Movie Report: Animal House (1978)

Book coverSince Friar was hooked on Sarah Holcomb’s accent in Caddyshack, I decided to research her appearance in another of her four movies (this being her first in 1978, and Caddyshack her last in 1980, and Internet searches for “Where are they today?” lead to different flavors of LLM-generated “we don’t know; she starred in four films and disappeared with rumors that it was drugs and schizophrenia based on what one guy affiliated with Caddyshack said nearly thirty years later.” So, to answer the important question of whether she was from old Eire: No. She apparently was from Connecticut, and she did not have an accent in this movie.

At any rate, the film describes the happenings at a party fraternity at a fictional college. Two freshmen are looking to join a fraternity, so they visit the hoity-toity fraternity first and are not pledged, and then they go to the Delta house where they have an “in” as Dorfman’s brother was a member of the frat, so he is a legacy. But it’s the lowest frat, and Dean Wormer has them on probation and then “double secret probation” and looks for an excuse to toss them out. Hijinks ensue, including a toga party, a road trip, and culminates in an attack on the powers-that-be during a parade that is less funny now in an era of instability than it would have been in 1978 (but set in an even more stable 1962).

You still hear quotes from it and allusions to it (double secret probation, “Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”) and see memes about it (Kevin Bacon’s character saying “All is well!”) So it must have hit a certain segment of, well, influencers in just the right way to make it stick culturally. Heaven knows the humor in it was mostly miss for me (as was The Blues Brothers). I guess I was too young to see them at a formative time in my life, or perhaps too old.

And we discussed the Maggie O’Hooligan versus Lacey Underall dilemma in Caddyshack; given that Karen Allen played Boon’s girl in the film and is the only developed female character, if we want an Internet argument, I guess we have to gin up an argument about Babs versus Mandy, the two sorority girls vying for the affection of the leader of the soc fraternity.

Martha Smith as Babs
Mary Louise Weather as Mandy

The first photos are from the film; as you might know, gentle reader, I am not a fan of the look nor the hairstyles of that part of the late 1950s and 1960s, so I was not especially impressed with either. But Weller, who appeared in some other television in the 1970s and 1980s, was pretty.

Smith played a recurring character in The Scarecrow and Mrs. King, a series I remember, but I don’t remember that particular character. She, too, appeared sporadically on television and has aged well. I think she’s prettier now than she was back then. Of course, it could just be the more modern look.

I have to say I really am reaching for the pre-Internet controversy to make this into a Rule 5 post.

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