Animal House - National Lampoon's

John Belushi	John "Bluto" Blutarsky
Tim Matheson	Eric "Otter" Stratton
John Vernon	Dean Vernon Wormer
Verna Bloom	Marion Wormer
Tom Hulce	Larry "Pinto" Kroger
Cesare Danova	Mayor Carmine DePasto
Donald Sutherland	Prof. Dave Jennings
Mary Louise Weller	Mandy Pepperidge
Stephen Furst	Kent "Flounder" Dorfman
James Daughton	Greg Marmalard

Director

John Landis

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 (some approaching their late twenties) 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 (and, thus, eligible for the draft). They decide to commit one last, utterly senseless (and screamingly funny) 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 (specifically, the notion that a group of white visitors who stumble innocently into a black roadhouse would be in incredible danger) 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 (albeit not one that the studio expected too much of, or invested very much in) 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 (also a Universal release), and did it one better, limiting itself to a single disc's worth of songs. Central to most audiences' enjoyment, however, was John 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 (though hardly an innocent, as we discover) 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 (in a small role here), and even DeWayne Jessie (who played singer/bandleader Otis Day, and was still performing to collegiate audiences in that guise in the 1990s) have also enjoyed long careers as actors, directors, writers, and so forth. — Bruce Eder