Trivia / Eddie and the Cruisers

• Breakaway Pop Hit: Chances are, if there's anything you know about this movie even if you never saw it, it's the song "On the Dark Side".
• Cast the Expert: Cruisers saxophonist Wendell Newton is played by Michael Antunes, the saxophonist for John Cafferty & The Beaver Brown Band, who provided the film's soundtrack.
• Creator Backlash: The cast and crew who worked on Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives! admit to not liking the movie.
• Fake Shemp: Though supposedly taking place in Montreal, where the rest of the movie was filmed and set, the climactic music festival performance in Eddie II was actually filmed as part of a Bon Jovi concert in Las Vegas. It soon becomes obvious that all of the performers are getting close-ups except Stewart, the keyboardist, who's shown only in long shots with his hair over his face. Evidently David Matheson, who played Stewart, was somewhere else in the world that day and a stand-in was used for the Vegas shoot.
• Recycled IN SPACE!: You might want to sit down for this....
  • The film opens on the title alone, with no credits. We see news footage of a celebrity's life while a news reporter covers the basics.
  • There is an unanswered question concerning the person's death, and a reporter decides to try and answer it.
  • The central character is portrayed as forward-thinking, possibly brilliant in his field... and he's a complete Jerkass.
  • The story moves back and forth between present day and flashbacks.
  • At the end, the viewer learns the answer to the mystery presented at the beginning... but in the film's universe, no one will ever know.
  • That's right, sports fans. Eddie and the Cruisers is Citizen Kane in the world of rock music. Amazingly, while it has a lot of flaws, it's still quite good.