of the numbers for verification. whatculture.com/film/20-things-you-didn't-know-about-the-blues-brothers?page=12 www.startrescue.co.uk/news/top-10/the-10-films-that-destroyed-the-most-cars.

The trivia entry is mostly correct and doesn't need a correction. Just a word change to make it accurate. "Blues Brothers" (1980) did hold the record. 60 police cars were wrecked, but so were an additional 43 cars for a total of 103. "Blues Brothers 2000" beat their own record by 1 car. It seems person who made the entry found on the internet that "Blues Brothers" wrecked 60 cop cars and thought that was the record and assumed 61 was the new record.

Bishop73

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Question: There is a Blues Brothers song, sang by Elwood and Jake themselves, "I'm a Sole Man". However, this song does not appear in the film, but is often related to their band. Was the song supposed to be in the movie? Is it a deleted scene? If it is, can someone tell me when it was supposed to appear?

Answer: It's called "Soul Man". The Blues Brothers exist as an entity seperate to the film - they originated as a band performing on Saturday Night Live. The band continued, releasing an album in 1978, entitled "Briefcase Full Of Blues", which contained the track Soul Man, as well as many others. This was followed by the film two years later, the soundtrack of which formed the band's second album. None of the tracks from their first album appear in the film - a third album followed shortly after the film, again containing non-film tracks.

Tailkinker

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