Summary
Boon accidentally hits a golf ball into the cafeteria kitchen, where a woman stirs it into a large soup tureen without noticing it. Back on the field, Neidermeyer orders Flounder to "report to the stable tonight and every night at 1900 hours," just as Boon hits another rogue golf ball into Wormer's office, spilling water all over a bunch of the dean's documents.
As Neidermeyer orders everyone to do 20 pushups, Otter hits a golf ball that hits Neidermeyer's horse's back leg, causing it to start leaping. Otter hits another golf ball which hits Neidermeyer's helmet and knocks him off the horse, with his foot still caught in a stirrup. The horse drags him behind it, as he screams.
Later, Boon, Pinto and Katy walk and Boon tells Katy he wants her to set Pinto up with someone, alluding to the fact that Pinto is a virgin. Katy tells the boys not to embarrass her in front of Professor Jennings, who they are about to go meet, since he is her favorite professor. The scene shifts and we see Jennings at his home, telling the group, "Teaching's a way of paying the rent, until I finish my novel." He tells them he's been working on it for four and a half years, calling it "a piece of shit" and offering them some pot.
Jennings lowers the blinds and locks the door before retrieving his pot. By candlelight, they all pass a joint around, and Pinto asks, "I won't go schizo, will I?" to which Jennings replies, "There's a distinct possibility." Pinto takes a drag, before accidentally putting the candle out with a cough. Katy and Boon sing a song together as Pinto talks about the fact that the universe could just be a tiny part of an atom "in the fingernail of some other giant being." Giggling, he tells Jennings that an atom in his fingernail could be a whole universe, before asking Jennings if he can buy some pot.
We see Flounder struggling to clean a horse's pen in the stable that evening. Neidermeyer, now with a neck brace, scolds Flounder for doing a bad job shoveling the stables, then feeds the horse by putting the horse's food in his mouth and calling the horse "baby." Neidermeyer pulls Flounder aside and threatens to hit him for hitting the horse. "Your days are numbered here at Faber," he threatens Flounder. He tells Flounder to give him 20 pushups directly above a large pile of horse feces.
Unseen by Neidermeyer, D-Day and Bluto sneak into the stables to save Flounder. D-Day tells Flounder, "Don't get mad, get even" before whispering a plan to get back at Neidermeyer in Flounder's ear. The three Delta brothers lead Neidermeyer's horse up the steps of a university building and into Dean Wormer's office and leave, locking the horse inside. Outside the office, D-Day hands Flounder a pistol and tells him to finish the job, but Flounder is terrified. "Get it over with, Kent," Bluto tells Flounder, and they send him into the office with the gun. When Flounder is out of earshot, Bluto confirms with D-Day that the gun just has blanks in it.
In the office, Flounder goes to shoot the horse, but he cannot bring himself to do it, so shoots it at the ceiling instead. All of a sudden, D-Day and Bluto hear a loud thud from the office and run to investigate what happened. The horse dies, seemingly from shock, and the boys all run from the office, screaming.
The next day, the mayor of the town, Carmine DePasto, tells Dean Wormer that if they want to have homecoming parade at the college, they have to pay the town. As a man measures the body of the dead horse, Wormer says he doesn't think it's right to extort money from the college. "If you mention extortion again, I'll have your legs broken," says Carmine, which causes Wormer to agree. Carmine then tells Wormer that he wants him to keep an eye on the Delta boys in order to ensure the parade goes off without a hitch. Suddenly, the man who measured the horse fires up a chainsaw, evidently to cut the horse up.
At lunch, Bluto makes eyes at a few girls bringing their dirty trays up to be washed. He eyes a bowl of soup with Boon's golf ball in it, picking it up and taking a bite out of the golf ball. Meanwhile, Otter goes and sits next to Mandy, alluding to the fact that they have had an affair, even though she seems embarrassed by his presence. Bluto goes through the lunch line taking as much food as he can grab, stuffing some sandwiches in his pocket and stacking his plates on top of one another. At one point he picks up a plate of green jello and slurps it up in one gulp.
On his way to finding a table, Bluto makes horse noises at Neidermeyer, before going and sitting with Otter, Mandy, another sorority girl, Chip, and Greg. As Bluto gorges himself on food, Greg asks him, "Don't you have any respect for yourself?" Bluto then tells them to guess what he is, before stuffing his face with potato and spitting it all over them, saying, "I'm a zit, get it?" Greg and Chip chase Bluto around the cafeteria, but he manages to escape, creating even more chaos.
In the midst of it, Otter asks Mandy to go out, but she tells him that the sex wasn't great, as Bluto starts a huge food fight.
That night, cars line up on a hill and couples kiss in the front seat. Mandy and Greg sit in a yellow convertible and Mandy makes a wish on a star, but Greg is pretty sure it's not a star but a 707. Mandy asks Greg if he's erect yet, and he tells her he's distracted by thoughts of the Deltas. She masturbates Greg, but he is continually upset about the Deltas, so she stops. As she brings her hands above the dashboard, we see that she's wearing rubber gloves.
Later, Greg walks Mandy up to the front door of her sorority, while Bluto watches them from the bushes. Mandy kisses Greg on the cheek and goes inside. As Greg goes back to his car, Bluto sneaks to the back of the sorority house and looks up through a window overhead, where he sees the silhouettes of naked girls. He grabs a ladder and climbs up to look more clearly, and when he peers through the window, he sees a number of sorority girls, some topless, having a pillow fight.
When Mandy retires to her bedroom, Bluto moves his ladder over with loud thuds. He peeks in her window as she gets undressed, taking her bra off slowly. Just before she removes it, Bluto looks directly at the camera and raises his eyebrows mischievously. As she touches her torso gently, Bluto falls backwards and the ladder goes crashing onto the ground.
The next day, we see an elderly professor printing a Psychology midterm. Later, Chip steals the printing paper that she used from the garbage, hoping to cheat. We see a garbage man taking the trash out. Then the scene shifts again and we see D-Day rifling through the trash looking for it, when all of a sudden Bluto emerges with what he thinks are the stolen test answers. Nearby, Greg and Chip laugh at the Delta brothers' foolishness. We see Bluto taking the midterm, Hoover in front of him, Katy and Boon sitting nearby.
Analysis
In this section, we learn more about Professor Jennings: an aging hippie type, a failed writer, and a slacker in his own right. He tells Boon, Katy, and Pinto that he's been working on his novel for four and a half years and calls it a "piece of shit," before offering them some pot. In contrast to the bombastic indulgences of the fraternity brothers, Jennings has the cool slacker energy of an aging intellectual. His poison of choice is marijuana as opposed to beer, and he enjoys a groovy and secluded life on campus. Like his students, he too is searching for escape from the stodginess of the institution, but in a headier and markedly distinguished way. In this way, he is a sort of foil for the boys that fill his classes.
Part of the comedy of the film is just how backwards and hypocritical the authorities and rule-followers are. Neidermeyer, for example, is a horrible and violent man who is held up as a moral authority on campus. His military ethic ensures that he is constantly bellowing orders at people with less power than him and he takes particular issue with Flounder's incompetence and sloppiness. His backwards logic is highlighted when he threatens to hit Flounder for hitting his horse, saying, "I've got a good mind to smash your fat face." The fact that Neidermeyer cares more about the wellbeing of his steed than for a fellow student shows that at Faber, the characters with better reputations at the school are not necessarily those with a higher moral caliber.
The absurdity of much of the film's plot mirrors the subject matter of the film, so that the film has the effect of making the viewer feel as though they are in on the antics of a wild fraternity. For instance, when we see D-Day and Bluto playing a prank with the horse and Flounder, the viewer is meant to feel as though they are being brought along on the late-night adventure. The film does not take its subject matter very seriously, which allows the viewer to relish in the ridiculousness of the college students' missteps and misadventures.
One character that particularly embodies the absurdity and over-the-top nature of the film is Bluto, played by the iconic comedian, John Belushi, a founding cast member of Saturday Night Live and a forceful comedic presence in the 1970s. With his un-self-conscious performing style, wry smirk, and imposing figure, he seems like a physical manifestation of the id, the perfect embodiment of the carefree and irreverent college party boy. While his acting is often amusing, his star moments in Animal House are when he is using physical comedy, such as when he eats the golf ball out of the soup, loads up his lunch tray with as many items as he can find, and pretends to be a zit. He is crude and outrageous, a grown-up infant who follows his appetites and his instincts before his brain, and his warmth makes his portrayal of Bluto, a secondary character, one of the most memorable in the film.
Lovable though Bluto may be in some ways, his chaotic nature leads him into some ethically ambiguous territory. He proves to be something of a creep when he visits a sorority house to spy on some girls through their window. The scene is tame in the context of when the film was released, and it is played for laughs rather than shock value certainly, but one cannot help but wonder how a scene like this would play in today's political context. Animal House does not shy away from objectifying women and cares little about issues of consent or sexual ethics.
