National Lampoon's Animal House
Encyclopedia
National Lampoon's Animal House is a 1978 American comedy film
directed by John Landis
. The film was a direct spin-off of National Lampoon magazine. The plot is about a misfit group of fraternity
members who challenge the administrators of their university.
The screenplay was adapted by Douglas Kenney
, Chris Miller
and Harold Ramis
from stories written by Miller and published in National Lampoon magazine based on Miller's experiences in the Alpha Delta Phi
fraternity at Dartmouth College
. Other influences on the film come from Ramis' experiences in the Zeta Beta Tau
fraternity at Washington University in St. Louis
, and producer Ivan Reitman
's experiences at Delta Upsilon
at McMaster University
in Hamilton, Ontario
. Of the lead actors only John Belushi
was an established star, but even he had not yet appeared in a movie, having gained his notoriety mainly from Saturday Night Live appearances. Several cast members, including Karen Allen
, Tom Hulce
and Kevin Bacon
,were just beginning their careers.
Upon its initial release, Animal House received generally mixed reviews from critics, but Time
and Roger Ebert
proclaimed it one of the year's best. Filmed for $2.7 million, it is one of the most profitable movies of all time. Since its initial release, Animal House has garnered an estimated return of more than $141 million in the form of video and DVDs, not including merchandising.
The film, along with 1977's Kentucky Fried Movie
, also directed by Landis, was largely responsible for defining and launching the gross-out genre of films that became one of Hollywood's staple genres. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress
deemed Animal House "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
. This film was #1 on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies. It was #36 on AFI
's 100 Years... 100 Laughs
list of the 100 best American comedies. In 2008, Empire
magazine selected Animal House as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.
) and Kent Dorfman (Stephen Furst
), seek to join a fraternity at Faber College. They visit the prestigious Omega Theta Pi House's invitational party but are unwelcome. They then try next door at the Delta Tau Chi House, where Kent's brother was once a member, making Kent a "legacy." There they find John "Bluto" Blutarsky (John Belushi
) urinating outside the fraternity house. The Deltas "need the dues" so they permit Larry and Kent to pledge. They receive the fraternity names "Pinto" (Larry) and "Flounder" (Kent).
Vernon Wormer (John Vernon
), the Dean of Faber College, wants to remove the Delta fraternity from campus due to repeated conduct violations and low academic standings. Since they are already on probation, he puts the Deltas on something he calls "double secret probation" and orders the clean-cut, smug Omega president Gregg Marmalard (James Daughton
) to find a way to get rid of the Deltas permanently.
Flounder is bullied by Omega member and ROTC
cadet commander Doug Neidermeyer (Mark Metcalf
) so Bluto and Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day (Bruce McGill
) persuade Flounder to sneak Neidermeyer's horse into Dean Wormer's office late at night. They give him a gun and tell him to shoot it. Flounder does not know that the gun is loaded with blanks
. He cannot bring himself to kill the horse, so he fires into the ceiling. The noise frightens the horse so much that it dies of a heart attack.
In the cafeteria the next day, smooth-talking Eric "Otter" Stratton (Tim Matheson
) tries to convince the stuck-up Mandy Pepperidge (Mary Louise Weller
) to abandon her boyfriend, the uninterested Marmalard, and date him instead. Bluto proceeds to provoke Marmalard with his impression of a popping zit
by stuffing his mouth with mashed potatoes and propelling it at Marmalard, Mandy and their table mates, Chip Diller (Kevin Bacon
) and Barbara "Babs" Jansen (Martha Smith
). Bluto then starts a food fight that engulfs the cafeteria.
Bluto and D-Day steal the answers to an upcoming psychology test. However, it turns out the Omegas planted the exam stencil and the Deltas get every answer wrong. Their grade point averages drop so low that Wormer only needs one more incident to revoke the charter that allows them to remain on campus.
To cheer themselves up, the Deltas organize a toga party
, during which Otis Day and the Knights
perform "Shout". The dean's alcoholic, lecherous wife, Marion (Verna Bloom
), attends the party at Otter's invitation and has sex with him. Pinto hooks up with Clorette (Sarah Holcomb
), a girl he met at the supermarket, and makes out with her only to learn she is the mayor's 13-year-old
daughter. He later brings her home in a shopping cart. Due to the party, Wormer revokes the fraternity's charter, and all belongings are confiscated.
To take their minds off their troubles, Otter, Boon, Flounder, and Pinto go on a road trip. Otter picks up some girls from Emily Dickinson College by pretending to be the boyfriend of Fawn Liebowitz, a girl who recently died on campus. They stop at a roadhouse because Otis Day and the Knights are performing there, not realizing that it caters to an exclusively black clientele. The hulking patrons intimidate the guys into fleeing, damaging Flounder's borrowed car and leaving their frightened dates behind.
Boon breaks up with his girlfriend Katy (Karen Allen
) after discovering her sexual relationship with a professor (Donald Sutherland
). Marmalard is told that his girlfriend is having an affair with Otter, so he and other Omegas lure him to a motel and beat him up. The Deltas' midterm grades are so poor that an ecstatic Wormer expels them all. He even notifies their draft boards
of their eligibility. In the process, before Bluto attempts to speak to the dean, Wormer orders Flounder to speak with the words "OUT WITH IT", resulting in Flounder vomiting on the dean.
It seems time for the Deltas to give up but Bluto, supported by the injured Otter, rouses them with an impassioned, historically inaccurate speech ("Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor
?!") and they decide to take revenge on Wormer and the Omegas. The Deltas construct a rogue parade float with Flounder's car as its base and wreak havoc on the annual homecoming parade. During the ensuing chaos, the futures of many of the main characters are revealed. The last shot of the film is of Bluto driving away in a white convertible with his soon-to-be wife: Mandy Pepperidge.
in 1969 and had a college experience closer to the Omegas in the film (he had been president of the university's elite Spee Club). Kenney was responsible for the first appearances of two characters that would appear in the film, Larry Kroger and Mandy Pepperidge. They made their debut in National Lampoon’s High School Yearbook, a satire published in 1975.
However, Kenney felt that fellow Lampoon writer Chris Miller
was the magazine's expert on the college experience. Faced with an impending deadline, Miller submitted a chapter from his then-abandoned memoirs entitled "The Night of the Seven Fires" about pledging experiences from his fraternity days in Alpha Delta (associated with the national Alpha Delta Phi
during Miller's undergraduate years, the fraternity subsequently disassociated itself from the national organization and is now called Alpha Delta) at the Ivy League
's Dartmouth College
, in Hanover, New Hampshire
. The antics of his fellow fraternities became the inspiration for the Delta Tau Chis of Animal House and many characters in the film (and their nicknames) were based on Miller's fraternity brothers. Miller's college nickname was "Pinto" in recognition of dark spots he had on a certain private part of his anatomy. Filmmaker Ivan Reitman
had just finished producing David Cronenberg
's first film, Shivers
, and called the magazine’s publisher Matty Simmons about making movies under the Lampoon banner. Reitman had put together The National Lampoon Show in New York City
that featured several future Saturday Night Live cast members, including John Belushi. When most of them moved to that show except for Harold Ramis, Reitman approached him with an idea to make a film together using some skits from the Lampoon Show.
Addition: Please see the Von Summer story with images of Chris Miller and the actual Dartmouth Crew. http://www.bergen.com/Animal_House_Recalling_Alex_von_Summers_college_days_at_Dartmouths_famed_Alpha_Delta_frat.html
fraternity at Washington University
in St. Louis
and was working on a treatment
about college entitled "Freshman Year" but the magazine’s editors were not happy with it. Kenney and Ramis started working on a treatment together, positing Charles Manson
in a high school, calling it Laser Orgy Girls. Simmons was cool to this idea so they changed the setting to a "northeastern
college . . . Ivy League kind of school." Kenney was a fan of Miller’s fraternity stories and suggested using them as a basis for a movie. Kenney, Miller and Ramis began brainstorming ideas. They saw the film's 1962 setting as "the last innocent year . . . of America", and the homecoming parade that ends the film as occurring on November 21, 1963, the day before the John F. Kennedy assassination
. They agreed that Belushi should star in it and Ramis wrote the part of Bluto specifically for the comedian, having met him at Chicago's The Second City
.
The writers were new to screenwriting, and thus produced a 110-page treatment (the average was 15 pages) that Reitman and Simmons pitched to various Hollywood studios. Simmons met with Ned Tanen
, an executive at Universal Studios. He was encouraged by younger executives Sean Daniel
and Thom Mount
who were more receptive to the Lampoon type of humor. Tanen hated the idea. Ramis remembers, "We went further than I think Universal expected or wanted. I think they were shocked and appalled. Chris’ fraternity had virtually been a vomiting cult. And we had a lot of scenes that were almost orgies of vomit... We didn’t back off anything". As the writers created more drafts of the screenplay (nine in total), the studio gradually became more receptive to the project, especially Mount, who championed it. Surprisingly, the studio green-lighted the film and set the budget at a modest $3 million. Simmons remembers, "They just figured, ‘Screw it, it’s a silly little movie, and we’ll make a couple of bucks if we’re lucky – let them do whatever they want.’"
, for $5,000. The film's producers approached Richard Lester
and Bob Rafelson
before considering John Landis, who got the director job based on his work on Kentucky Fried Movie. That film’s script and continuity supervisor was the girlfriend of Sean Daniel, an assistant to Mount. Daniel saw Landis’ movie and recommended him. Landis then met with Mount, Reitman and Simmons and got the job. Landis remembers, "When I was given the script, it was the funniest thing I had ever read up to that time. But it was really offensive. There was a great deal of projectile vomiting and rape and all these things". There was also a certain amount of friction between Landis and the writers early on because Landis was a high-school dropout from Hollywood and they were college graduates from the East Coast. Ramis remembers, "He sort of referred immediately to Animal House as ‘my movie.’ We’d been living with it for two years and we hated that". According to Landis, he drew inspiration from classic Hollywood comedies featuring the likes of Buster Keaton
, Harold Lloyd
, and the Marx Brothers
.
The initial cast was to feature Chevy Chase
as Otter, Bill Murray
as Boon, Brian Doyle-Murray
as Hoover, Dan Aykroyd
as D-Day and John Belushi as Bluto, but only Belushi wanted to do it. Chase was a star from Saturday Night Live, which had recently become a cultural phenomenon. His name would have added credibility to the project, but he turned the film down to do Foul Play
; Landis, who wanted to cast unknown dramatic actors such as Bacon and Allen (the first film for both) instead of famous comedians, takes credit for subtly discouraging Chase by describing the film as an "ensemble
". The character of D-Day was based on Aykroyd, who was a motorcycle aficionado. Aykroyd was offered the part, but he was already committed to Saturday Night Live. Belushi—who had worked on The National Lampoon Radio Hour
before Saturday Night Live—was also committed to the show, but spent Monday through Wednesday making the film and then flying back to New York to do the show on Thursday through Saturday. Ramis originally wrote the role of Boon for himself, but Landis felt that he looked too old for the part and Riegert was cast instead. Landis did offer Ramis a smaller part, but he declined. Landis met with Jack Webb
to play Dean Wormer and Kim Novak
to play his wife. Webb ultimately backed out due to concerns over his clean-cut image, and was replaced by John Vernon.
Belushi received only $35,000 for Animal House, with a bonus after it became a hit. Landis also met with Meat Loaf
in case Belushi did not want to play Bluto. Landis worked with Belushi on his character, who "hardly had any dialogue"; they decided that Bluto was a cross between Harpo Marx
and the Cookie Monster
. Despite Belushi's presence, Universal wanted another star. Landis had been a crew member on Kelly's Heroes
and had become friends with actor Donald Sutherland
, sometimes babysitting his son Kiefer
. Landis asked Sutherland, one of the biggest stars of the 1970s
, to be in the film. For two days' work, Sutherland initially declined $35,000. Universal then offered him $35,000 and 15% of the film's gross
, assuming that the movie would be quickly forgotten. Sutherland wanted guaranteed money and settled for $50,000; although this made him the highest-paid member of the cast (other than Neidemeyer's horse), the decision cost Sutherland what Landis estimates as "at least $20 million."
The filmmakers' next problem was finding a college that would let them shoot the film on their campus. They submitted the script to a number of colleges and universities but "nobody wanted this movie" due to the script; according to Landis, "I couldn't find 'the look'. Every place that had 'the look' said, 'no thank you.'"
The president of the University of Oregon
in Eugene
, William Beaty Boyd, had been a senior administrator of a major California university when his campus was considered for a location of the film The Graduate
. After he consulted with other senior administrative colleagues who advised him to turn it down due to the lack of artistic merit, production moved to Berkeley
and USC
. The Graduate went on to become a classic, and Boyd was determined not to make the same mistake twice when the producers inquired about filming at Oregon. After consulting with student government leaders and officers of the Pan Hellenic Council, the Director of University Relations advised the president that the script, although raunchy and often tasteless, was a very funny spoof of college life. Boyd even allowed the filmmakers to use his office as Dean Wormer's.
The actual house depicted as the Delta House was originally a residence in Eugene, the Dr. A.W. Patterson House. Around 1959, it was acquired by the Psi Deuteron chapter of Phi Sigma Kappa
fraternity and was their chapter house until 1967, when the chapter was closed due to low membership. The house was sold and slid into disrepair, with the spacious porch removed and the lawn graveled over. At the time of the shooting, the Phi Kappa Psi
and Sigma Nu
fraternity houses sat next to the old Phi Sigma Kappa house. The interior of the Sigma Nu house was used for many of the interior scenes, but the individual rooms were filmed on a soundstage. The Patterson house was demolished in 1986. A suite of physicians' offices now occupies the site. A large boulder placed to the west of the parking entrance displays a bronze plaque commemorating the Delta House location. The parade scene takes place in downtown Cottage Grove, Oregon
on Main Street.
Although the cast members were warned against mixing with the college students, one night, some girls invited several of the cast members to a fraternity party. They arrived assuming they had been invited and were greeted with open hostility. As they were leaving, Widdoes threw a cup of beer at a group of drunk football players
and a fight "like a scene from the movie" broke out. Tim Matheson, Bruce McGill, Peter Riegert, and Widdoes narrowly escaped, with McGill suffering a black eye and Widdoes getting several teeth knocked out.
Other than Belushi's opening yell, the food fight was filmed in one shot, with the actors encouraged to fight for real. Flounder's groceries handling in the supermarket was another single shot; Furst deftly caught the many items Landis and Matheson threw at him, amazing the director.
While shooting the film, Landis and Bruce McGill staged a scene for reporters visiting the set where the director pretended to be angry at the actor for being difficult on the set. Landis grabbed a breakaway pitcher and smashed it over McGill's head. He fell to the ground and pretended to be unconscious. The reporters were completely fooled, and when Landis asked McGill to get up, he refused to move.
Black extras had to be bused in from Portland
for the segment at the Dexter Lake Club due to their scarcity around Eugene. More seriously, the segment alarmed studio executives, who perceived it as racist and warned that "'black people in America are going to rip the seats out of theaters if you leave that scene in the movie.'" Richard Pryor
's approval helped retain the segment in the film. The studio became more enthusiastic about the film when Reitman showed executives and sales managers of various regions in the country a 10-minute production reel that was put together in two days. The reaction was positive and the studio sent 20 copies out to exhibitors. The first preview screening for Animal House was held in Denver four months before it opened nationwide. The crowd loved it and the filmmakers realized they had a potential hit on their hands.
and rhythm and blues
with the original score created by film composer Elmer Bernstein
, who had been a Landis family friend since John Landis was a child. Bernstein was easily persuaded to score the film, but was not sure what to make of it. Landis asked him to score it as though it were serious. Bernstein said that his work on this film opened yet another door in his diverse career, to scoring comedies.
. It made $120.1 million in North America
and went on to have a domestic lifetime gross of $141.6 million.
. Roger Ebert
gave the film four stars out of four and wrote, "It's anarchic, messy, and filled with energy. It assaults us. Part of the movie's impact comes from its sheer level of manic energy... But the movie's better made (and better acted) than we might at first realize. It takes skill to create this sort of comic pitch, and the movie's filled with characters that are sketched a little more absorbingly than they had to be, and acted with perception". Ebert later placed the film on his 10 best list of 1978. In his review for Time
, Frank Rich wrote, "At its best it perfectly expresses the fears and loathings of kids who came of age in the late '60s; at its worst Animal House revels in abject silliness. The hilarious highs easily compensate for the puerile lows". Gary Arnold wrote in his review for The Washington Post
, "Belushi also controls a wicked array of conspiratorial expressions with the audience... He can seem irresistibly funny in repose or invest minor slapstick opportunities with a streak of genius". David Ansen
wrote in Newsweek
, "But if Animal House lacks the inspired tastelessness of the Lampoon's High School Yearbook Parody, this is still low humor of a high order". Robert Martin wrote in The Globe and Mail
, "It is so gross and tasteless you feel you should be disgusted but it's hard to be offended by something that is so sidesplittingly funny". Time magazine proclaimed Animal House one of the year's best.
When the film was released, Landis, Widdoes and Allen went on a national promotional tour. Universal Pictures spent about $4.5 million promoting the film at selected college campuses and helped students organize their own toga parties. One such party at the University of Maryland
attracted some 2,000 people, while students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
tried for a crowd of 10,000 people and a place in the Guinness Book of World Records
. Thanks to the film, toga parties became one of 1978's favorite college campus happenings.
television sitcom, Delta House, in which Vernon reprised his role as the long-suffering, malevolent Dean Wormer. The series also included Steven Furst as Flounder, Bruce McGill as D-Day, and James Widdoes as Hoover. The pilot episode was written by the film's screenwriters, Douglas Kenney, Chris Miller and Harold Ramis. Michelle Pfeiffer
made her acting debut in the series and Peter Fox was cast as Otter. John Belushi's character from the film, John "Bluto" Blutarsky, is in the army, but his brother, Blotto, played by Josh Mostel
, transfers to Faber College to carry on Bluto's tradition.
Animal House inspired Co-Ed Fever, another sitcom but without the involvement of the film's producers or cast. Set in a dorm of the formerly all-female Baxter College, the pilot
of Co-Ed Fever was aired by CBS
on 4 February 1979, but the network canceled the series before airing any more episodes. NBC
also had its Animal House-inspired sitcom, Brothers and Sisters
, in which three members of Crandall College's Pi Nu fraternity interact with members of the Gamma Iota sorority. Like ABC's Delta House, Brothers and Sisters lasted only three months.
The film's writers planned a movie sequel set in 1967 (the so-called "Summer of Love
"), in which the Deltas have a reunion for Pinto's marriage in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. The only Delta to have become a hippie is Flounder, who is now called Pisces. Later, Chris Miller and John Weidman, another Lampoon writer, created a treatment for this screenplay, but Universal rejected it because the sequel to American Graffiti
, which contained some hippie-1967 sequences, had not done well. When John Belushi died, the idea was indefinitely shelved.
A second attempt at a sequel was made in 1982 with producer Matty Simmons co-authoring a script which saw some the Deltas returning to Faber College five years after the events of the film. The project got no further than a first draft script dated May 6, 1982.
The "Double Secret Probation Edition" DVD included a short film entitled "Where Are They Now?: A Delta Alumni Update" which suggested the film had been a documentary and Landis was catching up with some of the cast (played by their original actors).
Spike TV's sitcom Blue Mountain State
uses this film as an inspiration.
Animal House was released on videodisc
in 1979. A Collector's Edition DVD
was released in 2002, with a 30-minute 1998 documentary entitled "The Yearbook - An Animal House Reunion" by producer JM Kenny with production notes, theatrical trailer, and new interviews with director Landis, stars Tim Matheson, Karen Allen, Peter Riegert, Mark Metcalf and Kevin Bacon. The "Double Secret Probation Edition" DVD released in 2003 features cast members reprising their respective roles in a "Where Are They Now?" mockumentary
, which posited the original film as a documentary
. One major change shown in this mockumentary from the epilogue of the original film is that Bluto went on from his career in the U.S. Senate to become the President of the United States
, with a voiceover on a shot of the north portico of the White House
, since by then Belushi was no longer alive. This DVD also includes "Did You Know That? Universal Animated Anecdotes," a subtitle trivia track, the making of documentary from the Collector's Edition, MXPX
"Shout" music video, a theatrical trailer, production notes, and cast and filmmakers biographies. In August 2006, the film was released on an HD DVD
/DVD combo disc, which featured the film in a 1080p
high-definition format
on one side, and a standard-definition format
on the opposite side. Along with the film Unleashed
, Animal House was one of Universal
's first two HD/DVD combo releases, but was later discontinued in 2008 after Universal decided to switch to the Blu-ray Disc
format following the conclusion of the high definition optical disc format war
.
It is scheduled for blu-ray release July 26, 2011.
success despite its limited production costs and thus started an industry trend, inspiring countless other comedies such as Porky's
, the Police Academy films, the American Pie films, and Old School
among others. However Animal House included a subversive bodily humor and political references that got lost in the subsequent innocuous derivatives. Examples of taboo bodily humor included projectile vomiting and other explicit uses of bodily functions.
On the left-wing and counterculture side, it included references to topical political matters like Kent State shootings
, President Harry S. Truman
's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
, Richard Nixon
, the Vietnam war
and the civil rights movement. Precursors of this counterculture subversive humor in film were two non "college movies," M*A*S*H
, a 1970 satirical dark comedy, and the Kentucky Fried Movie, a 1977 formless comedy consisting of a series of sketches.
deemed the film culturally significant and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
. Animal House is first on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies. In 2000, the American Film Institute
ranked the film #36 on 100 Years... 100 Laughs
, a list of the 100 best American comedies. In 2006, Miller wrote a more comprehensive memoir of his experiences in Dartmouth's AD house in a book entitled, The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie, in which Miller recounts hijinks that were considered too risqué for the movie. In 2008, Empire
magazine selected Animal House as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. The film was also selected by The New York Times
as one of The 1000 Best Movies Ever Made.
Comedy film
Comedy film is a genre of film in which the main emphasis is on humour. They are designed to elicit laughter from the audience. Comedies are mostly light-hearted dramas and are made to amuse and entertain the audiences...
directed by John Landis
John Landis
John David Landis is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is known for his comedies, his horror films, and his music videos with singer Michael Jackson.-Early life and career:...
. The film was a direct spin-off of National Lampoon magazine. The plot is about a misfit group of fraternity
Fraternities and sororities
Fraternities and sororities are fraternal social organizations for undergraduate students. In Latin, the term refers mainly to such organizations at colleges and universities in the United States, although it is also applied to analogous European groups also known as corporations...
members who challenge the administrators of their university.
The screenplay was adapted by Douglas Kenney
Douglas Kenney
Douglas C. Kenney was an American writer and actor who co-founded National Lampoon magazine in 1970. Kenney edited the magazine and wrote much of its early material.-Childhood:...
, Chris Miller
Chris Miller (writer)
John Christian "Chris" Miller was born in Brooklyn in 1942 and grew up in Roslyn, NY on Long Island. Miller is an American author and screenwriter, most notable for his work on National Lampoon magazine and the movie Animal House...
and Harold Ramis
Harold Ramis
Harold Allen Ramis is an American actor, director, and writer, specializing in comedy. His best-known film acting roles are as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters and Russell Ziskey in Stripes , both of which he also co-wrote...
from stories written by Miller and published in National Lampoon magazine based on Miller's experiences in the Alpha Delta Phi
Alpha Delta Phi
Alpha Delta Phi is a Greek-letter social college fraternity and the fourth-oldest continuous Greek-letter fraternity in the United States and Canada. Alpha Delta Phi was founded on October 29, 1832 by Samuel Eells at Hamilton College and includes former U.S. Presidents, Chief Justices of the U.S....
fraternity at Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
. Other influences on the film come from Ramis' experiences in the Zeta Beta Tau
Zeta Beta Tau
Zeta Beta Tau was founded in 1898 as the nation's first Jewish fraternity, although it is no longer sectarian. Today the merged Zeta Beta Tau Brotherhood is one of the largest, numbering over 140,000 initiated Brothers, and over 90 chapter locations.-Founding:The Zeta Beta Tau fraternity was...
fraternity at Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...
, and producer Ivan Reitman
Ivan Reitman
Ivan Reitman, OC is a Canadian film producer and director. He is known for the comedies he has directed and produced, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.He is the owner of The Montecito Picture Company, founded in 2000.-Early life:...
's experiences at Delta Upsilon
Delta Upsilon
Delta Upsilon is the sixth oldest international, all-male, college Greek-letter organization, and is the oldest non-secret fraternity in North America...
at McMaster University
McMaster University
McMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...
in Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton, Ontario
Hamilton is a port city in the Canadian province of Ontario. Conceived by George Hamilton when he purchased the Durand farm shortly after the War of 1812, Hamilton has become the centre of a densely populated and industrialized region at the west end of Lake Ontario known as the Golden Horseshoe...
. Of the lead actors only John Belushi
John Belushi
John Adam Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, The Star of the Films National Lampoon's Animal House and the The Blues Brothers and for fronting the American blues and soul...
was an established star, but even he had not yet appeared in a movie, having gained his notoriety mainly from Saturday Night Live appearances. Several cast members, including Karen Allen
Karen Allen
Karen Jane Allen is an American actress best known for her role as Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull...
, Tom Hulce
Tom Hulce
Thomas Edward "Tom" Hulce is an American actor and theater producer. As an actor, he is perhaps best known for his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Mozart in the movie Amadeus and his role as "Pinto" in National Lampoon's Animal House. Additional acting awards included a total of four Golden Globe...
and Kevin Bacon
Kevin Bacon
Kevin Norwood Bacon is an American film and theater actor whose notable roles include Animal House, Diner, Footloose, Flatliners, Wild Things, A Few Good Men, JFK, Apollo 13, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Trapped, Friday the 13th, Hollow Man, Tremors, Death Sentence, Frost/Nixon, Crazy, Stupid, Love....
,were just beginning their careers.
Upon its initial release, Animal House received generally mixed reviews from critics, but Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
and Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
proclaimed it one of the year's best. Filmed for $2.7 million, it is one of the most profitable movies of all time. Since its initial release, Animal House has garnered an estimated return of more than $141 million in the form of video and DVDs, not including merchandising.
The film, along with 1977's Kentucky Fried Movie
The Kentucky Fried Movie
The Kentucky Fried Movie is an American comedy film, released in 1977 and directed by John Landis. The film's writers were the team of David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker. This same team would go on to write and direct Airplane!, Top Secret! and the Police Squad! television series and its...
, also directed by Landis, was largely responsible for defining and launching the gross-out genre of films that became one of Hollywood's staple genres. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
deemed Animal House "culturally significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
. This film was #1 on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies. It was #36 on AFI
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
's 100 Years... 100 Laughs
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs
Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Laughs is a list of the top 100 funniest movies in American cinema. A wide variety of comedies were nominated for the distinction that included slapstick comedy, screwball comedy, romantic comedy, satire, black comedy, musical comedy, comedy of...
list of the 100 best American comedies. In 2008, Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine selected Animal House as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.
Plot
In 1962, college freshmen, Lawrence "Larry" Kroger (Thomas HulceTom Hulce
Thomas Edward "Tom" Hulce is an American actor and theater producer. As an actor, he is perhaps best known for his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Mozart in the movie Amadeus and his role as "Pinto" in National Lampoon's Animal House. Additional acting awards included a total of four Golden Globe...
) and Kent Dorfman (Stephen Furst
Stephen Furst
Stephen Furst is an American actor and film and television director. He was a regular in the science fiction series Babylon 5 playing Centauri diplomatic attaché Vir Cotto and as Dr. Elliot Axelrod on St...
), seek to join a fraternity at Faber College. They visit the prestigious Omega Theta Pi House's invitational party but are unwelcome. They then try next door at the Delta Tau Chi House, where Kent's brother was once a member, making Kent a "legacy." There they find John "Bluto" Blutarsky (John Belushi
John Belushi
John Adam Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, The Star of the Films National Lampoon's Animal House and the The Blues Brothers and for fronting the American blues and soul...
) urinating outside the fraternity house. The Deltas "need the dues" so they permit Larry and Kent to pledge. They receive the fraternity names "Pinto" (Larry) and "Flounder" (Kent).
Vernon Wormer (John Vernon
John Vernon
John Keith Vernon was a Canadian actor. He made a career in Hollywood after achieving initial television stardom in Canada.-Early life:...
), the Dean of Faber College, wants to remove the Delta fraternity from campus due to repeated conduct violations and low academic standings. Since they are already on probation, he puts the Deltas on something he calls "double secret probation" and orders the clean-cut, smug Omega president Gregg Marmalard (James Daughton
James Daughton
James Daughton is a film and television actor who is widely known for his role as Gregg Marmalard in National Lampoon's Animal House. He also had a role in the 1982 film The Beach Girls, in which he was noted primarily for stripping naked and running into the sea.-External links:...
) to find a way to get rid of the Deltas permanently.
Flounder is bullied by Omega member and ROTC
Reserve Officers' Training Corps
The Reserve Officers' Training Corps is a college-based, officer commissioning program, predominantly in the United States. It is designed as a college elective that focuses on leadership development, problem solving, strategic planning, and professional ethics.The U.S...
cadet commander Doug Neidermeyer (Mark Metcalf
Mark Metcalf
Mark Howes Metcalf is an American actor in both television and film.-Early life:Metcalf attended Westfield High School in Westfield, New Jersey.-Film and television work:...
) so Bluto and Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day (Bruce McGill
Bruce McGill
Bruce Travis McGill is an American actor who has an extensive list of credits in film and television. He is perhaps best known for his role as Jack Dalton on the television series MacGyver and as Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day in National Lampoon's Animal House.-Early life:McGill was born in San...
) persuade Flounder to sneak Neidermeyer's horse into Dean Wormer's office late at night. They give him a gun and tell him to shoot it. Flounder does not know that the gun is loaded with blanks
Blank (cartridge)
A blank is a type of cartridge for a firearm that contains gunpowder but no bullet or shot. When fired, the blank makes a flash and an explosive sound . Blanks are often used for simulation , training, and for signaling...
. He cannot bring himself to kill the horse, so he fires into the ceiling. The noise frightens the horse so much that it dies of a heart attack.
In the cafeteria the next day, smooth-talking Eric "Otter" Stratton (Tim Matheson
Tim Matheson
Tim Matheson is an American actor, director and producer. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of the smooth-talking Eric 'Otter' Stratton in the 1978 comedy National Lampoon's Animal House and has had a variety of other well-known roles, including providing the voice of the lead character...
) tries to convince the stuck-up Mandy Pepperidge (Mary Louise Weller
Mary Louise Weller
Mary Louise Weller is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her role as Mandy Pepperidge in the popular 1978 film Animal House...
) to abandon her boyfriend, the uninterested Marmalard, and date him instead. Bluto proceeds to provoke Marmalard with his impression of a popping zit
Acne vulgaris
Acne vulgaris is a common human skin disease, characterized by areas of skin with seborrhea , comedones , papules , pustules , Nodules and possibly scarring...
by stuffing his mouth with mashed potatoes and propelling it at Marmalard, Mandy and their table mates, Chip Diller (Kevin Bacon
Kevin Bacon
Kevin Norwood Bacon is an American film and theater actor whose notable roles include Animal House, Diner, Footloose, Flatliners, Wild Things, A Few Good Men, JFK, Apollo 13, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Trapped, Friday the 13th, Hollow Man, Tremors, Death Sentence, Frost/Nixon, Crazy, Stupid, Love....
) and Barbara "Babs" Jansen (Martha Smith
Martha Smith
Martha Smith is an American model and actress. She is sometimes credited as Martha L. Smith....
). Bluto then starts a food fight that engulfs the cafeteria.
Bluto and D-Day steal the answers to an upcoming psychology test. However, it turns out the Omegas planted the exam stencil and the Deltas get every answer wrong. Their grade point averages drop so low that Wormer only needs one more incident to revoke the charter that allows them to remain on campus.
To cheer themselves up, the Deltas organize a toga party
Toga party
A toga party is a particular kind of costume party in which party-goers wear a toga, or a semblance thereof, normally made from a bed sheet, and sandals...
, during which Otis Day and the Knights
Otis Day and the Knights
Otis Day and the Knights was originally created as a fictional band to perform in the movie National Lampoon's Animal House. They are best known for their version of "Shout" and "Shama Lama Ding Dong". Otis Day was played by DeWayne Jessie. Robert Cray was one of the members of the band in the...
perform "Shout". The dean's alcoholic, lecherous wife, Marion (Verna Bloom
Verna Bloom
Verna Bloom is an American actress. She co-starred in the 1973 film High Plains Drifter with Clint Eastwood and the 1974 made for TV movie Where Have All The People Gone? with Peter Graves and Kathleen Quinlan...
), attends the party at Otter's invitation and has sex with him. Pinto hooks up with Clorette (Sarah Holcomb
Sarah Holcomb
Sarah Holcomb is a former American actress. She first appeared in National Lampoon's Animal House and in three other films, ending with Caddyshack...
), a girl he met at the supermarket, and makes out with her only to learn she is the mayor's 13-year-old
Age of consent
While the phrase age of consent typically does not appear in legal statutes, when used in relation to sexual activity, the age of consent is the minimum age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. The European Union calls it the legal age for sexual...
daughter. He later brings her home in a shopping cart. Due to the party, Wormer revokes the fraternity's charter, and all belongings are confiscated.
To take their minds off their troubles, Otter, Boon, Flounder, and Pinto go on a road trip. Otter picks up some girls from Emily Dickinson College by pretending to be the boyfriend of Fawn Liebowitz, a girl who recently died on campus. They stop at a roadhouse because Otis Day and the Knights are performing there, not realizing that it caters to an exclusively black clientele. The hulking patrons intimidate the guys into fleeing, damaging Flounder's borrowed car and leaving their frightened dates behind.
Boon breaks up with his girlfriend Katy (Karen Allen
Karen Allen
Karen Jane Allen is an American actress best known for her role as Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull...
) after discovering her sexual relationship with a professor (Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
). Marmalard is told that his girlfriend is having an affair with Otter, so he and other Omegas lure him to a motel and beat him up. The Deltas' midterm grades are so poor that an ecstatic Wormer expels them all. He even notifies their draft boards
Conscription in the United States
Conscription in the United States has been employed several times, usually during war but also during the nominal peace of the Cold War...
of their eligibility. In the process, before Bluto attempts to speak to the dean, Wormer orders Flounder to speak with the words "OUT WITH IT", resulting in Flounder vomiting on the dean.
It seems time for the Deltas to give up but Bluto, supported by the injured Otter, rouses them with an impassioned, historically inaccurate speech ("Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor, known to Hawaiians as Puuloa, is a lagoon harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, west of Honolulu. Much of the harbor and surrounding lands is a United States Navy deep-water naval base. It is also the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet...
?!") and they decide to take revenge on Wormer and the Omegas. The Deltas construct a rogue parade float with Flounder's car as its base and wreak havoc on the annual homecoming parade. During the ensuing chaos, the futures of many of the main characters are revealed. The last shot of the film is of Bluto driving away in a white convertible with his soon-to-be wife: Mandy Pepperidge.
Delta Tau Chi (ΔΤΧ)
- John BelushiJohn BelushiJohn Adam Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician, best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live, The Star of the Films National Lampoon's Animal House and the The Blues Brothers and for fronting the American blues and soul...
as John "Bluto" Blutarsky: A drunken degenerate with his own style, in his seventh year of college, with a GPA of 0.0. He becomes a United States Senator. In the epilogue "Where Are They Now?: A Delta Alumni UpdateWhere Are They Now?: A Delta Alumni UpdateWhere Are They Now?: A Delta Alumni Update is a 2002 mockumentary film directed by John Landis for Universal. It shows the main characters from National Lampoon's Animal House 30 years on and purports that the original film had been a documentary. It was never shown in theaters, but only as part of...
" it is revealed that he eventually became President of the United States. - Tim MathesonTim MathesonTim Matheson is an American actor, director and producer. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal of the smooth-talking Eric 'Otter' Stratton in the 1978 comedy National Lampoon's Animal House and has had a variety of other well-known roles, including providing the voice of the lead character...
as Eric "Otter" Stratton: A smooth playboy whose room is a pristine seduction den amid the sheer filth of the rest of the Delta house. Otter is the fraternity's rush chairman and essentially the fraternity's unofficial leader. He becomes a gynecologist in Beverly HillsBeverly Hills, CaliforniaBeverly Hills is an affluent city located in Los Angeles County, California, United States. With a population of 34,109 at the 2010 census, up from 33,784 as of the 2000 census, it is home to numerous Hollywood celebrities. Beverly Hills and the neighboring city of West Hollywood are together...
. - Peter RiegertPeter RiegertPeter Riegert is an American actor, screenwriter, and film director, best known for his role as Boon from Animal House and crooked New Jersey State Assemblyman Ronald Zellman on the HBO original series The Sopranos.-Early life:...
as Donald "Boon" Schoenstein: Otter's best friend, who has to decide between his Delta pals and girlfriend Katy. He marries Katy in 1964, but they divorce in 1969. In the book adaptation Boon becomes a cab driver and part-time writer in New York CityNew York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
. In "Where Are They Now?" he and Katy remarried, re-divorced, and remarried a final time after a fling resulted in the conception of their son Otis; he also works as a documentarian. - Thomas HulceTom HulceThomas Edward "Tom" Hulce is an American actor and theater producer. As an actor, he is perhaps best known for his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Mozart in the movie Amadeus and his role as "Pinto" in National Lampoon's Animal House. Additional acting awards included a total of four Golden Globe...
as Lawrence "Pinto" Kroger: A shy but normal fellow, who becomes the editor of National Lampoon magazine. "Pinto" was screenwriter Chris Miller's nickname at his Dartmouth fraternity. - Stephen FurstStephen FurstStephen Furst is an American actor and film and television director. He was a regular in the science fiction series Babylon 5 playing Centauri diplomatic attaché Vir Cotto and as Dr. Elliot Axelrod on St...
as Kent "Flounder" Dorfman: An overweight, clumsy legacyLegacy preferencesLegacy preferences or legacy admission is a type of preference given by educational institutions to certain applicants on the basis of their familial relationship to alumni of that institution...
pledge, later a sensitivity trainer in ClevelandCleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
. - Bruce McGillBruce McGillBruce Travis McGill is an American actor who has an extensive list of credits in film and television. He is perhaps best known for his role as Jack Dalton on the television series MacGyver and as Daniel Simpson "D-Day" Day in National Lampoon's Animal House.-Early life:McGill was born in San...
as Daniel Simpson Day, "D-Day": A tough bikerMotorcycleA motorcycle is a single-track, two-wheeled motor vehicle. Motorcycles vary considerably depending on the task for which they are designed, such as long distance travel, navigating congested urban traffic, cruising, sport and racing, or off-road conditions.Motorcycles are one of the most...
with no grade point average; all classes incomplete. His later whereabouts are unknown. - James WiddoesJames WiddoesJames "Jamie" Widdoes is an American actor and film and television director, sometimes credited as Jamie Widdoes.-Career:...
as Robert Hoover: The affable, reasonably clean-cut president of the fraternity, who desperately struggles to maintain a façade of normality to placate the Dean. These efforts usually end with him willingly going along with the Delta lifestyle. He becomes a public defenderPublic defenderThe term public defender is primarily used to refer to a criminal defense lawyer appointed to represent people charged with a crime but who cannot afford to hire an attorney in the United States and Brazil. The term is also applied to some ombudsman offices, for example in Jamaica, and is one way...
in BaltimoreBaltimoreBaltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
. - Douglas KenneyDouglas KenneyDouglas C. Kenney was an American writer and actor who co-founded National Lampoon magazine in 1970. Kenney edited the magazine and wrote much of its early material.-Childhood:...
as "Stork": During his first year, everyone thought the Stork was brain damageBrain damage"Brain damage" or "brain injury" is the destruction or degeneration of brain cells. Brain injuries occur due to a wide range of internal and external factors...
d; he only speaks two lines in the entire film. In the book adaptation, Stork is revealed to be independently wealthy as a result of several patents he holds. In "Where Are They Now?" he has died. - The Deathmobile. Originally Fred Dorffman's 1962 Lincoln Continental, it was transformed into an armored car equipped with a locomotive whistle and decorated with the head of Emil Faber's statue, founder of Faber College. Concealed by a parade float in the shape of a birthday cake with the words "Eat Me" emblazoned on the sides, the Deathmobile was used to disrupt the Homecoming Parade and demolish the reviewing stand. As of 2009, it was part of the George BarrisGeorge BarrisGeorge Barris may refer to:*George Barris , designer of custom made cars*George Barris , photographer in the U.S. Army and of Hollywood stars...
Custom Car Collection.
Omega Theta Pi (ΩΘΠ)
- James DaughtonJames DaughtonJames Daughton is a film and television actor who is widely known for his role as Gregg Marmalard in National Lampoon's Animal House. He also had a role in the 1982 film The Beach Girls, in which he was noted primarily for stripping naked and running into the sea.-External links:...
as Gregory Marmalard: The president of Omega House and boyfriend of Mandy Pepperidge. He suffers from erectile dysfunctionErectile dysfunctionErectile dysfunction is sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual performance....
. He becomes a Nixon White HouseWatergate scandalThe Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...
aide and is subsequently raped in prisonPrison rapePrison rape commonly refers to the rape of inmates in prison by other inmates or prison staff.In 2001, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 140,000 inmates had been raped while incarcerated. and there is a significant variation in the rates of prison rape by race...
in 1974. - Mark MetcalfMark MetcalfMark Howes Metcalf is an American actor in both television and film.-Early life:Metcalf attended Westfield High School in Westfield, New Jersey.-Film and television work:...
as Douglas C. Neidermeyer: An ROTC cadet officer and scionKinshipKinship is a relationship between any entities that share a genealogical origin, through either biological, cultural, or historical descent. And descent groups, lineages, etc. are treated in their own subsections....
of a military family who hates the Deltas. He is fragged (killed by his own platoon) in VietnamVietnam WarThe Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
. - Kevin BaconKevin BaconKevin Norwood Bacon is an American film and theater actor whose notable roles include Animal House, Diner, Footloose, Flatliners, Wild Things, A Few Good Men, JFK, Apollo 13, Mystic River, The Woodsman, Trapped, Friday the 13th, Hollow Man, Tremors, Death Sentence, Frost/Nixon, Crazy, Stupid, Love....
as Chip Diller: A smarmy Omega pledge who is trampled by the panicking crowdCartoon physicsCartoon physics is a jocular system of laws of physics that supersedes the normal laws, used in animation for humorous effect. Normal physical laws are referential , but cartoon physics are preferential ....
at the end of the movie. In "Where Are They Now?" he became a born-again Christian missionaryMissionaryA missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
in AfricaAfricaAfrica is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
.
Supporting characters
- John VernonJohn VernonJohn Keith Vernon was a Canadian actor. He made a career in Hollywood after achieving initial television stardom in Canada.-Early life:...
as Dean Vernon Wormer: Dean of Faber college. He wants to revoke the Deltas' charter and kick them off-campus because of their partying ways. In "Where Are They Now?" he was fired after the Homecoming parade debacle and is now in a nursing home. - Verna BloomVerna BloomVerna Bloom is an American actress. She co-starred in the 1973 film High Plains Drifter with Clint Eastwood and the 1974 made for TV movie Where Have All The People Gone? with Peter Graves and Kathleen Quinlan...
as Marion Wormer: The Dean's alcoholic wife, who attends the toga party and is shown going to bed with Otter. In the graphic novel written by Chris Miller, she wins the "Miss Congeniality" prize at the climactic toga party and is shown wearing a toilet seat painted to look like a garland of flowers. - Donald SutherlandDonald SutherlandDonald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
as Professor Dave Jennings: A bored English professor who tries to turn his students on to left-wing politicsLeft-wing politicsIn politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
and smoking marijuana. In the "Where Are They Now," we learn that he became Chairman of Faber's English Department the same year that Dean Wormer entered the nursing home. - Karen AllenKaren AllenKaren Jane Allen is an American actress best known for her role as Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull...
as Katy: Boon's frustrated girlfriend who has a dalliance with Jennings but subsequently goes on to marry, then divorce, Boon. In the "Where Are They Now" we find out she and Boon re-married then re-divorced then re-re-married. - Sarah HolcombSarah HolcombSarah Holcomb is a former American actress. She first appeared in National Lampoon's Animal House and in three other films, ending with Caddyshack...
as Clorette DePasto: The mayor's 13-year-old daughter. - DeWayne JessieDeWayne JessieDeWayne Jessie is an American actor best known for his portrayal of Otis Day in National Lampoon's Animal House. In the movie, the songs "Shama Lama Ding Dong" and "Shout" were sung by Lloyd Williams and lip-synched by Jessie...
as Otis Day: The leader of the band that plays at the toga party. Jessie adopted the Day name in his private life and toured with the band. - Mary Louise WellerMary Louise WellerMary Louise Weller is an American actress. She is perhaps best known for her role as Mandy Pepperidge in the popular 1978 film Animal House...
as Mandy Pepperidge: A cheerleader and sorority girl who dates Greg, but is not satisfied with the relationship. She later marries Bluto. - Martha SmithMartha SmithMartha Smith is an American model and actress. She is sometimes credited as Martha L. Smith....
as Barbara Sue "Babs" Jansen: A Southern belleSouthern belleA southern belle is an archetype for a young woman of the American Old South's upper class....
who wants Greg for herself and finds the Deltas repulsive. After being indecently exposed in public by the Deltas she becomes a tour guideTour guideA tour guide provides assistance, information and cultural, historical and contemporary heritage interpretation to people on organized tours, individual clients, educational establishments, at religious and historical sites, museums, and at venues of other significant interest...
at Universal Studios HollywoodUniversal Studios HollywoodUniversal Studios Hollywood is a movie studio and theme park in the unincorporated Universal City community of Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is one of the oldest and most famous Hollywood movie studios still in use...
. - Cesare DanovaCesare DanovaCesare Danova was a television and screen actor. Born as Cesare Deitinger in Bergamo, Italy to an Austrian father and an Italian mother, he adopted Danova as his stage name after becoming an actor in Rome at the end of World War II. He emigrated to the United States in the 1950s to make the film...
as Mayor Carmine DePasto: The shady local mayor with suggested mafia ties. - Sean McCartin as "Lucky Boy": The PlayboyPlayboyPlayboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
-reading child who shouts "Thank you, God!" after a Playboy BunnyPlayboy BunnyA Playboy Bunny is a waitress at the Playboy Club. The Playboy Clubs were originally open from 1960 to 1988. The Club re-opened in one location in The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas in 2006...
flies through his bedroom window onto his bed. McCartin later became pastorPastorThe word pastor usually refers to an ordained leader of a Christian congregation. When used as an ecclesiastical styling or title, this role may be abbreviated to "Pr." or often "Ps"....
of a Eugene church.
Origins
Animal House was the first film produced by National Lampoon, the most popular humor magazine on college campuses in the mid-1970s. The periodical specialized in humor, and satirized politics and popular culture. Many of the magazine’s writers were recent college graduates, hence their appeal to students all over the country. Doug Kenney was a Lampoon writer and the magazine’s first editor-in-chief. He graduated from Harvard UniversityHarvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
in 1969 and had a college experience closer to the Omegas in the film (he had been president of the university's elite Spee Club). Kenney was responsible for the first appearances of two characters that would appear in the film, Larry Kroger and Mandy Pepperidge. They made their debut in National Lampoon’s High School Yearbook, a satire published in 1975.
However, Kenney felt that fellow Lampoon writer Chris Miller
Chris Miller (writer)
John Christian "Chris" Miller was born in Brooklyn in 1942 and grew up in Roslyn, NY on Long Island. Miller is an American author and screenwriter, most notable for his work on National Lampoon magazine and the movie Animal House...
was the magazine's expert on the college experience. Faced with an impending deadline, Miller submitted a chapter from his then-abandoned memoirs entitled "The Night of the Seven Fires" about pledging experiences from his fraternity days in Alpha Delta (associated with the national Alpha Delta Phi
Alpha Delta Phi
Alpha Delta Phi is a Greek-letter social college fraternity and the fourth-oldest continuous Greek-letter fraternity in the United States and Canada. Alpha Delta Phi was founded on October 29, 1832 by Samuel Eells at Hamilton College and includes former U.S. Presidents, Chief Justices of the U.S....
during Miller's undergraduate years, the fraternity subsequently disassociated itself from the national organization and is now called Alpha Delta) at the Ivy League
Ivy League
The Ivy League is an athletic conference comprising eight private institutions of higher education in the Northeastern United States. The conference name is also commonly used to refer to those eight schools as a group...
's Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College
Dartmouth College is a private, Ivy League university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. The institution comprises a liberal arts college, Dartmouth Medical School, Thayer School of Engineering, and the Tuck School of Business, as well as 19 graduate programs in the arts and sciences...
, in Hanover, New Hampshire
Hanover, New Hampshire
Hanover is a town along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. The population was 11,260 at the 2010 census. CNN and Money magazine rated Hanover the sixth best place to live in America in 2011, and the second best in 2007....
. The antics of his fellow fraternities became the inspiration for the Delta Tau Chis of Animal House and many characters in the film (and their nicknames) were based on Miller's fraternity brothers. Miller's college nickname was "Pinto" in recognition of dark spots he had on a certain private part of his anatomy. Filmmaker Ivan Reitman
Ivan Reitman
Ivan Reitman, OC is a Canadian film producer and director. He is known for the comedies he has directed and produced, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.He is the owner of The Montecito Picture Company, founded in 2000.-Early life:...
had just finished producing David Cronenberg
David Cronenberg
David Paul Cronenberg, OC, FRSC is a Canadian filmmaker, screenwriter and actor. He is one of the principal originators of what is commonly known as the body horror or venereal horror genre. This style of filmmaking explores people's fears of bodily transformation and infection. In his films, the...
's first film, Shivers
Shivers (film)
Shivers is a 1975 Canadian body horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg. Cronenberg won "Best Director" at the 1975 Sitges Film Festival.-Plot:Dr...
, and called the magazine’s publisher Matty Simmons about making movies under the Lampoon banner. Reitman had put together The National Lampoon Show in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
that featured several future Saturday Night Live cast members, including John Belushi. When most of them moved to that show except for Harold Ramis, Reitman approached him with an idea to make a film together using some skits from the Lampoon Show.
Addition: Please see the Von Summer story with images of Chris Miller and the actual Dartmouth Crew. http://www.bergen.com/Animal_House_Recalling_Alex_von_Summers_college_days_at_Dartmouths_famed_Alpha_Delta_frat.html
Screenplay
Kenney met Lampoon writer Ramis at the suggestion of Simmons. Ramis drew from his own fraternity experiences as a member of Zeta Beta TauZeta Beta Tau
Zeta Beta Tau was founded in 1898 as the nation's first Jewish fraternity, although it is no longer sectarian. Today the merged Zeta Beta Tau Brotherhood is one of the largest, numbering over 140,000 initiated Brothers, and over 90 chapter locations.-Founding:The Zeta Beta Tau fraternity was...
fraternity at Washington University
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...
in St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
and was working on a treatment
Film treatment
A film treatment is a piece of prose, typically the step between scene cards and the first draft of a screenplay for a motion picture, television program, or radio play. It is generally longer and more detailed than an outline , and it may include details of directorial style that an outline omits...
about college entitled "Freshman Year" but the magazine’s editors were not happy with it. Kenney and Ramis started working on a treatment together, positing Charles Manson
Charles Manson
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders carried out by members of the group at his instruction...
in a high school, calling it Laser Orgy Girls. Simmons was cool to this idea so they changed the setting to a "northeastern
Northeastern United States
The Northeastern United States is a region of the United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau.-Composition:The region comprises nine states: the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont; and the Mid-Atlantic states of New...
college . . . Ivy League kind of school." Kenney was a fan of Miller’s fraternity stories and suggested using them as a basis for a movie. Kenney, Miller and Ramis began brainstorming ideas. They saw the film's 1962 setting as "the last innocent year . . . of America", and the homecoming parade that ends the film as occurring on November 21, 1963, the day before the John F. Kennedy assassination
John F. Kennedy assassination
John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the thirty-fifth President of the United States, was assassinated at 12:30 p.m. Central Standard Time on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas...
. They agreed that Belushi should star in it and Ramis wrote the part of Bluto specifically for the comedian, having met him at Chicago's The Second City
The Second City
The Second City is a improvisational comedy enterprise which originated in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood.The Second City Theatre opened on December 16, 1959 and has since expanded its presence to several other cities, including Toronto and Los Angeles...
.
The writers were new to screenwriting, and thus produced a 110-page treatment (the average was 15 pages) that Reitman and Simmons pitched to various Hollywood studios. Simmons met with Ned Tanen
Ned Tanen
Ned Stone Tanen was an American movie studio executive behind films that included American Graffiti and Animal House....
, an executive at Universal Studios. He was encouraged by younger executives Sean Daniel
Sean Daniel
Sean Peter Daniel is an American film producer.Daniel was born in New York City, New York, the son of Beverly and Jeremy Daniel, a public relations executive. Daniel was a studio executive at Universal Studios for twelve years including five years as President of Production...
and Thom Mount
Thom Mount
Thom Mount is the former President of Universal Pictures and one of America's well-known independent producers.In the course of his thirty-five year career in the film industry, producer and studio head Thom Mount has made an indelible mark on the American film industry. He studied film at the...
who were more receptive to the Lampoon type of humor. Tanen hated the idea. Ramis remembers, "We went further than I think Universal expected or wanted. I think they were shocked and appalled. Chris’ fraternity had virtually been a vomiting cult. And we had a lot of scenes that were almost orgies of vomit... We didn’t back off anything". As the writers created more drafts of the screenplay (nine in total), the studio gradually became more receptive to the project, especially Mount, who championed it. Surprisingly, the studio green-lighted the film and set the budget at a modest $3 million. Simmons remembers, "They just figured, ‘Screw it, it’s a silly little movie, and we’ll make a couple of bucks if we’re lucky – let them do whatever they want.’"
Casting
Initially, Reitman had wanted to direct but had only made one film, Cannibal GirlsCannibal Girls
Cannibal Girls is a 1973 Canadian Comedy horror film directed by Ivan Reitman and stars Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, and Ronald Ulrich.-Synopsis:...
, for $5,000. The film's producers approached Richard Lester
Richard Lester
Richard Lester is an American film director based in Britain. Lester is notable for his work with The Beatles in the 1960s and his work on the Superman film series in the 1980s.-Early years and television:...
and Bob Rafelson
Bob Rafelson
Robert "Bob" Rafelson is an Emmy Award winning American film director, writer and producer. He was an early member of the New Hollywood movement in the 1970s and is most famous for directing and co-writing the film Five Easy Pieces, starring Jack Nicholson, as well as being one of the creators of...
before considering John Landis, who got the director job based on his work on Kentucky Fried Movie. That film’s script and continuity supervisor was the girlfriend of Sean Daniel, an assistant to Mount. Daniel saw Landis’ movie and recommended him. Landis then met with Mount, Reitman and Simmons and got the job. Landis remembers, "When I was given the script, it was the funniest thing I had ever read up to that time. But it was really offensive. There was a great deal of projectile vomiting and rape and all these things". There was also a certain amount of friction between Landis and the writers early on because Landis was a high-school dropout from Hollywood and they were college graduates from the East Coast. Ramis remembers, "He sort of referred immediately to Animal House as ‘my movie.’ We’d been living with it for two years and we hated that". According to Landis, he drew inspiration from classic Hollywood comedies featuring the likes of Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton
Joseph Frank "Buster" Keaton was an American comic actor, filmmaker, producer and writer. He was best known for his silent films, in which his trademark was physical comedy with a consistently stoic, deadpan expression, earning him the nickname "The Great Stone Face".Keaton was recognized as the...
, Harold Lloyd
Harold Lloyd
Harold Clayton Lloyd, Sr. was an American film actor and producer, most famous for his silent comedies....
, and the Marx Brothers
Marx Brothers
The Marx Brothers were an American family comedy act, originally from New York City, that enjoyed success in Vaudeville, Broadway, and motion pictures from the early 1900s to around 1950...
.
The initial cast was to feature Chevy Chase
Chevy Chase
Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase is an American comedian, writer, and television and film actor, born into a prominent entertainment industry family. Chase worked a plethora of odd jobs before moving into comedy acting with National Lampoon...
as Otter, Bill Murray
Bill Murray
William James "Bill" Murray is an American actor and comedian. He first gained national exposure on Saturday Night Live in which he earned an Emmy Award and later went on to star in a number of critically and commercially successful comedic films, including Caddyshack , Ghostbusters , and...
as Boon, Brian Doyle-Murray
Brian Doyle-Murray
Brian Doyle-Murray is an American comedian, screenwriter, actor and voice artist. He is the older brother of actor/comedian Bill Murray and has acted together with him in several films, including Caddyshack, Scrooged, Ghostbusters II, The Razor's Edge and Groundhog Day...
as Hoover, Dan Aykroyd
Dan Aykroyd
Daniel Edward "Dan" Aykroyd, CM is a Canadian comedian, actor, screenwriter, musician, winemaker and ufologist. He was an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, an originator of The Blues Brothers and Ghostbusters and has had a long career as a film actor and screenwriter.-Early...
as D-Day and John Belushi as Bluto, but only Belushi wanted to do it. Chase was a star from Saturday Night Live, which had recently become a cultural phenomenon. His name would have added credibility to the project, but he turned the film down to do Foul Play
Foul Play
Foul Play is a 1978 American comic mystery/thriller film written and directed by Colin Higgins. In it, a recently divorced librarian is drawn into a mystery when a stranger hides a roll of film in a pack of cigarettes and gives it to her for safekeeping....
; Landis, who wanted to cast unknown dramatic actors such as Bacon and Allen (the first film for both) instead of famous comedians, takes credit for subtly discouraging Chase by describing the film as an "ensemble
Ensemble cast
An ensemble cast is made up of cast members in which the principal actors and performers are assigned roughly equal amounts of importance and screen time in a dramatic production. This kind of casting became more popular in television series because it allows flexibility for writers to focus on...
". The character of D-Day was based on Aykroyd, who was a motorcycle aficionado. Aykroyd was offered the part, but he was already committed to Saturday Night Live. Belushi—who had worked on The National Lampoon Radio Hour
The National Lampoon Radio Hour
The National Lampoon Radio Hour was a comedy radio show which was created, produced and initially written by staff from National Lampoon magazine. The show ran weekly, for a little over a year, from November 17, 1973 to December 28, 1974...
before Saturday Night Live—was also committed to the show, but spent Monday through Wednesday making the film and then flying back to New York to do the show on Thursday through Saturday. Ramis originally wrote the role of Boon for himself, but Landis felt that he looked too old for the part and Riegert was cast instead. Landis did offer Ramis a smaller part, but he declined. Landis met with Jack Webb
Jack Webb
John Randolph "Jack" Webb , also known by the pseudonym John Randolph, was an American actor, television producer, director and screenwriter, who is most famous for his role as Sergeant Joe Friday in the radio and television series Dragnet...
to play Dean Wormer and Kim Novak
Kim Novak
Kim Novak is an American film and television actress. She began her career with her roles in Pushover and Phffft! but achieved greater prominence in the 1955 film Picnic...
to play his wife. Webb ultimately backed out due to concerns over his clean-cut image, and was replaced by John Vernon.
Belushi received only $35,000 for Animal House, with a bonus after it became a hit. Landis also met with Meat Loaf
Meat Loaf
Michael Lee Aday , better known by his stage name, Meat Loaf, is an American hard rock musician and actor...
in case Belushi did not want to play Bluto. Landis worked with Belushi on his character, who "hardly had any dialogue"; they decided that Bluto was a cross between Harpo Marx
Harpo Marx
Adolph "Harpo" Marx was an American comedian and film star. He was the second oldest of the Marx Brothers. His comic style was influenced by clown and pantomime traditions. He wore a curly reddish wig, and never spoke during performances...
and the Cookie Monster
Cookie Monster
Cookie Monster is a Muppet on the children's television show Sesame Street. He is best known for his voracious appetite and his famous eating phrases: "Me want cookie!", "Me eat cookie!", and "Om nom nom nom" . He often eats anything and everything, including danishes, donuts, lettuce, apples,...
. Despite Belushi's presence, Universal wanted another star. Landis had been a crew member on Kelly's Heroes
Kelly's Heroes
Kelly's Heroes is an offbeat 1970 comedy/war film about a group of World War II soldiers who go AWOL to rob a bank behind enemy lines. Directed by Brian G...
and had become friends with actor Donald Sutherland
Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland, OC is a Canadian actor with a film career spanning nearly 50 years. Some of Sutherland's more notable movie roles included offbeat warriors in such war movies as The Dirty Dozen, , MASH , and Kelly's Heroes , as well as in such popular films as Klute, Invasion of the...
, sometimes babysitting his son Kiefer
Kiefer Sutherland
Kiefer Sutherland is an English-born Canadian actor, producer and director, best known for his portrayal of Jack Bauer on the Fox thriller drama series 24 for which he has won an Emmy Award , a Golden Globe award , two Screen Actors Guild Awards and two Satellite...
. Landis asked Sutherland, one of the biggest stars of the 1970s
1970s in film
The decade of the 1970s in film involved many significant films.----Contents1 World cinema2 Hollywood3 List of films: # A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z.4 Events-World cinema:...
, to be in the film. For two days' work, Sutherland initially declined $35,000. Universal then offered him $35,000 and 15% of the film's gross
Gross (economics)
In economics, gross means before deductions. The antonym is net, meaning after deductions.-Usage:In this sense, it may appear an adjective, following the noun it modifies, e.g., "earned two million dollars, gross"...
, assuming that the movie would be quickly forgotten. Sutherland wanted guaranteed money and settled for $50,000; although this made him the highest-paid member of the cast (other than Neidemeyer's horse), the decision cost Sutherland what Landis estimates as "at least $20 million."
Locations
The president of the University of Oregon
University of Oregon
-Colleges and schools:The University of Oregon is organized into eight schools and colleges—six professional schools and colleges, an Arts and Sciences College and an Honors College.- School of Architecture and Allied Arts :...
in Eugene
Eugene, Oregon
Eugene is the second largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and the seat of Lane County. It is located at the south end of the Willamette Valley, at the confluence of the McKenzie and Willamette rivers, about east of the Oregon Coast.As of the 2010 U.S...
, William Beaty Boyd, had been a senior administrator of a major California university when his campus was considered for a location of the film The Graduate
The Graduate
The Graduate is a 1967 American comedy-drama motion picture directed by Mike Nichols. It is based on the 1963 novel The Graduate by Charles Webb, who wrote it shortly after graduating from Williams College. The screenplay was by Buck Henry, who makes a cameo appearance as a hotel clerk, and Calder...
. After he consulted with other senior administrative colleagues who advised him to turn it down due to the lack of artistic merit, production moved to Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
and USC
University of Southern California
The University of Southern California is a private, not-for-profit, nonsectarian, research university located in Los Angeles, California, United States. USC was founded in 1880, making it California's oldest private research university...
. The Graduate went on to become a classic, and Boyd was determined not to make the same mistake twice when the producers inquired about filming at Oregon. After consulting with student government leaders and officers of the Pan Hellenic Council, the Director of University Relations advised the president that the script, although raunchy and often tasteless, was a very funny spoof of college life. Boyd even allowed the filmmakers to use his office as Dean Wormer's.
The actual house depicted as the Delta House was originally a residence in Eugene, the Dr. A.W. Patterson House. Around 1959, it was acquired by the Psi Deuteron chapter of Phi Sigma Kappa
Phi Sigma Kappa
-Phi Sigma Kappa's Creed and Cardinal Principles:The 1934 Convention in Ann Arbor brought more changes for the fraternity. Brother Stewart W. Herman of Gettysburg wrote and presented the Creed, and Brother Ralph Watts of Massachusetts drafted and presented the Cardinal Principles.-World War II:The...
fraternity and was their chapter house until 1967, when the chapter was closed due to low membership. The house was sold and slid into disrepair, with the spacious porch removed and the lawn graveled over. At the time of the shooting, the Phi Kappa Psi
Phi Kappa Psi
Phi Kappa Psi is an American collegiate social fraternity founded at Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania on February 19, 1852. There are over a hundred chapters and colonies at accredited four year colleges and universities throughout the United States. More than 112,000 men have been...
and Sigma Nu
Sigma Nu
Sigma Nu is an undergraduate, college fraternity with chapters in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Sigma Nu was founded in 1869 by three cadets at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia...
fraternity houses sat next to the old Phi Sigma Kappa house. The interior of the Sigma Nu house was used for many of the interior scenes, but the individual rooms were filmed on a soundstage. The Patterson house was demolished in 1986. A suite of physicians' offices now occupies the site. A large boulder placed to the west of the parking entrance displays a bronze plaque commemorating the Delta House location. The parade scene takes place in downtown Cottage Grove, Oregon
Cottage Grove, Oregon
Cottage Grove is a city in Lane County, Oregon, United States. It received its name from its first postmaster, G. C. Pierce, in September 1861. Pierce's home at the time was in an oak grove. The population was 9,686 at the 2010 census.-History:...
on Main Street.
Principal photography
Landis brought the actors who played the Deltas up five days early in order to bond. Staying at the Rodeway Inn they moved an old piano from the lobby into McGill's room, which became known as "party central". Actor James Widdoes remembers, "It was like freshman orientation. There was a lot of getting to know each other and calling each other by our character names". This tactic encouraged the actors playing the Deltas to separate themselves from the actors playing the Omegas, helping generate authentic animosity between them on camera. Belushi and his wife, Judy, had a house in the suburbs in order to keep him away from alcohol and drugs.Although the cast members were warned against mixing with the college students, one night, some girls invited several of the cast members to a fraternity party. They arrived assuming they had been invited and were greeted with open hostility. As they were leaving, Widdoes threw a cup of beer at a group of drunk football players
Oregon Ducks football
The Oregon Ducks football program is the intercollegiate American football team for the University of Oregon located in the U.S. state of Oregon. The team competes at the NCAA Division I level in the Football Bowl Subdivision and is a member of the Pacific-12 Conference. Known as the Ducks, the...
and a fight "like a scene from the movie" broke out. Tim Matheson, Bruce McGill, Peter Riegert, and Widdoes narrowly escaped, with McGill suffering a black eye and Widdoes getting several teeth knocked out.
Other than Belushi's opening yell, the food fight was filmed in one shot, with the actors encouraged to fight for real. Flounder's groceries handling in the supermarket was another single shot; Furst deftly caught the many items Landis and Matheson threw at him, amazing the director.
While shooting the film, Landis and Bruce McGill staged a scene for reporters visiting the set where the director pretended to be angry at the actor for being difficult on the set. Landis grabbed a breakaway pitcher and smashed it over McGill's head. He fell to the ground and pretended to be unconscious. The reporters were completely fooled, and when Landis asked McGill to get up, he refused to move.
Black extras had to be bused in from Portland
Portland, Oregon
Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...
for the segment at the Dexter Lake Club due to their scarcity around Eugene. More seriously, the segment alarmed studio executives, who perceived it as racist and warned that "'black people in America are going to rip the seats out of theaters if you leave that scene in the movie.'" Richard Pryor
Richard Pryor
Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor was an American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer and MC. Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities, and profanity, as well as racial epithets...
's approval helped retain the segment in the film. The studio became more enthusiastic about the film when Reitman showed executives and sales managers of various regions in the country a 10-minute production reel that was put together in two days. The reaction was positive and the studio sent 20 copies out to exhibitors. The first preview screening for Animal House was held in Denver four months before it opened nationwide. The crowd loved it and the filmmakers realized they had a potential hit on their hands.
Soundtrack and score
The soundtrack is a mix of rock and rollRock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
and rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues
Rhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
with the original score created by film composer Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein
Elmer Bernstein was an American composer and conductor best known for his many film scores. In a career which spanned fifty years, he composed music for hundreds of film and television productions...
, who had been a Landis family friend since John Landis was a child. Bernstein was easily persuaded to score the film, but was not sure what to make of it. Landis asked him to score it as though it were serious. Bernstein said that his work on this film opened yet another door in his diverse career, to scoring comedies.
Soundtrack album listing
Additional music in the film
- "Theme from A Summer PlaceTheme from A Summer PlaceThe "Theme from A Summer Place" is a song with lyrics by Mack Discant and music by Max Steiner, written for the 1959 film, A Summer Place, which starred Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue. It was recorded for the film by Hugo Winterhalter...
", composed by Max SteinerMax SteinerMax Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
; performed by Percy FaithPercy FaithPercy Faith was a Canadian-born American bandleader, orchestrator, composer and conductor, known for his lush arrangements of pop and Christmas standards. He is often credited with creating the "easy listening" or "mood music" format which became staples of American popular music in the 1950s and...
and his Orchestra - "Who's Sorry Now?Who's Sorry Now?"Who's Sorry Now?" is a popular song with music written by Ted Snyder and lyrics by Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. It was published in 1923."Who's Sorry Now?" was featured in the Marx Brothers film A Night in Casablanca , directed by Archie Mayo and released by United Artists.The song has been...
", written by Ted SnyderTed SnyderTheodore Frank Snyder , was a U.S. composer, lyricist, and music publisher . His hits include "The Sheik of Araby" and "Who's Sorry Now?" . In 1970, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame...
, Bert KalmarBert KalmarBert Kalmar was a Jewish American lyricist.He was born in New York, New York. He ran away from home at the age of 10 to become a magician at a tent show, and retained an interest in magic all his life. He never got much of an education, but decided to make a career in show business...
and Harry RubyHarry RubyHarry Ruby was a Jewish American songwriter and screenwriter.After failing in his early ambition to become a professional baseball player,...
; performed by Connie FrancisConnie FrancisConnie Francis is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw... - "The Washington Post MarchThe Washington Post (march)"The Washington Post" is a march composed by John Philip Sousa in 1889. Since then, it has remained as one of his most popular marches throughout the United States and many countries abroad.-History:...
", composed by John Philip SousaJohn Philip SousaJohn Philip Sousa was an American composer and conductor of the late Romantic era, known particularly for American military and patriotic marches. Because of his mastery of march composition, he is known as "The March King" or the "American March King" due to his British counterpart Kenneth J.... - "TammyTammy (song)"Tammy" is a popular song with music by Jay Livingston and lyrics by Ray Evans. It was published in 1957 and debuted in the film Tammy and the Bachelor. It was nominated for the 1957 Academy Award for Best Original Song....
", by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans
Reaction
On its opening weekend, Animal House grossed $276,538, in 12 theaters. The film grossed over $1,000,000 per week, becoming the second most popular 1978 US film, trailing only GreaseGrease (film)
Grease is a 1978 American musical film directed by Randal Kleiser and based on Warren Casey's and Jim Jacobs's 1971 musical of the same name about two lovers in a 1950s high school. The film stars John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, and Jeff Conaway...
. It made $120.1 million in North America
North America
North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...
and went on to have a domestic lifetime gross of $141.6 million.
Critical reception
At the time of its release, Animal House received mixed reviews from critics but several immediately recognized its appeal, and it has since been recognized as one of the best films of 1978. The film currently holds a 90% "Certified Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
. Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
gave the film four stars out of four and wrote, "It's anarchic, messy, and filled with energy. It assaults us. Part of the movie's impact comes from its sheer level of manic energy... But the movie's better made (and better acted) than we might at first realize. It takes skill to create this sort of comic pitch, and the movie's filled with characters that are sketched a little more absorbingly than they had to be, and acted with perception". Ebert later placed the film on his 10 best list of 1978. In his review for Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
, Frank Rich wrote, "At its best it perfectly expresses the fears and loathings of kids who came of age in the late '60s; at its worst Animal House revels in abject silliness. The hilarious highs easily compensate for the puerile lows". Gary Arnold wrote in his review for The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
, "Belushi also controls a wicked array of conspiratorial expressions with the audience... He can seem irresistibly funny in repose or invest minor slapstick opportunities with a streak of genius". David Ansen
David Ansen
David Ansen is a reviewer and senior editor for Newsweek, where he has been reviewing movies since 1977. He came to Newsweek after several years as the chief film critic at Boston's The Real Paper...
wrote in Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
, "But if Animal House lacks the inspired tastelessness of the Lampoon's High School Yearbook Parody, this is still low humor of a high order". Robert Martin wrote in The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail
The Globe and Mail is a nationally distributed Canadian newspaper, based in Toronto and printed in six cities across the country. With a weekly readership of approximately 1 million, it is Canada's largest-circulation national newspaper and second-largest daily newspaper after the Toronto Star...
, "It is so gross and tasteless you feel you should be disgusted but it's hard to be offended by something that is so sidesplittingly funny". Time magazine proclaimed Animal House one of the year's best.
When the film was released, Landis, Widdoes and Allen went on a national promotional tour. Universal Pictures spent about $4.5 million promoting the film at selected college campuses and helped students organize their own toga parties. One such party at the University of Maryland
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
attracted some 2,000 people, while students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
tried for a crowd of 10,000 people and a place in the Guinness Book of World Records
Guinness World Records
Guinness World Records, known until 2000 as The Guinness Book of Records , is a reference book published annually, containing a collection of world records, both human achievements and the extremes of the natural world...
. Thanks to the film, toga parties became one of 1978's favorite college campus happenings.
American Film Institute Lists
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies—Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Laughs—#36
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Songs:
- Shout—Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes:
- "Toga! Toga!"—#82
- "Over? Did you say “over?” Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell, no!"—Nominated
- "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."—Nominated
- AFI's 100 Years...100 Movies (10th Anniversary Edition)—Nominated
Spin-offs
The film inspired a short-lived half-hour ABCAmerican Broadcasting Company
The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...
television sitcom, Delta House, in which Vernon reprised his role as the long-suffering, malevolent Dean Wormer. The series also included Steven Furst as Flounder, Bruce McGill as D-Day, and James Widdoes as Hoover. The pilot episode was written by the film's screenwriters, Douglas Kenney, Chris Miller and Harold Ramis. Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Pfeiffer
Michelle Marie Pfeiffer is an American actress. She made her film debut in 1980 in The Hollywood Knights, but first garnered mainstream attention with her performance in Brian De Palma's Scarface . Pfeiffer has won numerous awards for her work...
made her acting debut in the series and Peter Fox was cast as Otter. John Belushi's character from the film, John "Bluto" Blutarsky, is in the army, but his brother, Blotto, played by Josh Mostel
Josh Mostel
Joshua "Josh" Mostel is an American actor who is best known for his roles in Jesus Christ Superstar and two Adam Sandler films .-Life and career:...
, transfers to Faber College to carry on Bluto's tradition.
Animal House inspired Co-Ed Fever, another sitcom but without the involvement of the film's producers or cast. Set in a dorm of the formerly all-female Baxter College, the pilot
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
of Co-Ed Fever was aired by CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
on 4 February 1979, but the network canceled the series before airing any more episodes. NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
also had its Animal House-inspired sitcom, Brothers and Sisters
Brothers and Sisters (1979 TV series)
Brothers and Sisters is an American sitcom that aired on NBC from January to April 1979. The series attempted to capitalize on the success of the 1978 motion picture National Lampoon's Animal House...
, in which three members of Crandall College's Pi Nu fraternity interact with members of the Gamma Iota sorority. Like ABC's Delta House, Brothers and Sisters lasted only three months.
The film's writers planned a movie sequel set in 1967 (the so-called "Summer of Love
Summer of Love
The Summer of Love was a social phenomenon that occurred during the summer of 1967, when as many as 100,000 people converged on the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, creating a cultural and political rebellion...
"), in which the Deltas have a reunion for Pinto's marriage in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. The only Delta to have become a hippie is Flounder, who is now called Pisces. Later, Chris Miller and John Weidman, another Lampoon writer, created a treatment for this screenplay, but Universal rejected it because the sequel to American Graffiti
More American Graffiti
More American Graffiti is the 1979 sequel film to George Lucas's hit film American Graffiti. Whereas the first film followed a group of friends during the summer evening before they set off for college, this film shows us where the characters from the first film end up a few years later.Most of the...
, which contained some hippie-1967 sequences, had not done well. When John Belushi died, the idea was indefinitely shelved.
A second attempt at a sequel was made in 1982 with producer Matty Simmons co-authoring a script which saw some the Deltas returning to Faber College five years after the events of the film. The project got no further than a first draft script dated May 6, 1982.
The "Double Secret Probation Edition" DVD included a short film entitled "Where Are They Now?: A Delta Alumni Update" which suggested the film had been a documentary and Landis was catching up with some of the cast (played by their original actors).
Spike TV's sitcom Blue Mountain State
Blue Mountain State
Blue Mountain State is an American comedy series that premiered on Spike on January 11, 2010. The series producers include Chris Romano and Eric Falconer and is produced by Lionsgate Television...
uses this film as an inspiration.
"Where Are They Now?"
Included on the 2003 "Double Secret Probation Edition" DVD release, the mockumentary follows director John Landis to cities all over America in search of the former Deltas, Omegas, and Dean Wormer. Here are the various locales and professions the characters have settled into:- Donald Schoenstein - Film editor, New York City. Currently in his third marriage to Katy. He has a son named Otis.
- Babs Jansen - Tour guide, Universal Studios, Hollywood. She mentions to Landis that she is organizing an upcoming Faber reunion, and seems to be successful at her job.
- Marion Wormer - Seemingly unemployed in Chicago. She tells Landis of how her husband Vernon accepted the blame for the parade debacle, and was subsequently fired, leading to their divorce. She becomes progressively more tipsy throughout the interview, eventually falling off her chair.
- Kent Dorfman - Executive director, Encounter Groups of Cleveland, Inc., Cleveland, Ohio. He recalls trying to diet during the 1970s with a special program requiring him to shoot up the urine of pregnant women.
- Robert Hoover - Assistant district attorneyDistrict attorneyIn many jurisdictions in the United States, a District Attorney is an elected or appointed government official who represents the government in the prosecution of criminal offenses. The district attorney is the highest officeholder in the jurisdiction's legal department and supervises a staff of...
, Baltimore, Maryland. Hoover tells the tale of how he quit being a public defender after he realized many of his clients were insane. He also boasts of how his legal advice was sought during the O.J. Simpson murder case. - Chip Diller - Landis receives a letter from Diller, who is currently serving as a missionaryMissionaryA missionary is a member of a religious group sent into an area to do evangelism or ministries of service, such as education, literacy, social justice, health care and economic development. The word "mission" originates from 1598 when the Jesuits sent members abroad, derived from the Latin...
in Africa. He recalls how he was prevented from going to Vietnam as his father was a prime donor to several right-wing political campaigns. When he learned of Doug Neidermeyer's fragging in VietnamVietnam WarThe Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, he fell into alcoholism and despair. When he began seeing JesusJesusJesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
in his food, he became a Born-again Christian and fell into his current profession as reverend and missionary. - Dean Vernon Wormer - Wormer is seen at a nursing home in Florida, under the watchful eye of a male nurse. He appears to be senileDementiaDementia is a serious loss of cognitive ability in a previously unimpaired person, beyond what might be expected from normal aging...
, not recognizing Landis at first (calling him "Larry"), and not remembering his tenure as Dean of Faber. When Landis mentions the Deltas, Wormer erupts into a violent, profanity-laced tirade against the boys who cost him his job. He lashes out against the nurse and then physically attacks Landis, knocking out the camera in the process. - Eric Stratton - Gynecologist, Beverly Hills, California. Otter is depicted as still being the affable, suave gentlemen he was in his college days. He remarks that gynecology has been very enjoyable for him and that he has straightened up a bit since leaving Faber. An attractive, blonde patient in her underwear then tells Otter she's ready for her examination. Otter politely cuts the interview off and goes into the exam room.
- Daniel Simpson Day - Landis remarks in a voiceover that D-Day has been the hardest to track down for the documentary, saying that rumors have flown around, with his whereabouts ranging from a Buddhist monastery in Nepal to the Yukon Territory. Landis eventually approaches a house in Modesto, California, where a man opens the door by a crack and claims, in a Hispanic accent, "I don't know no D-Day person! I don't know him!" He slams the door in Landis' face and then bursts out of the garage in a car. He pulls out onto the street to the strains of the William Tell Overture, gives a manic laugh exactly like D-Day's, and speeds off.
- John Blutarsky - In a final voice-over a shot of the White HouseWhite HouseThe White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
, Landis remarks that the viewers all know what happened to Bluto and Mandy Pepperidge: they became the President and First Lady of the United States.
Home video
Animal House became one of the most profitable movies of all time. Since its initial release, the film has garnered an estimated return of more than $141 million in the form of video and DVDs, not including merchandising.Animal House was released on videodisc
Videodisc
Videodisc is a general term for a laser- or stylus-readable random-access circular disc that contains both audio and analog video signals recorded in an analog form...
in 1979. A Collector's Edition DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
was released in 2002, with a 30-minute 1998 documentary entitled "The Yearbook - An Animal House Reunion" by producer JM Kenny with production notes, theatrical trailer, and new interviews with director Landis, stars Tim Matheson, Karen Allen, Peter Riegert, Mark Metcalf and Kevin Bacon. The "Double Secret Probation Edition" DVD released in 2003 features cast members reprising their respective roles in a "Where Are They Now?" mockumentary
Mockumentary
A mockumentary , is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are presented in documentary format. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on current events and issues by using a fictitious setting, or to parody the documentary form itself...
, which posited the original film as a documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
. One major change shown in this mockumentary from the epilogue of the original film is that Bluto went on from his career in the U.S. Senate to become the President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
, with a voiceover on a shot of the north portico of the White House
White House
The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the president of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical...
, since by then Belushi was no longer alive. This DVD also includes "Did You Know That? Universal Animated Anecdotes," a subtitle trivia track, the making of documentary from the Collector's Edition, MXPX
MxPx
MxPx is a pop punk band from Bremerton, Washington with connections to the Christian punk scene. The band has recorded eight studio albums, four EPs, four compilation albums, a live album, a VHS tape, a DVD and released 20 singles....
"Shout" music video, a theatrical trailer, production notes, and cast and filmmakers biographies. In August 2006, the film was released on an HD DVD
HD DVD
HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...
/DVD combo disc, which featured the film in a 1080p
1080p
1080p is the shorthand identification for a set of HDTV high-definition video modes that are characterized by 1080 horizontal lines of resolution and progressive scan, meaning the image is not interlaced as is the case with the 1080i display standard....
high-definition format
High-definition video
High-definition video or HD video refers to any video system of higher resolution than standard-definition video, and most commonly involves display resolutions of 1,280×720 pixels or 1,920×1,080 pixels...
on one side, and a standard-definition format
Standard-definition television
Sorete-definition television is a television system that uses a resolution that is not considered to be either enhanced-definition television or high-definition television . The term is usually used in reference to digital television, in particular when broadcasting at the same resolution as...
on the opposite side. Along with the film Unleashed
Unleashed (film)
Unleashed , is a 2005 American-British-French martial arts action thriller film directed by Louis Leterrier and written by Luc Besson. Film stars Jet Li, Bob Hoskins, Morgan Freeman and Kerry Condon...
, Animal House was one of Universal
Universal Studios Home Entertainment
Universal Studios Home Entertainment is the home video division of Universal Pictures...
's first two HD/DVD combo releases, but was later discontinued in 2008 after Universal decided to switch to the Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
format following the conclusion of the high definition optical disc format war
High definition optical disc format war
A format war took place between the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD optical disc standards for storing high definition video and audio.These standards emerged between 2000 and 2002 and attracted both the mutual and exclusive support of major consumer electronics manufacturers, personal computer...
.
It is scheduled for blu-ray release July 26, 2011.
Precursors and legacy
Animal House is considered to be the movie that launched the gross-out genre, although it was predated by several films now also included in the genre. It was a great box officeBox office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
success despite its limited production costs and thus started an industry trend, inspiring countless other comedies such as Porky's
Porky's
Porky's is a 1982 comedy film about the escapades of teenagers at the fictional Angel Beach High School in Florida in 1954. It was released in the United States in 1982, and spawned two sequels: Porky's II: The Next Day and Porky's Revenge! and influenced many writers in the teen film genre...
, the Police Academy films, the American Pie films, and Old School
Old School (film)
Old School is a 2003 American comedy film released by DreamWorks SKG and directed by Todd Phillips, director of the documentary Frat House. The story was written by Court Crandall, and the film was written by Phillips and Scot Armstrong...
among others. However Animal House included a subversive bodily humor and political references that got lost in the subsequent innocuous derivatives. Examples of taboo bodily humor included projectile vomiting and other explicit uses of bodily functions.
On the left-wing and counterculture side, it included references to topical political matters like Kent State shootings
Kent State shootings
The Kent State shootings—also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre—occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970...
, President Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
During the final stages of World War II in 1945, the United States conducted two atomic bombings against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, the first on August 6, 1945, and the second on August 9, 1945. These two events are the only use of nuclear weapons in war to date.For six months...
, Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
, the Vietnam war
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and the civil rights movement. Precursors of this counterculture subversive humor in film were two non "college movies," M*A*S*H
MASH (film)
MASH is a 1970 American satirical dark comedy film directed by Robert Altman and written by Ring Lardner, Jr., based on Richard Hooker's novel MASH: A Novel About Three Army Doctors. It is the only feature film in the M*A*S*H franchise...
, a 1970 satirical dark comedy, and the Kentucky Fried Movie, a 1977 formless comedy consisting of a series of sketches.
Rank in classifies
In 2001, the United States Library of CongressLibrary of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
deemed the film culturally significant and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry
National Film Registry
The National Film Registry is the United States National Film Preservation Board's selection of films for preservation in the Library of Congress. The Board, established by the National Film Preservation Act of 1988, was reauthorized by acts of Congress in 1992, 1996, 2005, and again in October 2008...
. Animal House is first on Bravo's 100 Funniest Movies. In 2000, the American Film Institute
American Film Institute
The American Film Institute is an independent non-profit organization created by the National Endowment for the Arts, which was established in 1967 when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act...
ranked the film #36 on 100 Years... 100 Laughs
AFI's 100 Years... 100 Laughs
Part of the AFI 100 Years… series, AFI's 100 Years…100 Laughs is a list of the top 100 funniest movies in American cinema. A wide variety of comedies were nominated for the distinction that included slapstick comedy, screwball comedy, romantic comedy, satire, black comedy, musical comedy, comedy of...
, a list of the 100 best American comedies. In 2006, Miller wrote a more comprehensive memoir of his experiences in Dartmouth's AD house in a book entitled, The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie, in which Miller recounts hijinks that were considered too risqué for the movie. In 2008, Empire
Empire (magazine)
Empire is a British film magazine published monthly by Bauer Consumer Media. From the first issue in July 1989, the magazine was edited by Barry McIlheney and published by Emap. Bauer purchased Emap Consumer Media in early 2008...
magazine selected Animal House as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time. The film was also selected by The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
as one of The 1000 Best Movies Ever Made.
Further reading
- Hoover, Eric (2008) "Animal House" at 30: O Bluto, Where Art Thou?, Chronicle of Higher Education, v55 n2 pA1 Sep 2008
- Daniel P. Franklin (2006) Politics and film: the political culture of film in the United States, pp. 133–4
- Krista M. Tucciarone (2007) Cinematic College: "National Lampoon's Animal House" Teaches Theories of Student Development, in Journal of College Student DevelopmentJournal of College Student DevelopmentThe Journal of College Student Development is a bimonthly peer-reviewed academic journal established in 1959 and is the official publication of the American College Personnel Association. The journal publishes scholarly articles and book reviews from a wide variety of academic fields related to...