In Into the Night, John Landis Asked Hollywood to Throw Him a Life Preserver

It’s 1985, and John Landis needs all the friends he can get.

Back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, Landis — one of the many New Hollywood scamps who shook up the movie biz during the Me Decade — had one hell of a winning streak, directing some of the era’s most successful comedies. We’re talking Kentucky Fried Movie (written by the guys who would later make Airplane!), National Lampoon’s Animal House, The Blues Brothers, Trading Places — not to mention taking a horror detour with the groundbreaking An American Werewolf in London, which inspired Michael Jackson to hire Landis for his revolutionary “Thriller” music video.

And then came Twilight Zone: The Movie. The 1983 big-screen adaptation of Rod Serling’s classic anthology series featured stories helmed by several filmmakers, including Landis. While shooting his segment, a helicopter crashed, resulting in the deaths of star Vic Morrow and two child actors. The accident led to years of civil and criminal action against those overseeing the film shoot, including Landis, who violated child-labor laws by hiring the kids without proper permits.

Although some filmmakers distanced themselves from Landis (Steven Spielberg, who also directed a Zone segment, publicly broke off his friendship with Landis), others came to his defense. After Rolling Stone printed an article examining the responsibilities of filmmakers like Landis, the magazine later printed a letter – signed by John Huston, Sidney Lumet, George Lucas and a list of other directors – defending him. Landis found a way to get more directors on his side: by casting them in his next film.

Released 40 years ago this weekend, Into the Night was Landis’s attempted comeback of sorts. Jeff Goldblum stars as Ed, an insomniac aeronautics engineer who finds out that his wife has been cheating on him. Desperate to shake up his humdrum existence, he takes a co-worker’s suggestion and heads to the airport for a head-clearing trip to Vegas. As he contemplates taking the trip in the parking garage, that’s when Diana (Michelle Pfeiffer) hops on his car, begging him to take her out of there.

It turns out Ed has picked up an emerald smuggler on the run from a gang of killer Iranians (the quietest and most destructive is played by none other than Landis). Ed decides to help this easy-on-the-eyes dame. They spend the rest of this late night driving around the damn-near-desolate streets of LA, tracking down powerful friends that’ll help her while dodging foreigners with guns – and that includes David Bowie, who pops up halfway through as a mysterious Englishman.

Working from a script by Ron Koslow (who would later create that ‘80s TV-show version of Beauty and the Beast), Landis assembled a peculiar cast for this black-comic neo-noir, featuring a soundtrack that includes several B.B. King songs (which Landis also directed all-star videos for). The supporting players include venerable character actors: Richard Farnsworth, Clu Gulager, Vera Miles, and veteran Greek actress Irene Papas plays the Big Bad. The most unexpected folk assume bit roles. The coworker who tells Ed he should go to Vegas? Why, that’s Landis’s Trading Places star Dan Aykroyd. “Blue Suede Shoes” originator Carl Perkins plays a henchman who gets in a knife fight with Bowie’s character. (I couldn’t help but interpret this as Landis cheekily getting these two to battle over the soul of rock and roll.)

But the movie is best known for having a who’s who of directors and screenwriters fill out the rest of the cast. Landis giving his Hollywood pals cameos in his films is nothing new (Spielberg memorably played a tax clerk in The Blues Brothers). But Landis, who was in serious need of solidarity at the time, rounded up many behind-the-scenes heavyweights who were ready for their close-up. French filmmaker Roger Vadim co-stars as another heavy, while body-horror maestro David Cronenberg briefly appears as Ed’s boss. Carl Gottlieb and Jonathan Demme pop in as federal agents. Lawrence Kasdan is a cop. Amy Heckerling is a waitress. That drug dealer with the business card? That’s special effects wizard Rick Baker. Blink and you’ll miss Jim Henson, Paul Bartel, Jack Arnold, Don Siegel. The only one who actually plays a filmmaker is Paul Mazursky, who’s doing a night shoot featuring a bunch of bikini-clad ladies.

Of the handful of David Bowie film roles, this isn’t the one you’ll often see mentioned.

Unlike Landis’s previous films, Into the Night was an unmitigated flop. Budgeted at $8 million, it only made $7.5 million at the box office. It also struck out with critics. Roger Ebert started off his 1-star review by calling it “a fitfully funny, aimless, unnecessary thriller.” James Wolcott pulled no punches with his Texas Monthly pan: “The whole movie looks like a coke whore’s fantasy of life sucked through a silver straw, a fast toot to pimp heaven.”

Admittedly, it is one weird, often inert B-movie. It’s a nocturnal, T&A-filled comedy-thriller where the hero is literally a sleepy-eyed joe who wanders through this thing like it’s a surreal, batshit-crazy nightmare he’s having. When a climactic shootout has one of the Iranians holding Diana at gunpoint, Ed sees this as a time to get real with the guy: “What’s wrong with my life? Why is my wife sleeping with someone else? Why can’t I sleep?” (Forever a dark-hearted smart-ass, Landis has the guy shoot himself in the head instead of telling Ed anything.) Goldblum does get his ironic detachment on – dude looks tired, but he never looks defeated – while maintaining a beguiling chemistry with Pfeiffer, beginning her ascent as one of the most desirable actresses of the ‘80s and ’90s.

Into the Night is not the best movie about a guy having an insane night in the city – directed by a filmmaker who sorely needed a hit – to come out that year. (That honor would go to Martin Scorsese’s After Hours.) But it is the one that had a filmmaker calling in a bunch of favors to show that he isn’t a movie-making menace to society.

Craig D. Lindsey is a Houston-based writer. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @unclecrizzle.