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Volvo: Safety Beyond the Star RatingsThe Blues Brothers’ Epic Car Chases
Chock full of celebrity cameos, gags, and musical numbers, The Blues Brothers is also one of the greatest car movies of all time.Music, Comedy, and Cars
The Blues Brothers, starring John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd, is ostensibly a comedy, but it is also much more than that. It’s a musical, with cameos featuring Areatha Franklin, James Brown, and Cab Calloway to name just a few. It’s also an epic, as Elwood Blues makes clear with his insistent refrain: “We’re on a mission from God.” But above all, The Blues Brothers is one of the greatest car movies of all time.
First, there’s the “Bluesmobile,” Elwood’s Dodge Monaco. And then there are the numerous car chases which variably involve an RV, Ford station wagons, and dozens upon dozens of police cars many of which crash spectacularly. In fact, The Blues Brothers briefly held the record for the number of cars destroyed in production at 104, surpassed by The Junkman, H.B. Halicki’s follow up to the original Gone in 60 Seconds, with 130 wrecks. The final, operatic sequence of The Blues Brothers contains one of the greatest, most over-the-top car chases ever put to film.
The Bluesmobile
The automotive hijinks begin almost immediately. The movie begins with Elwood Blues (Dan Akroyd) picking up his brother Jake following a stint in Joliet Penitentiary. Rather than the Caddy “Bluesmobile” Jake remembers, Elwood is driving a Dodge Monaco, and not just any Monaco but a former cop car. When Jake expresses is disapproval, Elwood decides to show him how worthy the Monaco is by jumping the 95th street drawbridge. Jake begrudgingly admits the car has a lot of pickup. Elwood adds: “It’s got a cop motor, a 440 cubic-inch plant. It’s got cop tire, cop suspension, cop shocks. It was a model made before catalytic converters, so it’ll run good on regular gas. Whattaya say, is it the new Bluemobile or what?” To which Jake replies, “Fix the cigarette lighter.”
Later on in the movie, the Bluemobile gains a massive loudspeaker on its roof to help spread the word for the Blue Brothers’ big concert. Legend has it this speaker was fashioned after the air-raid siren speaker used at Dan Akroyd’s elementary school. *
Mall Chase
The movie’s almost perpetual chase begins when Elwood is pulled over by the cops. With outstanding warrants, Elwood guns the throttle of the Monaco as Sam & Dave’s “Hold On, I’m Comin’” blasts from the stereo. Elwood tries to elude the cops in a mall parking lot but has trouble shaking their tail, his solution? Take a shortcut through the mall. The driving and stunt work here are impressive as plate glass is shattered and storefronts obliterated with the brothers careening through the mall like a black and white pinball, patrol cars in hot pursuit.
This first chase illustrates what makes the car chases in The Blues Brothers so great: that these late 1970s boats are not built for this. Straight-line speed is one thing, but watching these Dodge Monacos (yes, the patrol cars are also Monacos) fishtail through high-speed cornering makes clear how far from The Fast & The Furious we really are. The other great part of this chase is the faces of the two state troopers, Daniel and Mount, who are stoic and steely throughout, as if all this motorized mayhem were just another day at the office.
Making “Friends” Along the Way
The brother’s “Mission from God” involves them getting $5,000 to pay the property taxes on the Catholic orphanage where they grew up. Their plan? Get the band back together. Along the way, the brothers traverse Chicago, reuniting the band, meeting not a few musical legends along the way, and doing everyone a favor in running a group of protesting “Illinois Nazis” off a bridge.
The band’s first new gig is at a rural honky-tonk, Bob’s Country Bunker. Masquerading as The Good Ol’ Boys country and western band, the Blues Brothers perform a ripping rendition of the Rawhide to crash of many a broken beer bottle. Despite winning the crowd’s approval, the brothers end up owing a large bar tab. The situation gets stickier when the real Good Ol’ Boys show up late for their gig. Jake and Elwood wisely race off in the Bluesmobile with The Good Ol’ Boys and the bar owner pursuing in a custom painted Fleetwood Southwind RV. This chase ends abruptly when the troopers from the mall chase collide with the speeding RV, allowing Jake and Elwood a clean getaway.
In addition to cops, a honky-tonk band, and Pinto-driving Illinois Nazis, the brothers are harried throughout the movie by a mystery woman (Carrie Fisher) wielding a flamethrower, rocket launcher, machine gun, among other implements of destruction who drives a ratty Pontiac Grand Prix.
A Crescendo of Pile Ups
Being on the run from all these folks doesn’t distract from the brothers’ mission, getting that $5,000 for the orphanage. Their hopes for doing so lay in one big gig at the Palace Hotel. The show goes off, despite a few hitches, with Jake and Elwood making haste to get the gate money to the county assessor’s office. Of course, the concert has attracted the attention of Chicago’s finest as well as the Good Ol’ Boys all of whom are waiting to get a piece of the brothers.
As Jake and Elwood prepare to make their escape, Elwood makes clear the challenge, “It’s a hundred and six miles to Chicago. We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it’s dark, and we’re wearing sunglasses.” Jake tells him, “Hit it!” And thus begins The Blues Brothers’s epic car chase.
Elwood’s sabotaging of the police cars gives the brothers a good head start, and glue on the throttle of the Good Ol’ Boys RV takes them out early in the chase. Followed by a phalanx of wailing patrol cars, the brothers and their Monaco speed down the highway through the night and into the next day. A rapid change of route from Elwood leaves a large contingent of cop cars in a gnarled tangle in the highway median, and troopers Daniel and Mount and Jake’s parole officer (John Candy) crashing into the back of a trailer truck.
Sweet Home Chicago
When brothers finally reach Chicago the car stunts escalate rapidly. Elwood’s expert driving makes up for the Bluemobile’s natural handling deficits, leaving many a patrol car fishtailing or outright crashing, often into other police cars. There are some great shots that director John Landis gets of the Bluemobile rocketing down the streets under the L-train. According to Landis, the shot of the speedometer hitting 118 mph was legit for this sequence which ends with the movie’s largest pileup of cop cars.
The Illinois Nazis join the chase midway through, having picked up word from their police scanner. They follow the brothers on a closed section of freeway in their Ford Pinto and Ford LTD wagons. This leads to the movie’s most improbable bit of automotive physics when Jake and Elwood nearly run off the end of an unfinish section of road. Teetering on the brink, Elwood hits reverse which not only takes the Bluesmobile backward but flips it end over end, vaulting the Nazis’ Pinto which sails off the edge to the tune of Wagner’s “Flight of the Valkyries,” naturally.
Jake and Elwood make it to the county offices just in time. They hop out of the Bluesmobile just in time for the car to literally fall to pieces. A brief elevator ride later, the orphanage is saved and the National Guard finally apprehend the Blue Brothers.
Notable Car Cameos
1967 Cadillac Calais Flower Car
The ’67 Cadillac Calis flower car was driven by Curtis (Cab Calloway) as he and the kids passed out fliers to promote the concert. A flower car, in case you’re wondering, is a car specially modified to carry large flower arrangements in a funeral procession.
1974 Jaguar XK-E
This car was driven by the English woman (Twiggy) Jake and Elwood meet at the gas station.
*As a historical aside, the Cold War-era air raid siren built by Chrysler and powered by a 331 cu.-in. Hemi V8 holds the record for the loudest such siren ever created, making 138 decibels at 100 ft.
Ok, will the Cadillac CT6 become a collectible?
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