Goofs for
The Blues Brothers (1980) More at IMDb Pro »

• Continuity: During the actual drawbridge jump, the two halves of the bridge are much closer together and at a slightly lower angle than they were moments before, and have momentarily stopped moving.
  
  
• Continuity: While in the shopping centre, the outside of the overturned police car during shots of the interior of the car suggests that the car was flat on its roof. However the exterior shots of the car show the car on an angle.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Elwood accelerates the car to jump the bridge, the wheels lock up rather than spin.
  
  

• Continuity: As Elwood and Jake spin through an intersection in the first chase scene, the background momentarily rotates in the wrong direction.
  
  
• Continuity: When Elwood and Jake are barricading themselves into the office building, they tip two vending machines onto their sides. Jake's lands on its side, and Elwood's lands at an angle on Jakes. However, in the next shot they are both laying perfectly flat.
  
  
• Continuity: Five rockets are fired from a four-tube rocket launcher.
  
  
• Continuity: The sliding door on the refrigerator behind the counter in the Soul Food Cafe during the song.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: In the downtown Chicago chase scene near the end, there is a visible wooden ramp during a police car pileup.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: During the chase scene in the mall, a police car flips over and the ramp used to flip it is clearly visible.
  
  
• Continuity: When the Blues Brothers are being chased down Lower Wacker Drive after "flying" over a police car, cars on Upper Wacker Drive disappear.
  
  
• Continuity: Quantity and content of trash on dash of Elwood and Jakes' car during final chase scene.
  
  
• Continuity: During the chase from Lake Wassapamani to Chicago, IHP patrol car #55 looses control, goes airborne and then crashes into the trailer of a large truck. The sky at this time is totally cloudy. When Mercer finishes talking on the police radio, the sky is now almost totally clear with either a rising or setting sun in the background.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: During the downtown Chicago chase scene, the shadow of the camera can be seen on the hood of the Blues Brothers' car in two adjacent shots.
  
  
• Continuity: Number of bullet holes in the door of the assessor's office.
  
  
• Factual errors: When the brothers come from the stairwell onto the Assessor's office floor, they barricade the heavy fire door from the office side (which makes for a good forced entry by the cops) but fire doors have to open toward the stairwell to prevent people from being trapped against it. (One might argue that the municipal building predated the fire codes...but it is an upgraded steel fire door.)
  
  
• Incorrectly regarded as goofs: Lake Wasapamanni is 106 miles north of Chicago, placing it in Wisconsin, yet Illinois state troopers show up. But considering the attitude of the Illinois police in the film to personal rights ("Use of unnecessary violence in the apprehension of The Blues Brothers has been approved"), they wouldn't be likely to care about jurisdiction either.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the crowd's stony silence after Jake and Elwood's debut at the concert, an extra in the audience can clearly be seen making a face at the camera.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jake and Elwood talk with the record executive backstage, they are alternately dripping with sweat and not.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During one of the verses in "Sweet Home Chicago," Elwood's backing vocals are heard, even though he is on the stage catwalk dancing.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During "Sweet Home Chicago", there is the sound of a baritone sax solo, but no one on stage is playing a baritone sax.(Tom Scott played bari for the BB band on SNL, but did not appear in this movie)
  
  
• Continuity: When the cops hit the truck with the good ole boys inside, the vehicles collide then stop and the wreckage falls. In the next shot, the cars and wreckage stop in different places.
  
  
• Continuity: As Jake and Elwood stand up after the rocket shooting, their shoulders are clean. When they go upstairs in the next shot, stone debris falls off their shoulders.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the police car is turned over in the mall, as it is still spinning, you can see that it is spinning on some sort of rotating plate.
  
  
• Continuity: The number of pieces of chair around Jake at the bottom of the stairs.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Elwood's hotel building is blown up, the sign attached to the corner of the building doesn't move at all.
  
  
• Continuity: When Elwood's hotel building is blown up, the light bar on the State Trooper's car disappears.
  
  
• Continuity: Mr. Fabulous reacts twice when Jake and Elwood enter the posh restaurant.
  
  
• Continuity: When Elwood goes into his boss' office to quit his job, he drops his briefcase almost in the center of floor outside the office. When he leaves the office and opens the door, the briefcase is no longer in the center and has moved to the left.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: There are female backup vocalists in "Someone to Love", but none onstage.
  
  
• Continuity: When James Brown is singing, he clearly has the microphone in his hand as he sings to the right-hand side of the congregation, yet in the next shot, he is seen taking the mike out of the mike stand in the pulpit.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the state trooper crash, Car 73 appears to crash down the embankment twice.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: In the final chase with the Illinois Nazis, the Blues-Mobile is flipped upside down. A piece of equipment (evidently to push up the front of the car) can be seen rising from the street and flipping hood of the car backwards.
  
  
• Continuity: In the final chase with the Illinois Nazis we see the Nazis in the alley, as the Blues Mobile passes it starts moving, however when we see the Nazi leader the car is not moving.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the end Jail House Rock scene, every guard is carrying a shotgun. In real prisons, guards do not carry guns due to the fact that if the prisoners riot, they would then be armed.
  
  
• Continuity: When Elwood hits the Oldsmobile store in the mall the passenger-side headlight is destroyed. However when they "leave" the mall through the JC Penny's window the headlight is not damaged at all.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: Prior to colliding with The Good Ol' Boys' RV, the two state troopers are shown parked behind a ground-level billboard. They then spot "... that shitbox Dodge again", and gear up for the chase. However, when the switch is made to the external shot, the troopers' car can clearly be seen moving at full speed from a place somewhere to the right of the billboard and passing behind it, at which point the crash with the RV occurs.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During the big concert, when the camera cuts to views from the audience several times quickly, the claps are not cued correctly in some of the shots, so that the people are clapping on the downbeat and the sound of the claps comes on the off-beat.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: During the final concert, as Jake and Elwood are walking off stage, we hear a sax solo. There is a quick shot of Blue Lou during the solo, and he is not playing the sax.
  
  
• Continuity: When Jake and Elwoood enter the orphanage there is no door visible to their right. However, when Jake is lying on the floor after his fall down the stairs, Curtis is standing in the doorway and a dormitory is visible behind him.
  
  
• Crew or equipment visible: During a wide shot of Jake and Elwood standing at the back of the Triple Rock Baptist Church, a crew member runs across the background.
  
  
• Continuity: In the middle of the Triple Rock Church scene, Elwood and Jake "get religion" and start to dance at the back of the church. When they cut away to a high shot that shows the entire congregation, you can clearly see Elwood and Jake at the back of the church just standing there. When they return the shot to the two of them, they are dancing wildly again.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: During the big concert at the end, when Jake and Elwood are being introduced, it's obvious that Willie is not hitting the cymbal and is, in stead, playing air drums.
  
  
• Continuity: After the Illinois Nazi's Pinto crashes through the street, Elwood guns the engine and the Bluesmobile leaps over the hole. On the landing, the Bluesmobile's right tail light is out, but when we see the car again, just before it falls apart, both tail lights are working.
  
  
• Continuity: After the scene in the Country Bunker, the Bluesmobile's back windshield is shot out. It stays missing until the car is entering lower Wacker drive. As the car descends the ramp, lights can be seen reflecting off the rear windshield, but later in the chase, it's gone again.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: In the beginning of the movie when Jake is receiving his items from the prison office, he drums his fingers on the counter and you can clearly see that his name, "JAKE", is tattooed onto the fingers of his left hand. On the front cover of the movie box, the name is tattooed on his right hand instead.
  
  
• Continuity: During the "Stand by your Man" song, drummer Willie uses a metallic brush stick and a normal stick. At the end of the song, the brush stick disappears and Willie is shown using two regular drum sticks.
  
  
• Factual errors: The PA speaker the Blues Brothers use for announcing their concert is shown to be an outdoor warning siren taken from a children's play area. These air powered sirens are not capable of audio reproduction, but you clearly see Elwood talking into a microphone and sounding amplified through the siren held on the roof as they are promoting the concert.
  
  
• Miscellaneous: At the end of the movie, when the band members are being identified, and each of them plays a lick on his instrument, Tom Bones Malone plays his trombone left handed (the slide has been twisted to the left side of the bell; the right side it normal).
  
  
• Errors in geography: In front of the palace hotel is an Ohio flag.
  
  
• Continuity: During the police chase, a number of the crashed cars clearly do not have anyone riding in them.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the police officers are emerging from the debris of the building that Carrie Fisher blew up, a brick sits on the brim of one officer's hat without bending the hat or causing the officer to tilt his head under the weight, signifying that it is not a real brick.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When the Blues Brothers drive through the grocery store, customers and employees are seen running towards the camera, turning left (their right) off camera to avoid the oncoming car. The last person - an employee - actually bumps into the camera before turning, jarring the camera.
  
  
• Errors in geography: The Illinois Nazis' automobile flies off the overpass near and in the direction of Lake Michigan. However, the car somehow lands in the opposite direction, apparently near downtown Chicago.
  
  
• Audio/visual unsynchronized: When Jake and Elwood are getting hit by the Nun, the curses they're saying don't match up with their mouths.
  
  
• Continuity: In the mall, Elwood notes that the "new Oldsmobiles are in early this year." The poster says 1980 Olds. New models normally came out in the fall preceding the model year - this would make the date sometime at least as early as fall 1979. Later the Clarion Records exec. says he was a bouncer at the Palace "back in the 70s" indicating that the current date is sometime in the 1980s.
  
  
• Continuity: During the first song "Everybody" at the concert, the Duck's pipe smoke disappears and reappears during far away and up close shots.
  
  
• Factual errors: During the opening song at Bob's Country Bunker Jake & Elwood say they are happy to be here in Kokomo. As soon as they leave Bob's County Bunker they are chased by the Good Old Boys and the Illinois State Police. However there is not a Kokomo, IL. The nearest Kokomo is in Indiana so they would be chased by Indiana State Police and not Illinois State Police.
  
  
• Continuity: During the performance of Rawhide, a long shot shows Jake walking over and taking the whip off the wall. Two camera cuts later, there is the closeup shot of Jake noticing the whip on the wall and starting over to pick it up.
  
  
• Errors in geography: When returning to Chicago from Wisconsin, Jake and Elwood approach the city from the south, entering Lake Shore Drive from McCormick Place, when in reality, they should have approached the city from the north, as the police officer had stated earlier that the brothers were southbound. Jake and Elwood ultimately would have had to drive through the city to reach that location, short of driving west by dozens of miles to bypass it.
  
  
• Continuity: Elwood takes two spray cans from work, before quitting, and puts them in his briefcase - they do not have labels on them. When he takes one out of the briefcase to spray glue on the Good Ole' Boys Winnebago's accelerator the can has a label saying it is marine epoxy.
  
  
• Revealing mistakes: When Carrie Fisher handles a model airplane radio control transmitter when she prepares it for the remote control exploding of the hotel, the power switch in the transmitter is off. Also, she moves the left control stick with no purpose at all.
  
  
• Errors made by characters (possibly deliberate errors by the filmmakers): During Aretha Franklin's "Think" number, the backup singer in the postal uniform continues to lip-sync the word "Freedom", when that part of the backup vocal is over, and makes an obvious mid-word stop upon realizing her mistake.
  
  
• Continuity: When being chased by the Illinois Nazis, the Bluesmobile comes to a halt and just misses falling over the edge of an incomplete bridge. Elwood then throws the car into reverse and the force of the car's acceleration causes it to flip on its own rear-bumper and leap over the pursuing car. However, the way the car is shown rotating in mid-air (edge over edge), it should have landed still pointing in the same direction it was traveling before the flip. Instead, the car lands pointed in the opposite direction.
  
  

• Revealing mistakes: SPOILER: After Mystery Woman bombs the transients' hotel, Jake and Elwood emerge from rubble made of obvious fake "stage bricks". Stage bricks are brick-colored lightweight-material safety blocks used to reduce injury to actors during destructive special effects shots. Despite their convincing coloration, stage bricks are readily noticeable because (unlike real structural brick debris) they are almost always "clean" : no visible traces of mortar-cement on them.
  
  

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