Animal House
1978 film by John Landis
National Lampoon's Animal House is a 1978 American comedy film directed by John Landis and written by Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller. It stars John Belushi, Tim Matheson, John Vernon, Verna Bloom, Thomas Hulce and Donald Sutherland. The film is about a trouble-making fraternity whose members challenge the authority of Dean Vernon Wormer of the fictional Faber College.
Produced by Matty Simmons of National Lampoon and Ivan Reitman for Universal Pictures, it was inspired by stories written by Miller and published in National Lampoon, which were based on Ramis's experience in the Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at Washington University in St. Louis, Miller's Alpha Delta Phi experiences at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire and producer Reitman's at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Of the younger lead actors, only the 28-year-old Belushi was an established star but even he had not yet appeared in a film, having gained fame as an original cast member of Saturday Night Live, which was in its third season in the autumn of 1977. Several of the actors cast as college students, including Thomas Hulce, Karen Allen and Kevin Bacon, were just beginning their film careers. Matheson, also cast as student Eric "Otter" Stratton, was already a seasoned actor, having appeared in movies and television since the age of 13.
Filming took place at the University of Oregon from October to December 1977. Following its initial release on July 28, 1978, Animal House received generally mixed reviews from critics, but Time and Roger Ebert proclaimed it one of the year's best.
“Animal House” enters the record as 1978 film by John Landis. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Animal, House and film can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Animal House” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Animal, House and film provides the most credible route into that argument.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q960125. VIAF identifies the subject as 176042832. The Library of Congress control number is no2003085408. 4 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 4 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978 and 1977.
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This entry incorporates text from “Animal House” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.