Into the Night (1985, USA)

Into the Night is one of those odd movies that I half-remember from when I was in my teens – kind of like Pennies from Heaven or A Boy and His Dog. In one of John Landis’ last decent films before the 90s struck, Jeff Goldblum plays Ed, an office drone with a cheating wife and a brutal case of insomnia. Fed up, he drives to the airport one night looking for an escape. What he finds is an incredibly frantic Michelle Pfeiffer as Diane, on the run after a jewel heist gone wrong. The two spend the next few days criss-crossing Los Angeles, at every point encountering more and more people who want to kill them.

Since I last saw Night a good fifteen or so years ago, I didn’t realize what a quintessential L.A. film it is. Thom Andersen (Los Angeles Plays Itself) must love this movie – to begin with, it’s all about cars and movement. Ed lives under a freeway overpass, he carpools to work in endless traffic jams (alongside a jovial Dan Ackroyd), and he and Diane trade cars at least five times, starting with a ratty old Toyota and ending up in a Ferrari Testarossa. You know – the typical L.A. stuff. The film is also about the landscape of Los Angeles, all of which is only possible because of the automobile (Ed’s endless quest for a cab is only one of many Angeleno in-jokes). From Ed’s anonymous commuter neighborhood, to LAX, the marina, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and back through West L.A. to the airport again, I’ve rarely seen an L.A. movie cover more ground than Night. It also covers a good deal of the Los Angeles population, including weirdo Elvis impersonators, Hollywood bimbos and studio moguls, West Side Persians, and the wealthy underground that only a few ever see.

As much as Night is about L.A., it’s about the movies, too, and film geeks like me will likely delight at the endless cameos, including Rick Baker, Roger Vadim, Jim Henson, David Cronenberg, Amy Heckerling, and Jonathan Demme. Not to mention David Bowie’s hilarious bit as a confused killer-for-hire, and Landis himself as one of the Iranian thugs chasing after Diana and Ed. The good thing is that so many of these people are strictly behind-the-camera and below-the-line players, so it doesn’t disrupt the flow for anyone not interested in nerding out. Indeed, Night is smart and tongue-in-cheek, moving along at a rapid clip and displaying a ruthless sense of humor. Goldblum’s weird intensity and spacey demeanor makes him an oddly fitting choice for a burnt-out urbanite, and he shares surprising chemistry with a luminous twenty-six-year-old Pfeiffer. It’s amazing to remember how gorgeous these two were in their prime, and Night is a slick and quirky offbeat Hollywood time capsule, perfectly deserving of a cult audience.