I've Been Watching Action Movies For 48 Years. This Is The Film That Made Me A Lifelong Fan

I was born at the dawn of Hollywood's 1970s blockbuster era. Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" became the highest grossing film ever during my second year on the planet, and George Lucas revolutionized escapist cinema shortly after with "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope." Films kept getting bigger and bigger, and studios' desire to outdo the last mega-budget crowdpleaser proved insatiable. More of the same was insufficient. Above and beyond was the order of the day. Hence, when Hal Needham pulled off a bunch of wild freeway chases and crashes in 1977's smash hit "Smokey and the Bandit," the sequel had to up the ante with a pregnant pachyderm and the demolition of a massive roller coaster. He clearly had more fun making "The Cannonball Run."

Since the days of the silent Westerns starring dashing cowboys like Tom Mix, or Buster Keaton's life-or-death physical comedy set pieces in classics like "The General," Hollywood has prided itself on arm-rest clutching spectacle. But with the advent of sophisticated special effects leading to stunt-laden triumphs like "Gone in 60 Seconds," "Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry," and "Used Cars," it felt like we were entering an age of risk management. Hollywood could afford to knock out multiple car-crashing, bullet-whizzing stunt spectaculars a year. And, on occasion, they were more than the sum of their jerry-rigged parts.

In the pre-CGI days, practically staged action was the coin of a catastrophic realm. We'd already been blown away by "The French Connection" and "The Seven-Ups," but I felt we needed something bigger and zanier. I was very young and very much in the market for something akin to the slapstick-silliness of Richard Rush's crash-'em-up "Freebie and the Bean." How much more decadent could a big-budget action film get? John Landis found out with "The Blues Brothers."

Action cinema is a full-service form of entertainment. Do you dig gunplay, martial arts, aerial combat, tanks, submarines, wood chippers, spanking machines, and gifted stunt performers seemingly hellbent on killing themselves? The genre is broad enough to encompass all that and more. And the realer the thrills feel, the more enthralling they can be. I, however, was an American kid raised on Looney Tunes cartoons and, in my youth, preferred my mayhem with a thick dollop of mirth.

I had a fundamental understanding of how a mainstream action movie played thanks to my burgeoning James Bond fandom, which was then driven solely by the gadgetry of the Roger Moore era. However, those movies could get draggy on occasion, and this baffled me since the Moore-led Bond flicks were practically comedies anyways. I wasn't necessarily in the market for another star-studded, clumsy crack-up like the 1967 "Casino Royale," either, but when I heard director John Landis was following up the anarchic "National Lampoon's Animal House" with a wildly ambitious, mega-budget action-comedy-musical adaptation of the "Saturday Night Live" sketch" The Blues Brothers," I felt, as a young purveyor of adult-skewing sketch comedy, that my life was about to change. And after watching the film's legendary shopping mall car chase, I just wanted to make action movies for the rest of my life.

John Landis' "The Blues Brothers" is a giddy genre gumbo that excels on every level. It's an action-comedy-musical that'll make you howl, tap your toes, and marvel at the impeccable stuntwork on the screen. Even the Vatican adores it! You could, of course, question why any of this was necessary in the first place, seeing as Landis and stars John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd were basically hijacking Black culture for a gonzo car-chase comedy. But I was a white kid who grew up in a very white Ohio town, and this served as my introduction to Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles, and Cab Calloway. I am forever grateful for this zany rumpus for kicking that door open.

Landis paying tribute to the blues and R&B in the guise of an over-the-top studio action flick was a masterstroke. (And, yes, I'm well aware he's a bad person who was indefensibly irresponsible during the production of "Twilight Zone: The Movie.") The way the film scores some of its set pieces to the music of the likes of Otis Redding similarly turned me on to a soul legend, and for that, I am forever in Landis' debt.

"The Blues Brothers" might be the only white-directed action film that swings. The plot is no great shakes and it runs long, but you don't want the party to end. The action is propulsive throughout. The aforementioned mall car chase is a bravura set piece, and it will always be your moral duty to cheer on the humiliation of Illinois Nazis. Belushi's Jake and Aykroyd's Elwood Blues might leave a trail of destruction in their wake, but, hey, they're on a mission for God.