Animal House (1978) on Netflix
Faber College freshmen Larry Kroger and Kent Dorfman are turned away by Omega Theta Pi and pledge the Delta Tau Chi house instead. Dean Vernon Wormer wants the unruly fraternity expelled.
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- Rotten Tomatoes91%
Trailer
Plot summary
At Faber College in the fall of 1962, freshmen Larry Kroger and Kent Dorfman go looking for a fraternity. Omega Theta Pi turns them away at its house party, so the two try the Delta Tau Chi house next door, where Kent's older brother Fred was a member and where Kent expects to be taken as a legacy. The Delta house is on probation over its pranks and poor grades. Dean Vernon Wormer puts the members on double secret probation and directs Omega president Greg Marmalard to find a clause that would revoke the Delta charter. At Omega, freshman Chip Diller is accepted and paddled during his initiation.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Animal House (1978)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Sutherland, one of the most popular film stars of the early 1970s, was asked to do two days of work. He declined $20,000 plus points, then took his guaranteed day rate of $25,000 rather than 2% of the gross, assuming the film would not be very successful; the decision cost him what he estimates at around $14 million.
- Landis and McGill staged a scene for reporters visiting the set in which the director pretended to be angry at the actor. Landis grabbed a breakaway pitcher and smashed it over McGill's head, and McGill fell to the ground and pretended to be unconscious. The reporters were completely fooled, and when Landis asked McGill to get up, he refused to move.
- Cast members were invited to a real fraternity party and met open hostility. As they left, Widdoes threw a cup of beer at drunk Oregon Ducks football players and a melee broke out; Tim Matheson, Bruce McGill, Peter Riegert and Widdoes narrowly escaped, McGill with a black eye and Widdoes with teeth knocked out.
- The initial cast was to feature Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray and Dan Aykroyd alongside John Belushi, but only Belushi was interested. Chase turned the film down in favour of Foul Play, and Landis, who wanted unknown dramatic actors such as Kevin Bacon and Karen Allen, takes credit for subtly discouraging Chase by describing the cast to him as an "ensemble".
- D-Day was based on Aykroyd, a motorcycle aficionado, and Aykroyd was offered the part, but he was already committed to Saturday Night Live; according to Landis, the show's producer Lorne Michaels threatened to fire Aykroyd if he signed on to do the film. Bruce McGill was cast as D-Day instead, and it became his breakthrough role.
- Black extras had to be bused in from Portland for the Dexter Lake Club segment because of their scarcity around Eugene. The segment alarmed Tanen and other studio executives, who perceived it as racist and warned that black audiences were "going to rip the seats out of theaters"; Richard Pryor's approval helped retain it in the film.
- Universal Pictures spent about $4.5 million promoting the film at selected college campuses and helping students organize their own toga parties. Students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison tried for a crowd of 10,000 people and a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, and toga parties became a favorite college campus happening during 1978 and 1979.
