Animal
House (1978)
aka: National Lampoon's
Animal House
sex comedy
directed
by : John Landis
featuring
: John Belushi - Tim Matheson - John Vernon - Verna Bloom - Tom Hulce
running
time : 1 hour 49 minutes
Director John Landis put himself on the
map with this low-budget, fabulously successful comedy, which made a then-astounding
$62 million and started a slew of careers for its cast in the process.
National Lampoon's Animal House (referred to by most people as Animal House)
is set in 1962 on the campus of Faber College in Faber, PA. The first glimpse
we get of the campus is the statue of its founder Emil Faber, on the base
of which is inscribed the motto, "Knowledge is good." Incoming freshmen
Thomas Hulce and Stephen Furst find themselves rejected by the pretentious
Omega fraternity, and instead pledge to Delta house. The Deltas are a motley
fraternity of rejects and maladjusted undergraduates whose main goal seemingly
accomplished in part by their mere presence on campus is disrupting the
staid, peaceful, rigidly orthodox, and totally hypocritical social order
of the school, as represented by the Omegas and the college's dean, Vernon
Wormer (John Vernon). Dean Wormer decides that this is the year he's going
to get the Deltas expelled and their chapter decertified; he places the
fraternity on "double secret probation," and, with help from Omega president
Greg Marmalard (James Daughton) and hard-nosed member Doug Neidermeyer
(Mark Metcalf), starts looking for any pretext on which to bring the members
of the Delta fraternity up on charges. The Deltas, oblivious to the danger
they're in, are having a great time, steeped in irreverence, mild debauchery,
and occasional drunkeness, led by seniors Otter (Tim Matheson), Hoover
(James Widdoes), D-Day (Bruce McGill), Boon (Peter Riegert), and pledgemaster
John "Bluto" Blutarsky (John Belushi). They're given enough rope to hang
themselves, but even then manage to get into comical misadventures on a
road trip (where they arrange an assignation with a group of young ladies
from "Emily Dickinson University"). Finally, they are thrown out of school,
and, as a result, stripped of their student deferments. They decide to
commit one last, utterly senseless slapstick act of rebellion, making a
shambles of the town's Founder's Day parade, and, in the process, getting
revenge on the dean, the Omegas, and everyone else whose ever gone against
them. Not everything in Animal House works, and the racial implication
of the scene in the Dexter Lake Club seems disturbing assuming one takes
any of this seriously at all but overall, it was one of the funnier movies
of the 1970s, and the first big studio comedy aimed specifically
at collegiate and teenaged audiences. Thus, it started a cycle of movies
that encompassed everything from Fast Times At Ridgemont High (1982) and
Revenge Of The Nerds (1984) to Legally Blonde (2001) and Slackers (2002).
Animal House was also among the first feature films not built around a
musical subject to garner some of its appeal by loading its soundtrack
up with period hits, all played just prominently enough in the background
and woven well enough into the action to attract the notice of audiences
without distracting them and then it made a small fortune for the record
division of its studio by selling the soundtrack album. In that sense,
it followed the lead of George Lucas' American Graffiti, and did it one
better, limiting itself to a single disc's worth of songs. Central to most
audiences' enjoyment, however, was Belushi's performance as Bluto, the
fraternity's most dedicated drinker and most enthusiastic member, seven
years an undergraduate and with no prospects of completing a B.A. His ability
to chug fifths of Jack Daniels in one draught is merely the highlight of
a uniquely gonzo performance that even teetotalers had to enjoy. The presence
of Karen Allen as the most fetching screen ingénue since Julie Harris
in East Of Eden was also a notable introduction, though James Widdoes,
Peter Riegert, Bruce McGill, Tim Matheson, the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon ,
and even DeWayne Jessie have also enjoyed long careers as actors,
directors, writers, and so forth.
The 1970s were full of movies
that constituted cultural phenomena, what with The Exorcist, Jaws, The
Omen, Star Wars, and Close Encounters Of The Third Kind all coming out
in about a four-year span. One title that is usually overlooked probably
because it didn't take itself remotely as seriously as these others but
had every bit as much impact as any of those films, was National Lampoon's
Animal House. Shot during late 1977 and early 1978 on a modest budget,
Animal House proceeded to return many times its investment, and jump-started
the careers of its director and most of its cast. College students who
had too much energy and not enough outlets for it suddenly began organizing
"toga parties"; interest in fraternities, which had been declining since
the mid-'60s, suddenly spiked; and it was suddenly not only okay, but even
expected, for college students to be goofy again. On the most superficial
level, Animal House was no more profound than such collegiate comedies
of an earlier era as Too Many Girls (1940), Good News (1947), or The Affairs
Of Dobie Gillis (1953), and less serious than Apartment For Peggy (1948)
or Mr.Belvedere Goes To College (1949). What it did do was take audiences
back to that earlier era of college humor, add some sex in a carefully
calculated manner, and put in just enough of a '70s consciousness so that
audiences could laugh at the film, and at the idea of the film, and hold
those late '50s/early '60s pop and R&B songs in their heads. The movie's
impact and the nature of its acceptance can be measured by the fact that
the only star to emerge from it was Belushi, his gonzo portrayal of "Bluto"
Blutarsky marking a high-point in his big-screen career that he never again
achieved. What's more, the movie's influence is still being felt today
in every teen comedy by the Farrelly brothers, the Wayans brothers, and
any of their rivals, most of whom emphasize gross-out humor to a degree
that Animal House director Landis never would have considered. Ironically,
amid the slapstick humor and outsized characterizations that filled the
movie, Animal House had a very serious source of inspiration co-author
Chris Miller did base some of the material on his experiences as an undergraduate
at Dartmouth, but the authors also intended part of the plot as an allegory
about the Nixon White House. The inspiration for Dean Wormer and the Omegas,
and their activities undermining the Deltas, was President Richard Nixon
and the "plumbers," his dirty-tricks squad, which directed their activities
against Nixon's political enemies. And if you look closely at the portrayal
of the dean by Vernon, and of Omega house leaders Greg Marmalard and Doug
Neidermeyer by James Daughton and Mark Metcalf, respectively, it's easy
to see similarities to Nixon, his aides H.R. Haldeman and John Erlichman,
and their underlings. This doesn't make Animal House into All The President's
Men and knowing it doesn't make the movie any more funny, though it may
make it seem slightly more subversive, as well as more intelligent. Animal
House is still best appreciated for what is seen onscreen some good jokes
and sight gags and memorable characterizations, with Belushi's Bluto proving
that "fat, drunk, and stupid" may not get you through life, but it is one
way to get through seven years of college. The viewer does best to just
sit back and echoing Stephen Furst's exclamation as all comic hell breaks
loose at the denouement say to themselves, "Oh boy, is this great!"