They infiltrated Track Town, USA, in 1978 during a 38-day stint marked with toga partying and ruckus-raising. Food fights, debauchery, edgy competitions, and campaigns against the stilted college ambiance and snotty Omegas ensued. Bluto and the Delta boys secured Eugene a claim to fame beyond Hayward Field with the original screwball college comedy, “National Lampoon’s Animal House.”
“Eugene’s a small dot on the map, yet this movie represents the culture of college,” said David Sommers, a University student and former inhabitant of the Phi Kappa Psi house where the Omegas dwelled. “It was a not-so-typical movie at the time, like Eugene is a not-so-typical town.”
Thirty years since the release of “Animal House,” fans visit sites from the movie set that John Belushi and his anarchist brigade made famous. The majority of locations lie within walking distance of the University. Others sit 20 minutes south in Cottage Grove. Between events at the U.S. Olympic Track & Field Trials, take a scenic stroll or ride to discover this realm in Eugene’s history.
“We definitely let people in who were excited about ‘Animal House,’” said Sommers about living in the former Omega house before his fraternity was relocated. “Now they’re renovating the interior but the exterior still looks exactly the same and you can take pictures in front of it.”
The Phi Kappa Psi fraternity house, a grand, white colonial building, is among a dozen or so “Animal House” sites situated near campus. Located at 720 E. 11th Ave., the Omega house neighbors the fallen Delta headquarters. Once a dilapidated shack, the now-gynecologist’s office and physicians’ suite pays homage to the original “Animal House” with a placard. Before the notorious grounds were no more, house dwellers framed the hole Bluto punched through the wall with a guitar.
Continue across the street to 763 E. 11th Ave., the former Sigma Nu fraternity – now Northwest Christian College property – that hosted the motorcycle scene and a wild toga party with tons of sheet-clad twenty-somethings.
Swing through the heart of campus on East 13th Street by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art and Knight Library, where cameras panned several times in the film; 110 Fenton Hall, where the courtroom scene took place; Johnson Hall, the administrative building where Delta members went neck-to-neck with a disapproving and determined-to-crush-Bluto-and-the-gang Dean Wormer; and Gerlinger Hall, home to Emily Dickinson College. Across from Gerlinger sits the Erb Memorial Union fishbowl, a nostalgic cafeteria space where John Belushi once “popped a zit” on a young Kevin Bacon (Chip), spewing food at him and spurring an epic food fight. Stop here for a bite to eat, where á la carte dining options include Subway, Panda Express and a slew of cafés.
From the EMU, continue down 13th Street to Carson Hall, the first University building captured in “Animal House.”
Behind Hayward Field and near the tennis courts, filming crews shot the golf scene, Sommers said.
Dave Bemis, a former reporter for The Cottage Grove Sentinel, remembers inadvertently running into the filming of the topless pillow fight scene in which Belushi’s character was so overcome with excitement while watching half-naked women that he fell backward on the ladder he spied upon. Bemis came through a back entrance of the Cottage Grove armory, where the interior scenes were filmed, and was shooed away by crew members who told him the site was off limits. “I didn’t even realize I had been sneaking around,” Bemis said.
Bemis’ dad, also a former Cottage Grove journalist, was called an expletive by Belushi when he asked the actor for an interview. Bemis didn’t interact with the stars, but remembers the ways in which the film turned the town of 8,000 upside down. Some businesses triumphed, some floundered, and “…in a small town, you can’t disrupt anything without upsetting people, even if it involves making them a huge profit,” he said.
Still, Cottage Grove celebrates the 25th anniversary of “Animal House” with a “town-sponsored toga party,” and locals are likely to point you to the film’s famous sites.
“Most of the fun stuff during filming of ‘Animal House’ in Cottage Grove occurred on Main Street, where they filmed the parade,” said Bemis, who now works in Santa Monica. “They put false fronts on a few key buildings, including the auto dealership on the corner of Main and Highway 99 where they filmed the scene of the runaway float snapping off a fake fire hydrant and crashing through the front of the building.”
Track Town, USA, may be Eugene’s greatest claim to fame, but “Animal House” harkens to the civil upheaval of 1960s college life and cemented another legacy for the college town.
“Any time a movie is filmed in Oregon, there’s definitely a sense of pride,” said University student Hillary Stanley. Sommers agreed, adding, “The moral is that people who figure out life in college and think creatively are better off than people who figure out college in college.”