Your favorite cult classic you never knew about.
This past spring, Sarah Jessica Parker sat down with Michelle Pfeiffer to interview her for Variety as a way to promote their respective projects. When the conversation turned to Pfeiffer’s past filmography, Parker declared her favorite movie featuring the actress to be 1985’s Into the Night, exclaiming, “Oh my God, I LOVE THAT MOVIE!” Hearing Parker speak so enthusiastically about what remains a little known ‘80s gem truly warmed my heart given the movie’s ongoing anonymity. It still amazes me that there are so many people who don’t know of Into the Night since, thanks to its comic darkness and wild tone, the film is more or less a west coast equivalent to After Hours. Directed by John Landis during a “funny” period in his career when the director was trying to distance himself from the infamous tragedy on The Twilight Zone: The Movie (a fact perhaps responsible for this film’s obscurity), Into the Night is a great love letter to the city of Los Angeles in the shape of an unforgettable laugh-and-craze-filled ride.
Into the Night stars Jeff Goldblum as Ed Oken, an aerospace engineer currently battling a maddening case of insomnia. Adding to his troubles is the revelation that his wife (Stacy Pickren) is having an affair. One sleepless night Ed decides to take a drive around the city, eventually ending up in the parking garage of LAX. Almost instantly, a beautiful blonde named Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer) falls onto the hood of his car, followed by a four Middle Eastern hitmen who have killed her traveling companion and are now after her. As Ed helps her escape, he finds himself drawn into a tale involving precious diamonds and one unpredictable situation after another as he and Diana head into the night.
One of the most unique things about Into the Night, which works in its favor, is how it embraces its scenario with such reckless abandon, particularly in the way it mixes comedy with violence. For every laugh out loud moment that comes up, there’s a darker one that follows. A scene featuring our heroes trying to escape from the bad guys hot on their tail sees an elevator door open on a kind old man and his ferocious dog, who scares the pair away with the owner shouting, “He’s really a sweet dog!” A moment later when the same elevator opens and the bad guys encounter the vicious animal, they instantly open gunfire on it, much to the shock and surprise of the old man. A later scene taking place in the home of a famous director (Paul Mazursky) and his actress girlfriend (Kathryn Harrold), which the hitmen descend upon, is hilarious to watch as the heavies trash the living room, breaking the director’s awards as he sits on the couch with tears streaming down his face. As his girlfriend tries to make a break for it by heading down to the beach, the four men drown her in the water, showing that Into the Night is a film which doesn’t care about playing it safe. Into the Night’s script has plenty of laughs within its pages. “Are we dead?” Diana asks at one point, not knowing where she and Ed have been taken. “When you die, you don’t end up in a Ramada Inn,” Ed replies. But it’s its opposing sides and the blending of its two tones which makes the film stand out and give it its one-of-a-kind voice.
A case could be made that Into the Night functions as a neo-noir entry, a fact easy to miss thanks to its humor. Yet the film takes place in Los Angeles, one of the most noir of cities, with many of its locations being well-utilized throughout. In the two main characters, there is the amateur detective in over his head who is pulled into a world of crime by an accidental femme fatale. Along the way they encounter a dying rich man (Richard Farnsworth), an Elvis impersonator (Bruce McGill), the head of a Middle Eastern mob (Irene Papas), as well as other offbeat characters who would fit right in the world of noir. Going further, Into the Night almost functions as an homage to Hitchcock, especially in the way it manages to find its laughs. It’s also easy to see Ed as a sort of Jimmy Stewart-like character who flat out admits that he’s out of his depth. In Diana, the film has found the quintessential Hitchcock blonde for the ‘80s. As a screen heroine, Diana is cagey, mysterious, but also vulnerable at moments when she cannot help it. She embodies the iciness of Kim Novak and the glow of Grace Kelly, keeping the audience by her side even though she never fully lets them in. However, the biggest Hitchcock nod of all comes in the movie’s macguffin. The master of suspense famously made a career telling tales of suspense without always having to divulge details of his plots, which he felt held his movies back. Into the Night follows the same blueprint. We never really know why the diamonds are important until near the close of the movie, and by then, we don’t much care. Everything that’s come before has been far more interesting.
While both Goldblum and Pfeiffer are now household names, at the time of Into the Night the two were still novice actors earning their stripes. Landis’s gamble on the two virtual unknowns paid off, as evidenced by their work here. Goldblum hones in on Ed’s despair at his life situation and demonstrates perfect comic timing as he remains in sync with the madness going on around him. As Diana, Pfeiffer recognizes the soulfulness and depth of her character as well as her longing and survivalist nature, keeping the film grounded in every scene she’s in. While the two can now count plenty of classics between them, Into the Night gave both Goldblum and Pfeiffer the perfect kind of early platform for the talent they possessed and the glittering careers they would both eventually enjoy.
Into the Night is one of those films whose joy is comprised of a number of variables, or in this case quirks. Here it’s the endless amount of director cameos (filmmakers ranging from Jonathan Demme to Amy Heckerling pop up at the most random of moments); the eclectic supporting cast, which also includes Psycho’s Vera Miles and even David Bowie as a snarky hitman; and the rocking B.B. King soundtrack (the movie’s title song is a personal favorite on my iTunes). In terms of placement on Landis’s resume, the movie will never carry the same level of fandom as An American Werewolf in London, Coming to America, or The Blues Brothers. On some level, however, Into the Night is a lot like Landis’s own career: wonderfully frenetic, unpredictable, and full of so many different flavors that it eventually creates its own language and sensibility. Above all though, it’s that bold willingness to not play it safe at any moment whatsoever which makes Into the Night work on a manic level that’s hard to forget and easy to give in to.
The Package
If Pfeiffer didn’t show up for Scarface or Batman Returns special edition releases, there’s no way she was ever going to make time for Into the Night. However, Shout! has included an interview with Landis, who gives a standard recollection of what went into making the film, complete with a Jack Nicholson anecdote. There’s also an awesome interview with Goldblum in which he offers a deep analysis of his character and wild idea for a sequel. Watching the eccentric, yet totally authentic actor as revelations hit him the very moment he says them aloud is a joy and worth the price of the disc alone.
The Lowdown
A dark comic quasi-masterpiece of the ‘80s, the fun richness of Into the Night continues to live on.
Into the Night is now available on Blu-ray from Shout! Factory.
