10National Lampoon’s Animal House (1978)

Released in 1978 and written by Ramis along with National Lampoon stalwarts Doug Kenney (Harvard, class of ’68), and Chris Miller (Dartmouth, class of ’63), Animal House set box office records for a comedy. Though plenty crude, by moving the film’s time and place back to the early 1960s, “the writers tapped the source of their earliest ideals,” The New Yorker’s Tad Friend wrote, in his 2004 profile of Ramis. In that article, Ramis told Friend: “Woody Allen had defined the American nebbish as a loser. But we felt instinctively that our outsiders weren't losers. They may not achieve anything in the traditional sense – they may not even be smart – but they're countercultural heroes. The movie went on after the credits to tell you that these were your future leaders, while the guys from the ‘good’ frat would be raped in prison and fragged by their own troops.”