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Animal House has just been released on DVD, and it couldn’t have come at a better
time. If you haven’t seen it before, then you’ve been living under a rock behind the
local Tibetan monastery. Believe me when I tell you that this movie is low-brow humor at
its best. This is one of those movies that I’ve loved for years but have been afraid to
review because I doubt I can do it justice.
It’s a movie about the rivalry
between two fraternities at Faber College, the uptight-ultra-conservative Omegas and the
drunken brothers of Delta house. The hi-jinks start from the very beginning of the movie
but don’t kick off in full force until the head of the college, Dean Wormer, decides to
shut down the Deltas. When he finally is able to close down the Delta fraternity, they
do the only logical thing. The guys build a renegade float and run rampant at the
homecoming parade. Along the way to being thrown off campus, the Delta brothers make a
road trip to find dates, shoplift sweaters full of meat from the grocery store, try to
pick up the Dean’s wife, and spend the evenings watching sorority girl pillow fights
through second story windows.
Animal House is the movie that really
brought low-brow mainstream. Thanks to this movie, the toga party became a fraternity
institution. It was this movie that taught us that food fights were good, clean fun. For
some of us, it became the model of what college life should be. Heck, I had a pledge
brother that thought Bluto was a god among men and lived our freshman year trying to
emulate him. For most people -- the ones with common sense -- it was a really funny
movie that took spoofs to a new level. The movie launched more than one movie career and
gave National Lampoon the impetus to get into the movie business in a big
way.
The version that’s just been released is the “Double Secret
Probation” edition. (That’s an inside joke, kids -- rent the movie and you’ll get it.)
It doesn’t come with all of the extra features that a newer movie does when released on
DVD. What it does have is a great featurette that updates viewers on what the characters
have been up to since getting kicked out of Faber College. The only two characters from
the movie who don’t appear in the update are John Belushi and Kevin Bacon. With Bacon,
though, you do get him doing a voice-over in character.
Full of laughs and
great one-liners -- this movie is indeed a classic of modern times. There are tons of
sex jokes, an exposed breast or two or three, and a horse killing, so if those types of
things offend you, find a way to get over it. You need to own this movie and watch it
often. It’s just that simple.
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