ANIMAL HOUSE

(July 1978, U.S.)

What can one possibly say about one of the funnist, raunchiest films ever made? What can one possibly say about the movie that made John Belushi a star? What can one possibly say about the greatest movie about college ever made? What can one possibly say about a movie that has as many quotable lines as CASABLANCA, GONE WITH THE WIND, JAWS and STAR WARS? What can I possibly say about my second favorite comedy of all time (you'll have to wait to find out about the first)?

(wait a second - I think I've been saying it!)

I was in high school during the era when teenage sex comedies like PORKY'S and FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH were all the rage on screen. But really, didn't it start in the late '70's with ANIMAL HOUSE? Sure it did. And didn't you love every filthy, raunch minute of it? Sure you did. I was too young to see it on screen and had to (unfortunately) wait until it premiered on NBC-TV to even get a glimpse of an edited version. Still, even on TV, comic moments like the dead horse, the cafeteria food fight and the frat toga party were still irresistable.

If you've already been through college then you know what ANIMAL HOUSE meant to you. If you've yet to go through it, then it'll mean something to you, too. But before I leave you, there is something that has always troubled me about the movie, and quite frankly, I'm surprised if I'm the only one to ever bring up this fact. At the end of the film, during the "whatever happened to them" finale inspired by AMERICAN GRAFFITI, the full names of the main characters are followed by the year they graduated Faber College. Exactly how does that number make sense when it's made very clear in the film that every one of the Deltas were expelled from Faber College?? I say again, they were expelled, so just how did they manage to graduate? Yes, we all know that Robert Hoover joked at the end of the movie by asking Dean Wormer to see his way clear to giving them all just one more chance, but I think we all know that there's no possible way in Hell they would have been granted that. So again, I ask, how could the Deltas have graduated Faber College if they were clearly expelled?? Somebody please get back to me on that one!

Favorite line or dialogue:

Bluto: "Hey, what's this lyin' around shit?"
Stork: "Well what the hell we supposed to do, ya mo-ron?"
D-Day: "War's over, man. Wormer dropped the big one."
Bluto: "Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until WE decide it is? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"
Otter: "Germans?"
Boon: "Forget it, he's rolling."
Bluto: "And it ain't over now! 'Cause when the goin' get's tough...the tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!"
(runs out alone then returns)
Bluto: "What the fuck happened to the Delta I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? This could be the greatest night of our lives, but you're gonna let it be the worst. "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this! Wormer, he's a dead man! Marmalard, dead! Niedermeyer..."
Otter: "Dead! Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now, we could fight em' with convention weapons, that could take years, cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part."
Bluto: "We're just the guys to do it."
D-Day: "Let's do it."
Bluto: "LET'S DO IT!!!"