Animal House (1978) 40 Years Ago!

I saw it 40 years ago in a theater too.
Problem is now that I'm a responsible 64 year old man who does work in a college town I don't really find the college frat boys that I deal with to be funny - just stupid slobs.

 

And what is so beautiful about the above is that we absolutely have life imitating art like that all the time. Huge, ridiculous conflation all the time every time you turn on the news. This era has really become the BS'ers field day. I see, in all seriousness, talking heads making statements that are pretty much mirror reflections of Delta man Otter's several times a day.

 

Times - and people - have changed

 

Wacky film they even did a tv series I think but didn't last long .I think the blimp was in it

 

My mom was going to drop my friend and me to see the movie at the theater, but they wouldn’t let us in because we were only 16. My mom said she would come in and watch it with us. She ended up laughing louder than anyone in the theater. Fun memories!

 

"Wait 'til Otis sees us...he LOVES us!!"

 

All time classic

 

Three years later, when I was a junior in high school, my band started getting booked to play parties at the PSU chapter of Phi Mu Delta, aka Mudhouse. Those guys were completely nutz, and it was pretty much just like what you saw in the movie. Naturally, "Louie Louie" was in our repertoire!

I'll never forget the time we decided to finish the night by doing a freeform freakout for 20 minutes, mainly just to mess with them. Keep in mind that the entire place was filled with extremely drunk 20-year-olds. I spent the whole "performance" kneeling in front of my amp, feeding back and making the most gawd awful racket, while the drummer bashed the crap out of his drums and the bass player rolled around on the floor. It concluded after I got up, swung my guitar at the amp, and knocked it over. I turned around to face the crowd, and they were standing there with their mouths hanging open... and then they all clapped!

 

And who was Otis Day's bass player? (Hint: he's better known now as a guitar player.)

 

Robert Cray?

 

We have a winner, folks!

 

Very good actor, especially in another of my favorites, Point Blank.

 

The Kevin Bacon "all is well..." scene is frequently quoted in my office.

 

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God I feel old...

 

On the whole "does it stand up" question, I think a LOT of the most-quoted stuff actually has suffered. I saw it a few months ago for the first time in decades, and a lot of the jokes didn't work. Some of the subtle things ("That foot is me!") fared better.

I think part of the problem is that so many people loved the movie that they applauded objectively horrible selfish entitled behavior. I've seen too many people do the same stuff in real life and act like it was funny because the Deltas did it, and I recoiled from that.

Yeah, I know, I'm being a buzzkill.

 

I love it! Such a classic.

 

I had a girlfriend who went to U of O and I spent a lot of time there. She and I ate many meals in the Fishbowl and at the the time (late 1980s) it looked pretty much the same as it did in the film. I was quite surprised to find out that many of the students there at the time didn't even know about the school's AH heritage, and there were also many who resented it.

 

Animal house is one of those DVDs that is very easy to find at a flea market or thrift store. Not much demand for it.

 

Stephen Bishop tried; he really, really tried:

"The Cherry Song," aka "I Gave My Love a Cherry" - Animal House.

 

He really lucked out by getting such a quotable character for his first movie role. Along with "all is well!" I've heard "Thank you sir may I have another?!" many a time too.

 

I see not much has changed at Mudhouse...

 

It’s a great movie but John Landis wanted actors instead of funny people. I mean can you imagine certain people from SNL and SCTV in the cast? There were parts written specifically for Chevy Chase, Bill Murray and Dan Ackroyd. Just imagine John Candy as Flounder.

 

The pink dresses worn by the sorority sisters on their parade float were bad copies of the dress worn by Jackie O on 11/22/63 in Dallas.

 

Animal House's greatest weakness is the final act. It is a disorganized mess which is sad because the story up to that point is coherent and fairly plausible.

The Deltas attempt to ruin the Homecoming parade in town is obviously just an afterthought to the main story arc -- where can the film go after the Deltas are expelled from the college? There isn't much comedy to mine from the former students returning to their homes -- alone and disgraced.

Alas, the "big" ending is seen in far too many comedies where plot resolution is usually achieved via revenge (often violent) upon the antagonists.

I still consider Animal House a cut above almost all comedies of this type; many of the jokes are somewhat sophisticated and very funny even forty years later (i.e; the two times we see Greg getting a handjob in his convertible he proves to be impotent. This has nothing to do with the Deltas -- it is the writers piling on to diminishing him!).

Even the mess of the climactic finale is somewhat rescued by the freeze-frame epilogue for all of the main characters ("D-Day: whereabouts unknown," etc.).