On
this day in 1978, National Lampoon’s Animal House, a movie spoof
about 1960s college fraternities starring John Belushi, opens in U.S.
theaters. Produced with an estimated budget of $3 million, Animal
House became a huge, multi-million-dollar box-office hit, spawned a
slew of cinematic imitations and became part of pop-culture history
with such memorable lines as “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go
through life, son.”
Set
at the fictional Faber College (the University of Oregon served as a
stand-in during filming), Animal House centered around the
disreputable Delta House fraternity, whose members enjoyed
beer-soaked toga parties and crude pranks such as putting a horse in
the dean’s office. Animal House was the first big hit for director
John Landis, who went on to helm The Blues Brothers (1980), Trading
Places (1983) and Coming to America (1988). The film’s cast
included a then-unknown Kevin Bacon (Footloose, Mystic River), Karen
Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark) and Tom Hulce (Amadeus), all of whom
were then just beginning their movie careers.
Animal
House was co-written by Doug Kenney, Harold Ramis and Chris Miller,
whose days at Dartmouth College in the early 1960s served as an
inspiration for the film. Animal House marked the first film produced
in affiliation with National Lampoon, a college magazine that was
first published in 1970 and known for its dark humor. Other National
Lampoon movies included Vacation (1983), which was written by John
Hughes, directed by Ramis and starred SNL alum Chevy Chase.
At
the time Animal House was released, John Belushi, who played party
animal Bluto Blutarsky, was starring on the TV sketch comedy show
Saturday Night Live (SNL). Belushi, who was born January 24, 1949,
appeared on SNL from 1975 to 1979 and co-starred in the hit movie
Blues Brothers with his SNL castmate Dan Akroyd. Belushi died of a
drug overdose at age 33 on March 5, 1982, at the Chateau Marmont
hotel in West Hollywood, California.
