Animal House Was Once A Completely Different Movie About Charles Manson In High School

One of the explanations for such a strange script even seeing the light of day is the fact that the entire concept of a National Lampoon movie wasn’t born from greed, creative desire, or even as a goof. Instead, it was “National Lampoon Magazine” head Matty Simmons’ who was desperate to hold onto his most valuable writer, Lampoon founder Douglas Kenney. According to Landis, “Doug was getting fed up at the magazine and Matty Simmons was freaking out because he knew that Doug was the brains. So he said, ‘Doug, don’t you know National Lampoon is gonna make a movie?’ And Doug said, ‘Oh really?’ And that’s how he kept him for another year or two.”

During those couple years, Kenney wrote the first version of a National Lampoon movie, allegedly entitled “Laser Orgy Girls,” a script that Landis purports to have never seen but heard “it was unacceptable.” Meanwhile, Simmons had brought on Ivan Reitman, who had produced “The National Lampoon Show” off-Broadway and worked with a bevy of young comedians on that project, including actor and writer Harold Ramis.

According to Landis, it was Ramis and Kenney who wrote the infamous “Charles Manson in high school” version (which may or may not have retained the title “Laser Orgy Girls”). Landis read that draft, and admitted that it had “some brilliant stuff in it, but it was too outrageous.” While the director considered that script unsuitable, he was particularly taken by its opening sequence, a scene which has the camera move through a “fortress prison” and continues tracking deeper down foreboding hallways before finally settling on “a padded cell, and in the corner is this man in a straight jacket.” Landis explained, “You see that it’s Charles Manson … and he looks at the camera and says, ‘Is it hot in here or am I crazy?'”

Reacting to that script, Simmons balked, with Landis recalling his response being, “‘You can’t have all this gang-rape stuff. Put it in college!'” At which point, Kenney and Ramis added Chris Miller to their writers room, thanks to Miller’s own writing about his fraternity experiences at Dartmouth. With the trio able to brainstorm a variety of characters and scenarios recalling their various college years in the early ’60s, “Animal House” as we know it was finally born.