The Blues Brothers

The Blues Brothers (1980)

82 mistakes - chronological order

(16 votes)

The Blues Brothers mistake picture

Continuity mistake: The sticker on the license plate is in the beginning on the left side (before the Bluesmobile jumps over the bridge), then on the right side (after the Nazis jump from the bridge). (00:08:35 - 00:52:40)

luigimakaroni

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)

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)

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)

The Blues Brothers mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (00:09:40)

Leonard Hassen

The Blues Brothers mistake picture

Revealing mistake: 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. (00:14:40)

The Blues Brothers mistake picture

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:15:45)

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)

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:21:55)

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: 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. (00:23:00)

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)

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:27:35)

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)

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: 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. (00:31:47)

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: 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. (00:35:00)

The Blues Brothers mistake picture

Continuity mistake: 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. (00:39:54)

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)

Police Dispatcher: Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers HAS been approved.

More quotes from The Blues Brothers

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

More trivia for The Blues Brothers

Question: Did John Belushi do all the dancing, especially the turnovers in church, by himself or was it a double?

Answer: It was a double, and the "making of" documentary on the DVD shows this.

David Mercier

To be fair, John did do a lot of flips and dancing as Jake; just not all of them in the movie.

More questions & answers from The Blues Brothers

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