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Top 5 College Movies
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The Top 5 College Movies
With school starting up again, both regular school and college, I thought it would be fun to make a list of the Top 5 College Movies. I then realized that I already did come up with a Top 5 College Movie list about ten years ago, but that particular list is long gone from the internets (it was used as part of the old weekly Top 5 column). I decided to look at what I wrote way back then and see if I could “update” it a bit. My top 5 hasn’t changed, but I did alter a bit/add to what I originally wrote. And that’s what’s below. A sort of “new” version of an old list. I hope you like it.
And so, without any further what have you, what are my Top 5 College Movies?
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5. Night of the Creeps (1986): I actually forgot that this movie takes place at a college but, yes, it takes place at the prestigious Corman University. But what everyone remembers about it, and rightfully so, is it’s about alien slugs that turn people into zombies. And who is going to rescue the students of Corman University? Detective Ray Cameron, brilliantly played by Michael Hunsaker hisself Tom Atkins, Chris “Spanky” Romero, played by “the second Rusty,” Jason Lively, Cynthia, played by Jill Whitlow, a shotgun, and a flamethrower. Night of the Creeps has a weird tone and pace, with flashbacks to the 1950s, an odd backstory for Detective Cameron, and a low level goofiness that doesn’t become full on goofy until the last quarter, when it’s alien zombie slaughter jubilee time. The alien slugs still freak me out, and the scene where the guy in the wheelchair, trying to escape the bathroom via crawling on the floor and getting attacked by the slug gives me the supreme willies. A true eighties classic. Oh, it also features a scene where a zombie is killed with a lawnmower to the face. That’s just awesome. I mean, for my money you just don’t see enough of that kind of thing in movies.
And, of course, who could ever forget the following immortal lines from Detective Cameron:
“I got good news and bad news, girls. The good news is your dates are here.”
“What’s the bad news?”
“They’re dead!”
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“Thrill me.”
4. Road Trip (2000) – This gross out comedy from 2000 features a four man road trip to retrieve a sex tape that was accidentally sent to a guy’s girlfriend. The guy in question, played by Breckin Meyer, is in a “committed” long distance relationship and, despite banging the ever eager Amy Smart, still wants to stay in that committed long distance relationship. The road trip to retrieve the sex tape is filled with various shenanigans that, when you write them down, come off as typical college movie/modern road movie clichés, but as executed in Road Trip they’re freaking brilliant. I still laugh just thinking about the scene where the guys (Meyer, Sean William “Stifler” Scott, Paulo Costanzo, and DJ Qualls) try to jump a bridge that’s out. The aftermath of that jump is exactly what would happen if four idiots tried to jump an out bridge. Fred Ward shows up and brandishes a gun like a lunatic, Andy Dick is super sleazy in a skeevy cameo as a hotel clerk, Horatio Sanz is a waiter you don’t want to mess with, and Tom Green is goofy as a college tour guide. A sequel of some sorts was made in 2009, Road Trip: Beer Pong, but I’ve never seen it. There was also a sort of quasi sequel that was released in 2004, Euro Trip, but I didn’t care for that one. Road Trip was released in the aftermath of American Pie (1999), but as a sort of “franchise,” Road Trip wasn’t as successful as American Pie.
3. Revenge of the Nerds (1984) – This college comedy is a tremendous underdog story featuring a bunch of nerds battling against an environment that caters only to the jocks on campus (it’s also, in retrospect, incredibly problematic. But then what 1980’s comedy isn’t?). The nerds, the Lambdas, are humiliated again and again (they aren’t even really allowed to become the Lambdas at first), but when they decide that they’ve had enough and get revenge on their tormenters (the Alpha Betas and their female counterparts the Pis), things start to get better for the Lambdas. The nerd cast is unbelievably good, with Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards doing iconic work as Lewis Skolnick and Gilbert Lowe, Curtis Armstrong as Dudley “Booger” Dawson (am I the only one who refers to him at all times, even when he’s in a different movie or TV show, as Booger? Even in Better Off Dead, he’s Booger?), and Timothy Busfield as Arnold Poindexter (Poindexter, Arnold). On the jock side you’ve got Ted McGinley as the uber douchebag Stan Gable, Donald Gibb as “Ogre, you asshole. Ogre” Ogre, and John Goodman as one of the best asshole football coaches in movie history (he only has a few scenes but he’s brilliant. I mean, think of the “You know, when you were a baby in your crib” speech). The immortal Bernie Casey shows up, too, as the head of the national Lambda Lambda Lambda organization who decides, yeah, the nerds can be Lambdas. Even with its “problematic” content, it’s a movie that’s still worth checking out. The sequel, Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise (1987), is worth seeing, too. Heck, all of the Revenge of the Nerds movies are worth seeing, even the two TV movie sequels: Revenge of the Nerds III: The Next Generation (1992), and Revenge of the Nerds IV: Nerds in Love (1994).
“Nerds!”
2. Back to School (1986) – Easily Rodney Dangerfield’s best movie, Back to School is Rodney as Thornton Melon, a rich guy going to college to hang out with his distant son Jason, played by Keith Gordon. Rodney’s Thornton Melon has no real intention of going to class and actually getting an education. He goes to class, yes but he doesn’t take it all that seriously. But he does have plenty of fun messing around with the tight ass economics professor Phillip Barbay (Paxton Whitehead), giving college dean Ned Beatty a bunch of money for a new building, and banging his English literature professor played by Sally Kellerman. And partying. Thornton parties quite a bit. He also helps the school win a major diving meet by doing an impossible dive (the Triple Lindy is the greatest dive in the history of the movies). Sam Kinison shows up as a hilariously insane history professor (his bit where he tells everyone what really happened in Vietnam is an absolute classic), Robert Downey, Jr. appears as Gordon’s goofball buddy Derek, William Zabka as a douchebag jock (another classic douchebag performance from Zabka), the great M. Emmet Walsh as a diving coach, and Adrienne Barbeau as Thornton’s soon to be ex-wife. Oh, and who could forget Burt Young as Thornton’s bodyguard/buddy Lou? “You got a problem? No, I don’t got a problem. Now you do.” Brilliant stuff.
And then, of course, there’s the Kurt Vonnegut cameo, where Thornton hires him to write a paper on his own literary work and ends up getting a failing grade. Kellerman’s Diane figured Thornton didn’t write the paper himself, but also says “Whoever wrote it doesn’t know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut.” And that leads to the epic phone call, where Thornton tells off Vonnegut.
“And another thing, Vonnegut, I’m gonna stop payment on the check. What’s that? Fuck me? Hey, Kurt, do you read lips? Fuck you! Next time I’ll call Robert Ludlum!”
God, there are so many great moments and lines in this movie.
1. National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978) – A disgusting yet lovable fraternity full of drunks and degenerates ends up battling the college dean and the student council over general decency. You root for the frat of drunks because they’re cool and genuine, and you hate the dean and the student council because they’re a bunch of smug, stuffy racists and assholes. I don’t think anyone’s college experience is quite like that today (mine wasn’t), but today’s students no doubt use the events depicted in the movie to help parody their own college experience. Especially the heavy drinking stuff. There’s a reason students the world over still have posters in their dorm rooms of John Belushi’s Bluto wearing that “college” sweatshirt. That, and the fact that the movie is still hysterical to this day, is the reason Animal House is, and likely always will be, the best college themed movie. It was inspired by real events (I saw a documentary where screenwriter Douglas Kenney was said to have based parts of the movie on things that really happened), and the movie inspires real events today. It’s timeless. And its cast is beyond phenomenal. Belushi as Bluto. Bruce McGill as Daniel Simpson Day (I still call him D-Day). Tim Matheson as Otter. Peter Riegert as Boon. Stephen Furst as Kent Dorfman, aka Flounder. Thomas Hulce as Pinto. They were the good guys. On the bad guy side, you had James Daughton as Greg. Mark Metcalf as Neidermeyer (I will never not laugh when we find out at the end that he was eventually killed in Vietnam by his own troops). Kevin Bacon as Chip (“Thank you, sir, may I have another?”). And John Vernon, in probably his most iconic role, as Dean Wormer. There’s also Karen Allen as Boon’s girlfriend Katy, and Donald Sutherland as Dave Jennings, the pot smoking English professor and novelist that thinks the novel he’s been working on for four and a half years is a piece of shit and wants you to believe that, yes, waiting for reports on Milton is actually his job.
And just like Back to School, there are so many great scenes, moments, and lines in this movie (we wouldn’t have “Double secret probation” without Animal House). My favorite line, one I still quote today? When Dean Wormer revealed the grade point averages for the assembled Deltas in his office and left Bluto’s GPA for last.
“Mr. Blutarsky. Zero. Point. Zero.”
And Dean Wormer’s “advice” to poor Flounder is mean as hell but still funny. “Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
And the one line I used to say with my Dad all of the time. “You guys playing cards?” Just classic, classic stuff.
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