Into The Night (1985)

What’s that you say? You’ve never heard of this obscure and frankly terrible comedy/thriller starring Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer and directed by John Landis? Well, you’re not alone. I, too, just discovered this piss-poor piece of shit a few weeks ago while I was trying to find good movie clips of the recently passed away Blues Legend B.B. King.

Not only have I never even heard of it but most of my close filmophile friends had not either. How is this possible really? It was made by comedy-film genius John Landis after Trading Places and before Spies Like Us—two of the funniest films of the 80s! And it’s not like it stars nobody; it has Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Pfeiffer as well as Dan Aykroyd and David Bowie as a hitman! In all my checking and searching with those actors, never has the title Into the Night ever come up. I thought I was missing something really special here. Turns out this movie should be kept sealed up in a large crate like the monster in Creepshow. It’s one of the worst films I ever seen and that says a lot. It was painful to watch this horribly acted, scripted and edited turd. I thought it was a comedy (well, can you blame me it’s directed by Landis and stars Goldblum and has Aykroyd in it. Plus imdb says its a comedy) but I think I chuckled twice and the one time was because it was a cameo by Rick Baker playing a drug dealer. I seriously couldn’t wait for this wretched movie to end and it was an appalling 2 hours long! I really don’t know what Landis was thinking. But I’m sure you there on the other side of the computer screen reading this have never heard of it or hopefully has never seen it but I’m here to tell you—Please don’t waste your precious time. 

The only redeeming thing to come out of this abomination was the music. Like I mentioned earlier, the legendary B.B. King co-scored the film with his signature wailing Blues guitar wizardry. After King died I could’ve sworn he was in many more films or had a hand involved in more films but really no. I thought he was at least involved in Adventures in Babysitting but that was Albert Collins. Just shows how much this suburban white boy knows about the Blues. I fondly remember King being in Landis’ Spies Like Us as the fella who says the infamous line: “Won’t you gentlemen have a Pepsi?” Which was a frequently uttered quote in my silly circle of friends. Sadly, the only movie he was prominently featured in was again Landis’ Blues Brothers 2000, which to this day I still won’t see. I waited over a month to post something about his passing because I wanted to watch Into The Night first because I have always seen this video on YouTube and always laugh my ass off, mainly because of Eddie Murphy’s facial expressions. 

I erroneously assumed that the video was a scene in the film because why would Goldblum, Pfeiffer, Aykroyd, Murphy and Steve Martin be in such a music video? The video was directed by Landis and made for the soundtrack album naturally and is ten times better than the actual film. To make matters worse, Lucille is heard in the film for a scant 25 seconds in a short scene. Baffling to say the least how much wrong surrounded this huge misstep in Landis’ career. The video is fun and entertaining though. It’s a shame that B.B. King wasn’t actually in the film because we all know how charismatic and charming he was and would’ve at least been a silver lining in this thundercloud of shit that the movie became.

So anyway, this is belated but I wish to express my condolences to B.B. King and his family and hope he’s wailing away on a shiny new golden Lucille with the rest of the greats in the after-life. The world is more blue without you.