ABOMINAL HOUSE

ANIMAL HOUSE (1978)
dir: John Landis

MAD #207, June 1979
w: Arnie Kogen & Dick DeBartolo
a: Mort Drucker

It's a gross-out comedy remembered mostly for the harmless toga parties and food fights, but the other elements about the fraternity system as a whole are what's bound to outrage audiences today who feel the need to be sheltered from things they don't agree with. I'm stridently liberal myself, but I have no problem with taboos in film when it's in the right context. I'm sick of clickbait articles that reveal problematic parts of a 40 year old thing. For God's sake, the internet mob was complaining about a 1971 interview with John Wayne last year! The acts of debauchery in Animal House are hilarious not for celebrating them, but are a satire of entitlement, showing what authority figures were really like in college. At least that's how I rationalize it. But enough of arguing with straw men, on with the show...

Larry “Pinto” Kroger (Thomas Hulce) and Kent “Flounder” Dorfman (Stephen Furst) are freshman at Faber College pledging to Omega house, rejected for being too nerdy by Doug Neidermeyer (Mark Metcalfe).

After being rejected by all fraternities, they're finally accepted at Delta House, which they decide is the place for them. They meet John “Bluto” Blutarsky (John Belushi).

The next night, everyone votes on the new pledges based on the pictures of them projected on the wall.

Chevy Chase had been the first breakout star to leave Saturday Night Live and go on to a movie career before John Belushi would follow a few years later. Dean Wormer (John Vernon) doesn't like the fraternity besmirching the college's reputation and wants Greg Marmalard (James Daughton) to investigate them.

(Remember that MAD wasn't quite woke in the 70s either, and considering they had a mostly Jewish staff, it's weird that they spelled “yarmulkes” wrong.)

Not named in the parody are Boon (Peter Reigert), and Katy (Karen Allen), in the bathtub when the “cool” professor (Donald Sutherland) turns some of the students on to marijuana. One of the subplots is a love triangle between the three of them which isn't parodied.

Mort Sahl was a comedian in the early 60s known for topical humor.

Bluto annoys everybody in the campus cafeteria, then starts a food fight.

The dean comes to the frat house, threatening to expel everyone, so they throw a toga party. Note caricature of director John Landis in crowd.

Otis Day (DeWayne Jessie, who actually goes by the name Otis Day in real life) is in a scene they don't parody where the fraternity brothers go to an all-black roadhouse where they're not wanted and the band pretends not to recognize them. (an early example of showing code switching) Too politically incorrect, maybe.

Larry's date Clorette (Sarah Holcombe) is underage (and later revealed to be the mayor's daughter in another scene they don't use because of possible political incorrectness). The Dean's wife (Verna Bloom) shows up drunk and is seduced by Otter (Tim Matheson).
(Don't worry, he doesn't have sex with her while she's sleeping.)

They are put on trial, which they don't take seriously.

The Deltas are expelled from college. They get back by ruining the town's homecoming parade.

Screenwriters Doug Kenney and Chris Miller had parts in the picture only because writers were not allowed on the set and this was a way the director could bring them in to improvise on the script.

They couldn't think of a way to end the movie so they had prophecies for all the characters. In the movie, even though Bluto went into politics, it was the Omegas that were the Nixon people. Much of it alluded to them being the ones behind Watergate and Kent State.

The female tennis pro reference was to Renee Richards, one of the first celebrities to transition, and back when such a thing was still considered a punchline. (Don't be so smug, fellow cisgenders born after 1965. You would have been that way too back then.)

I couldn't find the actual prophecy online. It must have been ordered removed by the studio because it was where a lot of the rape jokes were.

Not mentioned before were D-Day (Bruce McGill) and Robert Hoover (James Widdoes).


They got an angry letter from the KKK for a potshot against them, which led to a response from Landis and Belushi.

Incidentally, how do you make carbon copies of something that's already been printed? Do you trace everything? Did they mean xerox?

The poster for the movie is one of the many “chicken fat” comedy posters started by Jack Davis with his It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World poster.

Artist Rick Meyerowitz did one piece for MAD.

Years later, National Lampoon did a movie-themed issue and had fake ads throughout parodying the themes popular in movies at the time, including one for the many imitations that were coming out of their own Animal House. The cast was that of the forgotten season of Saturday Night Live when Eddie Murphy was still unknown.