Director Report Card: John Landis (1985) Part One

8. Into the Night

The tragic incident on the set of the “Twilight Zone” movie should have ended John Landis' career. Instead, his friends at Universal Studios – especially Sean Daniel, the company's president – rallied around him. Production started quickly enough on a new film, a thriller with comedy elements called “Into the Night.” Three weeks into filming, Landis was called away to stand trial for manslaughter. What the hell was the studio going to do if he had gone to jail? That didn't happen but, perhaps, there is some karmic justice in the universe after all. “Into the Night' would become the first big flop of Landis' career.

Ed Okin, a middle-age engineer, can't sleep for some reason. He feels a lack of satisfaction with his life. After discovering his wife is cheating on him, he goes for a late night drive. Driving to the airport, about to leave Las Vegas on a friend's recommendation, something unexpected happens. A beautiful woman named Diana, pursued by mysterious Iranian hitmen, leaps into his car. The two are soon pursued through Los Angeles by the men. Diana, it turns out, is an amateur jewel smuggler and has been drawn into an international conspiracy. Ed, quite unexpectedly, is pulled along on an adventure that will change his life.

“Into the Night' is one of those tiresome narratives about a mediocre white man having a mid-life crisis. Ed, by all accounts, has his shit together. Dude is married, with a nice home and a comfortable job. Yet, for whatever reason, he feels utterly empty inside presumably because he has no real problems in his life. Naturally, the movie introduces a series of events that will sweep him away on a wacky adventure, making him a hero, and earning him the love of a beautiful woman. The script was by Ron Koslow, best known for creating the “Beauty and the Beast” TV series. He's written at least three other movies about people having existential crises, so I guess this was his things. This kind of facile wish fulfillment story can't help but come off as the desperate pleading of a boring guy who, I don't know, should just have an affair instead.

In order to justify its set-up, “Into the Night” cooks up a needlessly convoluted plot. It starts out simply enough. Diana is being chased by some bad dudes, working for the nationally recognized enemy-of-America at the time. It starts out simple enough, with the reveal that she's smuggling some priceless crown jewels. From there, more false leads and entanglements are introduced. Eventually, three different parties, possibly in the employ of different nebulous forces, are after her. Unrelated outside individuals get caught up in the crossfire. It's all an awful lot to keep track of and the script eventually collapses under its own weight.

There's another big difference between “Into the Night” and John Landis' earlier movies. It's not funny. The film has elements in it that seem like they should be jokes. Diane's brother is an Elvis impersonator, his apartment covered with memorabilia and his car painted in a similarly ostentatious manner. It's silly but the movie never uses this absurd situation to generate any laughs, just putting the weirdness up on the screen. Similarly, there are multiple drawn-out scenes of the Iranians tearing up a fancy yacht, which feels like it should be some sort of excessive joke. Instead, no punch line ever comes. There's a lot of moments like that in “Into the Night,” absurd situations that never generate any laughs. I'm not even sure if they are meant to be jokes.

There are some laughs in “Into the Night,” brief though they may be. The funniest moment feels almost thrown in, simply for the heck of it. While hanging out on a film set, Ed makes repeated attempts to lean against various props. Each one collapses against him. It's an amusing bit of physical comedy, making good use of Jeff Goldblum's ability to react to events around him with increasing befuddlement. The group of Iranian hitmen get one or two decent gags to themselves, such as the direct way they open some pistachios while sitting or a waiting room. Or the way they are stymied by simple things like a toll gate or locked door. Other than these brief moments, the laughs simply never come.

Maybe the reason “Into the Night” doesn't work as a comedy because the tone is off. This is a violent movie. Ed comes across four bodies littered across a floor, their throats slashed. In the last act, numerous people are bloodily gunned down, the squips exploding graphically. The film even stops at one point to linger on a minor female character being drowned to death. The violence in “An American Werewolf in London” was sudden and intense but with a reason. Here, the severity of the death scenes come off as needlessly mean-spirited. In light of what was going on in John Landis' life at the time, it even feels distasteful. (The director himself gets gorily gunned down in a hail of gunfire, a choice I can only ponder about the motivation behind.) The movie even kills a dog for no reason, seemingly treating that like a punchline in of itself.

“Into the Night” was made during that brief period when Jeff Goldblum was a commercially viable leading man. Occasionally, Goldblum displays flashes of brilliance throughout “Into the Night's” overlong run time. When stalling for time in the last act, he distracts the bad guys by delivering a series of increasingly bizarre job descriptions. In that scene, you can see the oddball glee in Goldblum's eyes that would make him a living meme thirty years later. Throughout most of the movie though, Goldblum seems more dazed than anything else. He perhaps does too good of a job of playing a man suffering through soul-draining ennui.

Starring opposite Goldblum is Michelle Pfeiffer, in her first big role after “Scarface.” Pfeiffer is, easily, one of the highlights of “Into the Night.” There's a moment, in-between the various shoot-outs and car chases, where Ed and Diane get a quiet moment in a diner. The two bond over some banana split sundaes. You see the sparkle in Pfeiffer's crystal blue eyes, the gleam in that dynamite smile. She's absolutely charming. She also has the kind of vulnerability that is irresistible, which is good for a character who spends the entire movie imperiled by one set of bad guys or another. When you see the combination of qualities Pfeiffer has here, easily rising above the mediocre material, you wonder why she wasn't an even bigger star.

Landis and his team gathered together an eclectic blend of actors, for the various supporting roles. Dan Aykroyd appears earlier on, as a friend of Ed's, and gets prominent billing. You'd think he'd play a bigger role but, after that one scene, he's never seen again. Clu Gallagher is typically blustery as a FBI agent hat shows up near the end. Bruce McGill reappears from “Animal House,” this time playing the Elvis-obsessed brother. He doesn't get to display the same comedic energy he showed there. Most prominently, two musician appear in notable roles. David Bowie has a brilliantly entertaining role as a rival hitman, pulling off a unique mix of charm and threatening. He gets into a knife fight with Carl Perkins while “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein” plays in the background, a truly bizarre sequence of events.

These are not the only examples non-actors appearing in the film. Landis packs “Into the Night's” minor supporting roles with director friends of his. At times, the movie feels like a game of Who's Who for movie nerds. Roger Vadim and Paul Mazursky even have prominent roles as characters part of the film's tangled conspiracy. David Cronenberg, a year before directing Goldblum in “The Fly,” appears as his boss here. Jack Arnold is the man with the dead dog, Paul Bartel is a hotel doorman, Jim Henson is a man talking on a phone Amy Heckerling is a clumsy waitress, and those are just the most obvious ones. Apparently Jonathan Demme and Don Siegal, among many others, are in there somewhere too. Some have theorize that all these cameos exist because Landis' friends and colleagues were gathering around him during his difficult time. If that's true, it honestly might make me like some filmmakers I respect less...

I have no idea what attracted John Landis to this material, as the script contains few of the trademarks I associate with his work. It doesn't have the peppy editing and pacing that characterized his earlier comedies. You can see some of his trademarks here. There's some establishing shots of Los Angeles and Vegas, perhaps an attempt to establish a sense of place like in “Trading Places.” “See You Next Wednesday” is spotted briefly in the background. B.B. King is on the soundtrack, though the synth-laden theme song has to be among his weaker songs. (Landis directed three King music videos that tied into the film, two of which feature cameos from Goldblum, Pfiefer, Aykroyd, Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy.) There's also plenty of gratuitous nudity.

Otherwise, I'm really not sure why John Landis wanted to make “Into the Night.” Maybe he was just happy to get any job at all, after killing two kids and a beloved character actor. The movie, on account of not being very good, earned poor reviews and apathetic box office.  Despite the film's seeming disconnect with the rest of his output, the director is apparently fond of it. He's defended it a few times over the years. Many were baffled then by just how much “Into the Night” simply doesn't work. I still think that's true. There's something deeply off about “Into the Night,” the movie's many elements all seeming at odds with each other. [Grade: C-]