10 Movies That Spent Stupid Money On Pointless Things

1. The Blues Brothers' Cocaine Budget & Private Bar

Though John Landis' 1980 classic musical comedy The Blues Brothers was a considerable commercial success, grossing $115.2 million against a $30 million price tag, that was despite extremely questionable spending during the film's production.

Landis and Universal came to blows early as he hired the legendary likes of James Brown, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin to perform in the film at great cost, and even after shooting started, a budget still hadn't been finalised.

Scheduling, meanwhile, went totally off the rails and location wrap dates were missed by several weeks.

The original $17.5 million budget continually expanded during production and almost doubled by the time shooting wrapped, unaided by the literal allocation of a cocaine budget for the film's exhausting night shoots.

Though star John Belushi was a noted cocaine addict - and sadly died of a drug overdose less than two years after the film was released - according to Dan Aykroyd most of the cast and crew were dabbing the white stuff simply in order to stay awake.

Given that Universal couldn't be seen to be literally funding drug use, the film's books will never reflect how much was actually spent on coke, but it was clearly a lot.

Worse still, the production had a private bar built on-set for the cast and crew at considerable expense, which they stocked with bar staff who also doubled as drug dealers.

That the production wasn't shut down is a pure miracle, and that the final film is genuinely great even more so.