Guido Henkel: Will there be more commentary tracks by John Landis, now that the ice is broken?

John Landis: I doubt there will be more. I don’t know. I don’t really foresee it. I’d rather have documentaries in their stead. Look at the Collector’s Edition of Animal House. I like it a lot and Universal even let me clean up the transfer. The film looks better now than it ever did in theaters, and I am not kidding you. They made a new documentary for it and it turned out great. I thought it was terrific, and the guys even sounded British. To do a commentary track on top of all that seemed a little superfluous to me.

Lampoon Cast Relives Animal Instincts

The Animal House cast members slip into character as easily as they throw on a toga.

Director John Landis called on the actors from the raucous 1978 comedy to shoot new interviews for Universal Studios Home Video’s Aug. 26 release of National Lampoon’s Animal House Double Secret Probation Edition, the title’s second incarnation on domestic DVD.

The new edition marks Animal House’s 25th anniversary.

In the “Where Are They Now?” segment, Landis had the cast do the interviews while they remained in character. Among them were Tim Matheson, who played campus Lothario Eric “Otter” Stratton; Martha Smith (Barbara “Babs” Jansen); Stephen Furst (Kent “Flounder” Dorfman); James Widdoes (Robert Hoover); and Bruce McGill (Daniel Simpson “D-Day” Day).

All five appeared at last week’s Television Critic’s Association confab in Hollywood along with co-producer Ivan Reitman, where they discussed the shoot, the movie’s influence and the new DVD edition in a freewheeling interview session where their memories of the shoot — and the new Landis-directed segment in the DVD — flew around the room like food from the late John “Bluto” Belushi’s mouth.

Widdoes said he didn’t know he would have to be in character until he arrived at the session — and Landis held up a script, which had to be memorized in short order.

“He did not want this ad-libbed,” he said.

“How long did you get?” Smith asked.

“About an hour,” Widdoes replied.

“Me too!” said Smith, who brought along old on-set snapshots.

Universal didn’t skimp on the new digital transfer for the Double Secret Probation Edition, which is a marked improvement over prior videotape and DVD releases, Reitman said.

“So the picture looks gorgeous — for the first time,” he said.

There had been several attempts over the years to bring a sequel to the screen, but no one could ever devise a good script, he said.

“We just never got one that anybody wanted to do,” Reitman said.

And there was another missing piece, without which a sequel wouldn’t work, Matheson said.

“The centerpiece was Belushi,” he said.

Belushi died of a drug overdose in 1982.

One subsequent campus-set comedy that effectively used the Animal House formula and perhaps expanded on it is Old School, which exercised a measure of restraint, Matheson said.

Questions of the DVD’s quality aside, McGill said he prefers watching Animal House in a theater.

“I really enjoy seeing it on the big screen with an audience,” he said. “I see something different every time.”