When I was a kid, I used to go to movies with my friend Jas and his mother, and one thing we’d always do if we liked a movie was sit through the movie for two sittings (can this even be done anymore?) and I remember once even sticking around for the beginning of a third!
One such movie was the 1980 John Landis musical comedy THE BLUES BROTHERS, starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as the titular musical siblings, and not only did we stick around for two showings of this one, we loved the songs and performances so much, we went back with other friends so they could check it out, too!
As a story, the tale is a pretty simple one, (when the brothers find out their old orphanage is going to be sold unless they can come up with the money to pay the back-taxes, they decide to reform their old Rhythm and Blues band up) but when I was watching it again, after all these years, it strikes me how much the IMAGERY of the movie has stayed with me. So many of the scenes are like looking at captures of my childhood!
Really, from the opening scene with Elwood waiting to pick up Jake as he leaves Prison with the sunlight shining from behind him, to the ominous creaky steps up to the Mother Superior’s Room at the orphanage, these are images that have ingrained themselves in my mind, so whenever I read about a prison scene or a church scene in a book or story, these are the pictures I see in my mind!
And one other thing that I’d completely forgotten about was the appearance of Carrie Fisher as Jake’s jilted ex-fiancé- at the time I first saw this movie, it was the first non-Princess Leia role I’d seen her in, and I remember being completely stunned at how pretty she was in “real” clothes, with her hair down looking like a vixen proper as she tried and again and again to assassinate Jake and Elwood!
