Animal House

Animal House (1978) is ready to watch online on iFILM — the rowdy college comedy that set the template for everything that followed. On a buttoned-up campus, two fraternities sit on opposite sides of a line: the polished snobs obsessed with standing, and the cheerful wrecks of Delta Tau Chi, who treat the rule book as a suggestion.

Directed by John Landis, the film is a showcase for a young John Belushi, whose chaos drives the whole thing forward. Around him are Tom Hulce, Karen Allen, Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert and a very early Kevin Bacon, while Dean Wormer, played by John Vernon, declares open war on the troublemakers. Donald Sutherland turns up to lend a stranger, looser energy.

More than four decades on, this stays a benchmark for scruffy, good-natured comedy with no interest in behaving itself. A hundred and nine minutes of parties, pranks and small rebellions against the people in charge. For the genre at its source, queue it up on iFILM.