Into The Night (1985) is an American
comedy/
adventure motion
picture directed by
John Landis, and
starring
Jeff Goldblum and
Michelle Pfeiffer. The film is notable for
a large number of cameo appearances made by various filmmakers and
directors, including Landis himself. The soundtrack features the
songs '
In the Midnight Hour'
and '
Lucille', performed by
African-American
blues guitarist
B.B. King. While the
picture was being filmed, Landis was still caught up in the
controversy surrounding his previous release,
Twilight Zone: The Movie
(1983), during the filming of which an helicopter accident led to
the deaths of
Vic Morrow and two Asian
child actors.
Plot
Upon
discovering that his wife is having an affair, depressed insomniac
Ed Okin (Jeff Goldblum) drives
aimlessly around Los
Angeles
; he ends up at the airport, where he is surprised
by a beautiful jewel smuggler, Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer), who lands on his car
and begs him to drive her away from four Iranian secret police
agents who are chasing her. She persuades him to drive her
to various locations, and he becomes embroiled in her predicament.
After becoming increasingly exasperated with her demands, he
discovers that Diana has smuggled priceless emeralds from the
Shah of Iran's treasury into
the country, and is being pursued by various assorted assailants,
including the aforementioned
SAVAK agents and
a British hitman (
David Bowie).
The couple's caper gets increasingly out of hand, until Diana is
eventually taken hostage by the SAVAK thugs at the airport; here,
Ed finally comes into his own, saving the day and curing his
insomnia and acute boredom in the process.
Cast
Cameo Appearances
John Landis appears in
the film himself as the mute member of the quartet of Iranian
henchmen, alongside:
- Jack
Arnold, director of science
fiction films including It Came from Outer Space
(1953), as the man with the dog in the elevator.
- Rick
Baker, Academy
Award-winning make-up artist on An American Werewolf in
London (1981), as the drug dealer.
- David
Cronenberg, director of body
horror films including Shivers (1975) and Rabid (1977), as Ed's supervisor in the
boardroom.
- Jonathan Demme,
Academy Award-winning director of
The Silence of the
Lambs (1991), as the thin federal agent with glasses.
- Richard
Franklin, Australian
director of Roadgames (1981), as
the aerospace engineer sitting next to Herb in the cafeteria.
- Carl Gottlieb,
who co-wrote Jaws (1975), as
the large federal agent with moustache.
- Amy Heckerling,
director of Fast Times
at Ridgemont High (1982) and Clueless (1996), as the clumsy waitress.
- Jim Henson, creator
of The Muppets, as the man on
the phone talking to 'Bernie'.
- Colin Higgins,
who wrote Harold and Maude
(1971) and directed The Best Little
Whorehouse in Texas (1982), as the actor in the hostage
film.
- Lawrence
Kasdan, writer and director of Body Heat (1981), as the police detective who
interrogates Bud.
- Jonathan Lynn,
writer of Yes, Minister, as
the tailor who fits the SAVAK agents.
- Paul Mazursky,
director of Bob & Carol & Ted
& Alice (1969) and An Unmarried Woman (1978) as Bud
Herman, the beachhouse owner and accused drug dealer.
- Carl Perkins,
rockabilly musician and composer of
'Blue Suede Shoes', as Mr.
Williams.
- Daniel Petrie,
director of A Raisin in
the Sun (1961), as the director of the hostage film.
- Dedee Pfeiffer,
actress and sister of Michelle
Pfeiffer, as the hooker.
- Waldo Salt, Academy Award-winning screenwriter of
Midnight Cowboy (1969) and
Coming Home (1978), as the
derelict who informs Ed of his car having been towed.
- Don Siegel, director
of Invasion of the
Body Snatchers (1956) and Dirty
Harry (1971), as the man caught with a girl in the hotel
bathroom.
- Roger Vadim,
director of And
God Created Woman (1956) and Barbarella (1968), as Monsieur
Melville, the French kidnapper.
Critical reception
Into The Night has a rating of 38% on
Rotten Tomatoes, based on 21 critics'
reviews, indicating a mixed critical reception.
Vincent Canby in the
New York Times wrote: "A little bit of
Into The Night is funny, a lot of it is grotesque and all
of it has the insidey manner of a movie made not for the rest of us
but for moviemakers on the Bel Air circuit who watch each other's
films in their own screening rooms." He reserved praise, however,
for the performances of the two leading actors: "Mr. Goldblum does
little except react to the outrages of others, which he manages
with a good deal of comic poise. Miss Pfeiffer, last seen as
Al Pacino's cocaine-zonked wife in
Scarface, is so
beautiful that one is apt not to notice that she has the potential
for being a fine comedienne."
Variety held a similar view, writing
that the "film itself tries sometimes too hard for laughs and at
other times strains for shock," while also praising the performance
of Jeff Goldblum, "nonetheless enjoyable as he constantly tries to
figure out just what he's doing in all of this."
Some critics saw the large number of cameo appearances by Landis's
friends and colleagues as unnecessary and distracting.
Roger Ebert in the
Chicago Sun-Times wrote: "If I had
been the agent for one of the stars, like Goldblum, Michelle
Pfeiffer, Richard Farnsworth or Kathryn Harrold, I think I would
have protested to the front office that Landis was engaging in
cinematic auto-eroticism and that my clients were getting lost in
the middle of the family reunion."
Time
Out wrote: "The casting of innumerable major film-makers
in small roles seems an unnecessary bit of elbow-jogging, but David
Bowie makes an excellent contribution as an English hit man, and
the two leading players are excellent: Pfeiffer in particular takes
the sort of glamorous yet preposterous part that generally defeats
even the best actress and somehow contrives to make it credible
every inch of the way."
References
External links