07/28/2026
48 years ago today, July 28, 1978, National Lampoon's Animal House premiered in theaters.
John Belushi starred as John "Bluto" Blutarsky, one of the misfit members of the unruly Delta Tau Chi fraternity at fictional Faber College, set against the strait laced Omega fraternity in 1962. Tim Matheson played Eric "Otter" Stratton, John Vernon played the domineering Dean Vernon Wormer, and Verna Bloom played his wife, Marion, while Thomas Hulce, Stephen Furst, and Donald Sutherland rounded out the cast. The film also marked the earliest big screen roles for Kevin Bacon and Karen Allen.
John Landis directed the film from a screenplay by Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, and Chris Miller, drawing on the writers' own fraternity experiences at Dartmouth College in the early 1960s. Made in association with National Lampoon magazine and produced by Matty Simmons and Ivan Reitman for Universal Pictures, it marked the first feature film produced under the National Lampoon banner. Filming took place at the University of Oregon from October to December 1977.
Made on a budget of just 3 million dollars, Animal House grossed 141.6 million dollars worldwide, becoming the second highest grossing film of 1978 behind Grease. It was inducted into the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2001.
