| Collector's Corner December 2003
 National Lampoon's Animal House
- Starring: John Belushi,
Tim Matheson, John Vernon, Verna Bloom, Tom Hulce, Cesare Danova,
Mary Louise Weller, Kevin Bacon, Peter Riegert, Karen Allen,
Donald Sutherland, James Daughton, Mark Metcalf, Stephen Furst
- Directed by: John Landis
- Theatrical release: 1978
- DVD release: 2003
- Video: Widescreen (anamorphic)
- Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
- Released by: Universal
Seven years of college, down the drain.
-- "Bluto" Blutarsky
Welcome to Rush Week at Faber
College. The year is 1962, and several freshmen are making the rounds to learn about the
various fraternities. Larry (Tom Hulce) and Kent (Stephen Furst) first meet the members of
Omega house. After a bad experience with prejudice and starchy formality, they go to meet
the men of Delta Tau Chi. The first person they meet is a drunk Bluto Blutarsky (John
Belushi), who welcomes them with a pants-soaking stream of warm urine. Inside, it’s
party central. The Delta house is an anarchic stew of sex, drugs, and
rock’n’roll -- obviously, the recipe for the perfect college experience. Larry
and Kent happily join the Deltas, and receive the respective nicknames of Pinto and
Flounder.
Unbeknownst to the Deltas, cranky Dean Wormer (John Vernon)
has placed them on "Double Secret Probation," hoping to kick the party animals
off campus. His every plan is thwarted by the Deltas, who constantly up the ante with more
outrageous stunts. When Wormer enlists the stuffy Omega fraternity to help him, the Deltas
declare war.
Twenty-five years after its release, National
Lampoon’s Animal House is still a hilarious way to spend 109 minutes. It’s
irreverent, lewd, sloppy, and gross. The handsome guys are dumb bullies, impotent
("Gregg, is anything happening yet? My arm is getting kind of tired.") and
completely uncool. The slobs and losers have the most fun: drunken parties, lots of sex,
and continuous chaotic rebellion.
The film is a succession of unforgettable, sidesplitting
scenes unified by the simple technique of a battle between "us" and
"them." If you haven’t seen the film in a while, you might not remember the
abundance of classic scenes: the frat initiation, getting stoned with Professor Jennings,
the food fight, Bluto’s voyeurism at the sorority house, the toga party, Otter
pretending to be the boyfriend of the recently deceased Fawn Liebowitz, and the float
parade. Animal House has so many such scenes that it’s hard to imagine that
the movie almost didn’t get made.
Animal House began when Doug Kenny, then with National
Lampoon, decided he wanted out of the publishing business. Matty Simons, founder of
Diner’s Club, Weight Watchers magazine, and National Lampoon,
didn’t want to lose Kenny, so he offered to produce a movie. Kenny got Harold Ramis
(later famed for writing Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghost Busters, Back
to School, and Analyze This, among others) and Chris Miller to help
write the script. Working with an ultra-low budget, they had to use unknowns. Director
John Landis had made a cult movie that had garnered a lot of attention, Kentucky Fried
Movie. While it was little more than a series of skits, its irreverence and frenetic
pace seemed perfect for the writers’ idea of campus mayhem. Michael Chinich did a
wonderful job of casting unknowns, many of whom (Kevin Bacon, Karen Allen, Tom Hulce)
later became stars in their own rights. But no studio wanted the project. There were no
star names.
 The closest thing they had to
a star was John Belushi. After three years on Saturday Night Live, Belushi had
developed an offbeat following, but the big star of SNL at the time was Chevy
Chase. Landis described his directions from Universal’s Ned Tannen in Live from
New York (Little, Brown; 2002): "If you can get me Chevy Chase and John Belushi
and a movie star, I’ll make it." Though the role of Otter had been written with
Chase in mind, Landis was opposed to him. But without Chase, he needed to land a star, so
he called Donald Sutherland. After a 10-year track record of mostly hits, Sutherland had
drifted toward offbeat films, working with such directors as Nicolas Roeg, Bernardo
Bertolucci, and Federico Fellini. He had also worked with Landis in Kentucky Fried
Movie. Sutherland agreed to take the small role of the pot-smoking professor, thus
saving the film. Sutherland declined a percentage of the take in favor of a $40,000 fee;
so far, the percentage would have made him about $30 million.
With the many successes of the slew of anarchy films that
followed -- everything from Caddyshack and Porky’s to American Pie and
Old School -- it might be difficult today to understand how shockingly funny Animal
House was in its first release. There had been many ensemble cast comedies over the
years, some very successful. But the only thing close to the type of zany chaos of Animal
House was the Marx Brothers, and as crazy and sexually bizarre as they were, it was
all between the lines. Animal House showed it all. Watch Belushi pee on Flounder
(chapter 3), or Mandy masturbate Gregg with surgical gloves (chapter 13). Imagine getting
laughs from chain-sawing a horse (chapter 11), or pretending to be the fiancé of a dead
girl to get her friend to go out on a date (chapter 24). Before Animal House, no
one would have dared show such scenes. Today, you can do many of the same things and still
get a "PG-13" rating.
What changed all this is the fact that Animal House
made a boatload of money, and finished No.1 at the box office for 1978. Hollywood business
types, always happy to sacrifice principles at the altar of commerce, rushed out
second-rate copies as fast as they could. Within a year, even TV was getting into the act.
Few of the subsequent films can stand up to Animal House, but those that do (American
Pie and South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut are two examples) share some
characteristics.
First, affection for the characters: The directors and
stars of these movies treat their lovable losers sweetly and with respect -- a standard
set by Landis and his writers in Animal House. For instance, no matter how much of
an animal Blutarsky is, he has some core traits that all humans respect: loyalty, a sense
of humor, a willingness to stand up for his friends. Pinto has an appealing kindness
beneath his lack of sophistication. And Flounder goes through what every human being faces
who simply wants to be liked. Second, these are all archetypal characters. Think back to
your college days: You knew people like this, and every college had a frat like Delta Tau
Chi (at my school, Kappa Sigs were the Deltas and KAs were the Omegas). Finally, and most
important, the Deltas win. At the end, we’d all rather be the Deltas than the Omegas.
When the Deltas come out ahead, we feel as if we’ve won.
Director Landis and writer Ramis have made careers out of
making movies about endearing outcasts. Landis’s Coming to America, Trading
Places, An American Werewolf in London, The Blues Brothers -- each is a
good film with a heart. Ramis’s films -- Caddyshack, Stripes, Ghost
Busters, Back to School -- always feature a plucky, downtrodden dude with a
roguish streak. But as good as these films are, and as close as they hew to the Animal
House concept, they lack one thing: John Belushi.
We’ll never know how great Belushi might have become.
He had gone from being a $750/week player on SNL to getting $40,000 for his role in
Animal House. His portrayal, though only a bit part among an ensemble, was so
impressive that it made him a star able to ask for millions of dollars. It was the late
1970s, and cocaine was considered a recreational drug. Belushi tried it, liked it, could
now afford it, and overdosed and died at the age of 33. The movies he made while an addict
don’t tell the story of his potential.
For a great lesson in what Belushi was capable of, watch
Landis in one of the featurettes included in this reissue of Animal House:
"The Yearbook: An Animal House Reunion." Fifteen minutes in, we see old
footage of Landis and Belushi. Landis, his arm around Belushi, is playing for the camera
in the spirit of a buddy showing off his friend’s ability to light a fart or whistle
through his nose. The difference is, he’s asking Belushi to improvise emotions. Watch
Belushi covering the gamut, from fear to confidence to anger to faith, never doing a thing
but contorting his face.
My favorite Belushi moment is in chapter 14. Blutarsky has
climbed a ladder to peep through a window at the sorority girls having a nude pillow
fight. When he sees Mandy go into her room, he jumps the ladder over to her window. We
watch over Bluto’s shoulder as he watches Mandy slowly undress. Landis has Belushi
become a dark part of the foreground, and we end up devoting our attention to Mandy. Just
as she starts to get our full attention by taking her bra off, Belushi slowly turns to the
camera and gives us a conspiratorial pump of the eyebrows, as if to say, "Oh! So you
like it, too." It’s pure comic genius.
Universal’s DVD looks great. I had forgotten how many
dark scenes there are in Animal House, but each comes through with superb
definition. The sound is better than ever -- clear and with good use of the surrounds. The
extras are a mixed bag. The above-mentioned "Yearbook" is worth a watch for all
the insider information, but I found the other featurette, "Where Are They Now,"
painful to watch: poorly rehearsed, badly written, feebly filmed. It was a great idea --
let’s find out where all these characters are 25 years later -- poorly realized. The
other extra is trivia that pops up throughout the film. I found it distracting but fun.
Universal has made one huge mistake. Do you like the
trailers for Scarface, Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, Weird
Science, and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life? You’d better,
because Universal forces you to watch them every time you watch Animal House. The
disc defaults to them, and you can’t skip the chapter, pause, go to a menu, or stop.
You have two choices: watch or fast-forward. This is stupid.
Those negatives aside, don’t miss National
Lampoon’s Animal House. If you haven’t seen it in years, you’ll be
amazed how well it stands up. If you’ve never seen it before, not only are you in for
a load of belly-laughs, you’re also in for a piece of comedy history.
...Wes Marshall
wesm@hometheatersound.com |
