← All Movies
National Lampoon's Animal House
In the fall of 1962, Faber College freshmen Lawrence "Larry" Kroger and Kent Dorfman are seeking to join a fraternity. Finding themselves unwelcome at the exclusive Omega Theta Pi house party, the two visit the derelict Delta Tau Chi house next door. Kent believes that Delta will have to accept him as a "legacy" since his older brother was a member. They meet John ("Bluto") Blutarsky, chapter president Robert ("Hoov") Hoover, charismatic ladies' man Eric ("Otter") Stratton, motorcyclist Daniel Simpson ("D-Day") Day, Donald ("Boon") Schoenstein and Boon's exasperated girlfriend Katy. Larry and Kent are accepted as Delta pledges and given the fraternity names "Pinto" and "Flounder", respectively. Meanwhile, Omega pledge Chip Diller is accepted into the fraternity and given a paddling as part of his initiation.
The Delta house is on probation due to regular shenanigans and overall poor academic scores. Wishing to remove the unruly fraternity from Faber's campus, Dean Vernon Wormer elevates the Deltas to "double secret probation" and directs Greg Marmalard, the Omega house president, to get fellow Omega and ROTC Cadet Commander Douglas C. Neidermeyer to find a reason to revoke Delta's charter. Various misadventures increase the rivalry between Delta, Omega, and Wormer, including the accidental death of Neidermeyer's horse during a retaliatory prank following the bullying of ROTC member Flounder by Neidermeyer. Unbeknownst to Marmalard, Otter has had an affair with Marmalard's girlfriend, Mandy Pepperidge, a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority.
Bluto and D-Day steal the answers to an upcoming midterm exam, unaware the Omegas switched it for a fake. The Deltas all fail and their lowered grade-point averages prompt Wormer to announce he needs only one more misdemeanor to revoke their charter and permanently expel them.
Undeterred, the Deltas organize a toga party and recruit Pinto and Flounder to shoplift from a supermarket as a fraternity prank. At the market, Pinto meets a young cashier named Clorette and invites her to the party, while Otter flirts with an older woman, who turns out to be Dean Wormer's alcoholic wife Marion. During the toga party, at which Otis Day and the Knights perform, Otter seduces Marion, while Pinto and Clorette make out until she passes out, drunk. Pinto resists the temptation to rape her while she is unconscious and instead delivers her home in a shopping cart. He later discovers that she is the 13-year-old daughter of Carmine DePasto, the corrupt mayor of the city of Faber who secretly takes advantage of Wormer.
Wormer organizes a kangaroo court led by the Omegas, which revokes the Deltas' charter and confiscates the contents of their house. Otter, Boon, Pinto, and Flounder take a road trip in a Lincoln Continental Flounder has borrowed from his older brother, Fred. After reading about the recent death of a student at a nearby all-female college, Otter poses as her fiancé in order to find dates for himself and the others. The ruse works and the Deltas, along with their dates, stop at a club where Otis Day and the Knights are performing, unaware that the clientele is exclusively African-American. Some of the patrons intimidate the Deltas into abandoning their dates and fleeing the club, damaging both their car and several others in the parking lot.
The next morning, Boon discovers Katy has spent the night with English professor Dave Jennings. Babs Jansen, herself in love with Marmalard, informs him that Mandy and Otter have been having an affair; Marmalard has Babs lure Otter to a motel where the Omegas ambush and assault him. Due to the Deltas' low midterm grades, Wormer expels them all from Faber and gleefully tells them he has notified their local draft boards that they are now all eligible for military service.
The Deltas initially concede defeat until Bluto rallies the fraternity to seek revenge during the annual Homecoming parade. D-Day converts the heavily damaged Lincoln into an armored vehicle, which the Deltas conceal inside a cake-shaped breakaway parade float. The Deltas wreak havoc during the parade and crash into the reviewing stand, toppling the Wormers and DePasto. As Hoover asks the Dean for another chance, an epilogue amidst the chaos reveals the fates of the characters: