upcoming

Animal House (1978)

What:

National Lampoon’s Animal House(1978) screens Saturday, September 4 at 8 p.m. at Arcata Theatre Lounge, 1036 G St in Arcata. Box office opens 30 minutes prior to screening, costs $5 and is rated R.

We got to do something…You know what we are gonna do ? Toga party !

National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) is an American comedy film directed by John Landis. Set in 1962 on the campus of Faber College in Faber, PA., the first glimpse we get of campus is the statue of its founder Emil Faber, on the base of which is inscribed the motto, “Knowledge Is Good.” Incoming freshmen Larry “Pinto” Kroger (Tom Hulce) and Kent “Flounder” Dorfman (Stephen Furst) find themselves rejected by the pretentious Omega fraternity, and instead pledge to Delta House. The Deltas are a motley fraternity of rejects and maladjusted undergraduates (some approaching their late twenties) whose main goal, seemingly accomplished in part by their mere presence on campus, is disrupting the staid, peaceful, rigidly orthodox, and totally hypocritical social order of the school, as represented by the Omegas and the college’s dean, Vernon Wormer (John Vernon). Dean Wormer decides that this is the year he’s going to get the Deltas expelled and their chapter decertified; he places the fraternity on “double secret probation” and, with help from Omega president Greg Marmalard (James Daughton) and hard-nosed member Doug Neidermeyer (Mark Metcalf), starts looking for any pretext on which to bring the members of the Delta fraternity up on charges.

Of the young lead actors only John Belushi was an established star; several of the actors, including Tom Hulce, Karen Allen, and Kevin Bacon, were early in their careers. The film launched the gross-out genre. In 2001, the United States Library of Congress deemed Animal House “culturally significant” and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry. This film was number one on Bravo’s 100 Funniest Movies. It was number 36 on AFI’s 100 Years… 100 Laughs list of the 100 best American comedies. In 2008, Empire magazine selected Animal House as one of The 500 Greatest Movies of All Time.

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