MAGNET contributing writer Jud Cost is sharing some of the wealth of classic films he’s been lucky enough to see over the past 40 years. Trolling the backwaters of cinema, he has worked up a list of more than 100 titles—from the ’20s through the ’80s—that you may have missed. A new selection, all currently available on DVD, appears every week.
National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978, 109 minutes)
For those who think Animal House might be painted with brushstrokes that are too broad, here’s a word of advice: This is exactly how it was. Having spent two nights as the guest of a UC-Berkeley fraternity while attending a journalism conference as the editor of my high-school newspaper, I can vouch for its authenticity. That frat house was littered with broken-down furniture, overflowing ashtrays and a mountain of crushed beer cans. It’s where I drank my first three Budweisers before accompanying the brothers on a drunken panty-raid at a neighboring sorority. I was too bombed to remember if we scored any underwear.
The Faber College hymn, derived from Elgar’s “Pomp And Circumstance,” shepherds two freshmen, Larry Kroger (Tom Hulce) and Kent Dorfman (Stephen Furst) as they knock on the door of Omega house, the top-rated fraternity on campus. “Hi there, I’m Doug Neidermeyer, membership chairman,” greets the effusive Omega officer as he admits Kroger and “accidentally” slams the door into the pudgy face of Dorfman.
“This is Mandy Pepperidge, our name-tag hostess,” says Neidermeyer (Mark Metcalf) as he escorts the newcomers to another room. “A wimp and a blimp,” smirks Pepperidge (Mary Louise Weller) at the retreating pair. Neidermeyer introduces Kroger and Dorfman to the occupants of the reject-couch. “This is Mohammed and Jugdish,” he says pointing to a Muslim and an East Indian, “and here’s Sidney and Clayton,” one a geek, the other in a wheelchair. “Help yourself to cookies and punch.”
“I hate this,” says Kroger of the fraternity-pledging process as the pair warily approaches their next stop, the notorious Delta house. “Hey, I’m a legacy here,” says Dorfman. “They have to take me.” A naked, headless department-store mannequin flies out an upstairs window, crashing onto the sidewalk as a stereo blares out the Kingsmen’s version of “Louie Louie.”
Dorfman taps one of the house crazies on the shoulder: “Excuse me, sir, is this the Delta house?” Halfway through a pee in the shrubbery, Bluto (John Belushi) turns around and urinates on the shoes of both. “It sure is,” he answers. Looking for a beer upstairs, Kroger is almost run over by the other Delta lunatic, D. Day (Bruce McGill), as he guns his motorcycle up the stairs, hands Kroger a brew and plays Rossini’s “William Tell Overture” on his throat with his finger tips.
Awakened in he dead of night by a fire-extinguisher shower, the new pledges are lined up in their pajamas to receive their official Delta names. Bluto, as Sergeant at Arms, says to the first one, “From now on your name is Mothball.” As he reaches Dorfman he intones, “I’ve thought long and hard about this. Your new name is Flounder.” Everyone douses the neophyte members with beer as if they’d just won the World Series.
