The Blues Brothers is one of my favorite movies of all time. In fact, it may just be THE best movie in the world. That iconic chase scene, with Royal Monacos (and John Candy!) flying every which way is a classic, especially to folks with gasoline in their veins. This modified clip of the chase scene, found on Youtube, is even zanier than the original.
A word of advice: do not watch this clip while drinking any type of beverage–it may result in less-than-desirable side effects.
The redesigned 1974 C-body Dodges may have been a flop commercially, but Elwood Blues’s ’74 Monaco sedan was a star. Too bad the movie didn’t come out when the 1974-77 Monacos were still in production; maybe it would have helped sales.
And while Dodge tried to market the Royal Monaco as a full-size luxury car (exemplified by the ’76 brochure below), I will always associate these cars with this classic movie from 1980. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have an Orange Whip…who wants one?
Blues Brothers is a fine movie but in my opinion The Last Picture Show has it beat by a mile, and it has some great old Fords too!
Apples and Oranges, FSO!
Anyone know how many Monacos were trashed int the chase scene. Must be an all time record. Well they were not the greatest iron on the road at the time so no great loss. Now had they been Caprice Classics it would have been a tragedy!
There was probably nothing in 1980 with lower resale value than a 1974 Dodge Monaco.
On the Blu Ray edition, the first movie I bought on Blu Ray after I got the player, they claim it set a new record of the number of vehicles destroyed, not to be broken until Blues Brothers 2000. The problem was they weren’t all 74-77 Monacos in the crashes under and a around Lower Wacker drive you see some earlier Dodges and few Chevies thrown in since they couldn’t find enough Monacos. IIRC the number the quoted was 101 total cars.
You can count me in as one who thinks the original Blues Brothers is one of the greatest movies of all time.
I believe that this was the only movie in which Cab Calloway and a Dodge Monaco appeared onscreen together. 🙂
Never thought of it before, but I assume there was no shortage of Royal Monaco parts in the Chicago area for quite some time after filming those scenes. Some scrapyard was awash in wrecked Dodges.
They were probably all ex-Mount Prospect police cars!
The owner of Jerry’s Valley Auto in Lemont, Il used to claim to have the majority of the ones that weren’t completely destroyed. The Front or Rear clips were chopped off and put up on racks right next to the Rt83 Bridge.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/83385870@N00/1519222103/
I lived with my grandmother while attending Georgia Tech, and we loved any movie with car chases (Dukes of Hazzard was on back then, so we had a steady diet). The Blues Brothers was on TV at least twice I can remember, and it was easily both our favorite movie… (c:
The part of the Blues Brothers chase scene where elevated highway ends (and the cars “fly” off into the air) was filmed in Milwaukee. There was an uncompleted part of the interstate that ended in mid-air near downtown. It has since been torn down.
I think a good portion of the cars were bought from local municipalities, they were about due for replacement, I know that the Mayor of Chicago bent over backwards for the filming, some believe it resulted in her loosing re-election.
I am a Blues Brothers fan through and through.
Imagine trying to get approval to film a car doing a 110 on a public street today let alone something like Lower Wacker drive. Yeah, the City of Chicago bent over backwards for the filming.
Lower Wacker was cool. When they were doing it on Wells under the El? That was wild! It’s hard to believe any of that actually happened.
Elwood’s Flophouse was on Van Buren BTW..
Yup I found that out a few years ago.
Actually, that did not result in Jane Byrne’s election loss. The movie was filmed in 1979 and released in 1980. She was mayor until 1983. Her loss was more attributable to other factors, not the least was her choice to live in Cabrini-Green for a stunt..er..while.
The new Oldsmobiles are out early this year.
Use of excessive force in the apprehension of the Blues Brothers has been approved.
Interestingly enough, the mall used in the filming of the Blues Brothers was a vacant mall at the time the movie was filmed, and has remained vacant since the film wrapped. The forgotten “Dixie Square Mall” is an well documented urban ruin.
Update, the mall was finally demolished, May this year after decades of being vacant.
Thinking about that… There was some serious product placement for that chase. They could have just as easily made up Movieland store names or not shown any marquees.
It shows attention to detal, a funny bit of trivia, the Oldsmobile dealership in the mall was named DePasto Oldsmobile, same as the Oldsmobile dealership in Animal House, both John Landis films.
I never made the Olds connection. Nice!
The attention to detail is nice and I don’t actually think it was done for profit either. If anything they probably had to bribe the companies to use the names in the film..
I’ve been fortunate enough live in the area and visit some of the locations from the film over the years.
The Gas Station where Elwood was working over Twiggy is now just a plain intersection about 5 minutes from me.
Ray’s is now a Pay Day loan joint.. But 15 minutes west on 47th and you’ll find the best burger in Chicago.
Joliet Correctional is now home to the best “Haunted House” In Illinois.
Mrs. Tarantino’s house is 4 doors down from my dad’s childhood home in Cicero and looks almost the same as it did in the movie.
And on and on..
What about the Penguin? Is she still around????
🙂
If you could have only met Sr. Marilyn Hopewell from St. Joseph Academy. 😀
She was more about clipboards than rulers though..
I heard that gas station was somewhere near West Chicago. Is that true? I used to live in West Chicago.
It was WC. Where were you? I’m in “Unincorporated” Winfeld for a little while longer.
I lived in the “Lakewood” subdivision which was close to the North Ave. & I59 subdivision. I had a huge thing for a certain Guleserian girl who lived on Woodvale St. in Winfield some 20 years ago.
Some of the stores were just what was there and in some cases the stores said no you can’t use our name, the Toys R Us was actually a Wallgreens and they were one of the ones that said no don’t show our name.
The JC Penney is interesting in that they just closed one day left the store fully stocked and then about a year later had a sale to clear out all of that merchandise.
Much of the mural on Ray’s music exchange is still there and visible the last time the google street view cam passed by.
They did at least contact JCPenny, the store in the mall still had the old “Pennys” sign, they sign updating and action around the mall when filiming had locals thinking that the mall was going to re-open. Stats on the mall are unreal, it spent 75% of the time existed, it was vacant.
In the dead malls link below or one of the other places where the dead mall was documented 20 plus years after the filming many of the signs were still there or at least parts there of and some of the mall directory flyers that can be found on the internet show that yes indeed they were just what was there when they opened it up to film.
20 years after filming there were no remnants of any “Anchor” Store Signage. I was there in 89 and it looked like a Minuteman misfired and wiped half of the town out. That’s most of Harvey, Il and all of Phoenix,Il though.
It didn’t look anything like the pic below in my lifetime. I can’t fathom the idea that they Dozed a Golf Course to build the Mall.
(Pic stolen from pleasant family shopping blog)
I was referring to the sinage inside the mall.
Believe it or not, there is a group of guys that go around and document the rise and fall of malls. Here is by far the best writeup of Dixie Square Mall…
http://www.deadmalls.com/malls/dixie_square_mall.html
Speaking of Belushi, does anyone remember the SNL skit about a store in a soon-to-be-dead mall? It involved a store that just sold sticky tape.
There are a few movies that are able to bring the atmosphere and ‘feel’ of a major city to the audience. Bullitt and San Francisco is one. The Blues Brothers and Chicago is another. Throughout the movie, everything just ‘feels’ like Chicago. For anyone who has never been to the Windy City but is planning a trip, this movie is a great primer as to what to expect.
Everyone remembers the Monaco, but that’s disingenious to the movie. One of the best, most poignant scenes, is when Jake falls asleep on Elwood’s bed and Elwood stares out the window of his low-rent hotel while the blues play in the background. That’s Chicago. John Belushi was a rabid blues fan and, man, does it show.
If it’s true that Jane Byrne lost the mayoral election because of how much assistance she gave to the makers of the movie, she got a better part of the deal to be a significant part in the making of one of the most iconic movies about Chicago ever made.
True, it is “very Chicago” The seemingly endless stream of L-trains that pass by Elwoods hotel, Wacker Dr, the Richard Daley Plaza with the giant Picasso scupture, (bonus, the office of the accesor of Cook county IS on the 6th floor, it was the office that was trashed) the road block by McCormmick place, Sears Tower & John Hancock center, etc,etc.
Being at the end of the Disco era the movie also helped bring some decent music back into the spotlight.
I was 7 when I saw the film and John Lee Hooker’s Boom Boom has been stuck in my head since.
The Car, Chicago, and the Music were the stars of the film.
I can certainly see the public being unhappy due to all the inconvience of shutting down so many streets for many of the scenes.
I have to say Tom, that was funny 🙂
Didn’t much like the ‘Yakity Sax’ music to the clip. To me, ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ is absolutely perfect for the trip to Chicago in the Monaco. In fact, I would dearly love to have the true soundtrack version of ‘Sweet Home Chicago’ from the movie with the extended instrumental. It’s a great piece of music.
Being that I live in Chicago this movie has always been special to me. My girlfirends parents live in Park Ridge and the scene when the Blues Brothers are first pulled over and begine to run from the Illinois state police was filmed in Park Ridge not far from her parent’s house. I always found it amusing that the chase goes from Prak Ridge to Harvey (Dixie Square Mall) in three minutes. That trip would be closer to 40 minutes and is quite a change in neighborhoods ;).
I don’t drive a ’74 Monaco, but there have been many occasions where me and a friend have hopped into my car and we’ve said that line about the 109 miles to Chicago. Great movie.