National Lampoon's Animal House Details

It spawned a number of puerile spin-offs, but this cheerfully vulgar offering deserves the status of comedy classic. As well as providing John Belushi with his best ever role, it also helped launch the career of a number of rising young actors (Kevin Bacon, Tom Hulce, Peter Riegert), not to mention director John Landis and co-writer Harold Ramis, who went on to star with Bill Murray in the Ghostbusters movies and direct him in the hilarious Groundhog Day. There's not much of a plot to speak of: at a US college in the early 1960s, dean John Vernon plots to remove the depraved Delta House fraternity from the campus; Belushi and his fellow students decide to fight back. Everyone remembers the food fight, but the film is crammed with smart sight gags and one-liners, while Belushi's incomprehensible rallying speech at the end is quite wonderful.

A ragbag of college gags, of interest only to those who have had the experience; but its success caused much imitation, especially in American television.