We really loved the original Blues Brothers movie around here. It was filmed around town.
If they would have gone two more houses down in the first police chase scene before the mall scene, they would have shown my grandma's house. They paid everybody $10- $20 per night to leave their lights on all night so they could film the scene without too much traffic.
For every police car that they crashed, Dan Akroyd and John Belushi replaced it with a brand new one. There were wrecked cop cars from that movie all over the junk yards here, like 7 - 10 per yard back then.
Not to mention that they were from Chicago also (Dan & John).
The mall that they drove through was on the south side, Dixie Mall. It was abandoned before they filmed the movie, and they fixed it up for the movie. They say that they left it in worse shape after the filming than before they started. It was never opened again after that, and has since been torn down.