National Lampoon's Animal House was on Netflix recently and, naturally, I had to watch it again—for what had to be the zillionth time. Every time I see it, and it's probably been a good ten years since I last watched it from beginning to end, I come away with a different perspective.
Sometimes I'm fourteen or fifteen years old again, sneaking into the long-gone movie theater around the corner from the house I grew up in on Long Island to watch what felt like an X-rated movie.
Sometimes it feels like I'm getting together with a group of old friends—loud, obnoxious, politically incorrect, but endlessly entertaining. Friends I haven't seen in years, yet we somehow pick up right where we left off.
Other times I see it for what it was: a low-budget, boundary-pushing comedy starring John Belushi, who, thanks to Saturday Night Live, was arguably the biggest television star in America in the late 1970s.
Made for about $3 million, Animal House went on to gross more than $140 million worldwide, making it one of the most profitable comedies ever produced.
Viewed strictly on its own merits today, the film can occasionally feel dated. Some jokes don't land the way they once did, and the story is admittedly threadbare. Familiarity has a way of smoothing over what made it so revolutionary in 1978. Before Animal House, there simply hadn't been anything quite like it. Countless films have tried to imitate it since, but few have captured the same lightning in a bottle.
Granted, over the last forty-eight years there have been funnier movies—much funnier, in fact—but Animal House was the original. Every college comedy that followed had to live in the shadow of its toga party.
There are two cars featured prominently in Animal House: a 1959 Chevrolet Corvette driven by Tim Matheson's character, Eric "Otter" Stratton, and a 1964 Lincoln Continental borrowed by Kent "Flounder" Dorfman from his older brother, Fred.
You'd think, given that this is mostly a car blog, I'd devote this piece to Otter's Corvette. Maybe someday. But the Corvette is really just another prop, as much a part of Otter's image as Boon's letterman sweater or Babs' towering beehive hairdo.
Instead, let's dive into a swimming pool that's only an inch deep but nearly 79 inches wide—and weighs well over 5,000 pounds. That 1964 Lincoln Continental.
The casting of the gigantic Lincoln was an interesting choice. Its formal, almost presidential elegance provides the perfect visual contrast to the complete chaos surrounding the Delta house.
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in a 1961 Continental so perhaps the casting of the car was intentional as an anti-establishment metaphor.
Curiously, though, Fred's Lincoln is a 1964 model even though the movie takes place during the fall semester of 1962. The 1964 Continental is about three inches longer than the 1962 model and can be identified by its simpler grille and parking lamps recessed into the front bumper.
Most viewers would never notice the difference, but it's the kind of continuity error that would be far less likely to slip through a major Hollywood production today.
The common explanation is that when the movie was filmed in 1977, it was simply easier to find a decent 1964 Continental than a period-correct 1961 or 1962 model. Maybe. Then again, 1964 wasn't exactly a banner sales year for Lincoln, with production only modestly higher than in 1962. More likely, the filmmakers found a clean Continental that fit the part, and on a shoestring budget, that was good enough.
To all but the most obsessive car spotters, it passes without a second glance.
Those same sharp-eyed enthusiasts will notice that the 1962 Continental wore a distinctive floating-rectangle grille and bullet-style front fender ornaments, while the 1964 adopted a flatter, cleaner grille and revised front lighting. The '64 also rode on a slightly longer wheelbase, adding a couple of inches of rear-seat legroom—no doubt making Otter's romantic ambitions just a little more comfortable.
Rumors have circulated for years that the famous "Death Mobile" used during the parade sequence was actually a 1966 Continental. I've never found any credible evidence to support that. Everything I've seen suggests the same 1964 Lincoln was modified for the finale.
The 1964 Continental belonged to the generation produced from 1961 through 1969 that arguably saved Lincoln. Before the clean-sheet redesign introduced for 1961, Lincoln had been steadily losing ground to Cadillac and, to a lesser extent, Chrysler's Imperial.
The Continental's rear-hinged rear doors—popularly known as "suicide doors"—became one of the car's defining features. The nickname stemmed from the potential danger if a rear-hinged door accidentally opened while the vehicle was moving. Beyond their dramatic appearance, the doors also made getting into and out of the rear seat remarkably easy.
With its crisp slab-sided styling and restrained elegance, the Continental became an icon of mid-century American design. It couldn't have been more different from the chrome-laden, fin-covered Lincolns that came before it.
As for the Animal House Lincoln—better known as the Death Mobile—its fate remains something of a mystery. Some stories claim it was stolen after filming wrapped before eventually being destroyed. Others suggest it simply disappeared into the used-car market. Whatever the truth, its whereabouts remain unknown, adding one final bit of mythology to one of the most memorable cars in movie history.
