FRATERNITY WARD 'OLD SCHOOL' THE LATEST COMEDY SPAWNED BY 'ANIMAL HOUSE'.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

In ``Old School,'' which easily might have carried the title ``Arrested Development,'' a trio of college buddies, now well into their 30s, decide to recapture their youth by ...

``to-ga! to-ga! to-ga!''

...moving into a frat house across the street from a university ...

``To-ga! To-ga! To-ga!''

...and throwing wild par-...

``TO-GA! TO-GA! TO-GA!''

Sorry, but we're going to have to interrupt this ``Old School'' synopsis to listen to an echo being heard from a quarter-century ago.

Can you hear it? It started out as a whisper. Now it's getting louder, gathering beer-soaked steam.

``to-ga! To-ga! TO-GA! TO-GA! TO-GA!''

That's right, party-movie fans. Were it not for the genre-defining ``National Lampoon's Animal House'' 25 years ago, there would be no ``Old School,'' and not simply because comedy powerhouse Ivan Reitman produced both films. Nor would there be a ``Revenge of the Nerds,'' ``Sorority Boys'' or any other send-up of college or Greek life had not Bluto, Otter, Flounder and the boys paved the way.

And don't think the ``Animal House'' creative team isn't aware of it.

``I haven't seen DreamWorks' 'Old School,' '' says ``Animal House'' director John Landis. ``It's yet another 'Animal House' progeny, and I hope it's good, but if it's not, it's not my fault.''

``We did kind of tap into everybody's collegiate fraternity experience,'' adds Harold Ramis, one of three credited screenwriters on ``Animal House.'' ``And we thought we had something to say about our generation.''

``Old School'' writer/director Todd Phillips, whose first effort was the documentary ``Frat House,'' contends that ``Animal House'' isn't about fraternity life any more than ``Old School'' is. He considers the former an anti-establishment movie, while ``Old School'' is ``an anti-growing up'' movie.

``Obviously, people will draw comparisons since both take place in a fraternity house,'' says Phillips, who also directed the teen comedy ``Road Trip.'' ``Not to take credit for a movie that's really good, but this movie, to me, has really been more like 'City Slickers.' Here you have three guys who are lifelong friends going on a journey together. In our movie, they move into a frat house. Ultimately, it's the same kind of story. What are you searching for? Why do you need this?''

Phillips never pledged a fraternity while at New York University, but he has friends who did, and he always found fraternity life a rich subject for a documentary, and later for a movie.

``I just thought, God, what is it about guys that they have this need to belong to a group, because I never really grew up like that,'' says the Brooklyn-born Phillips, 32. ``Why is it that these guys are programmed to want to belong to something?''

And he discovered ...

``That a lot of guys are insecure,'' Phillips continues. ``A lot of guys don't like to stand out and enjoy being defined by a group. There are also some positives associated with it: friendships that last a long time and the kind of bonding that I never really had. I don't know that I missed it. It's just another way to go.''

In ``Old School,'' friendship is indeed the glue that cements Mitch (played by Luke Wilson), Beanie (Vince Vaughn) and Frank ``the Tank'' (Will Ferrell), the threesome who run afoul of vindictive Dean Pritchard (boo, hiss!) by starting an unsanctioned fraternity. It's definitely an act of male bonding since mostly straight-arrow Mitch has been dumped by his girlfriend and Frank has reverted to ``Tankhood'' mere days after his marriage.

And lest we give the impression that ``Old School'' is in any way reflective or cerebral, we can also tell you that the film contains cruel pledge tricks involving bricks tied to genitals; streaking; blow-out parties; and a KY Jelly wrestling match involving a 90-year-old pledge and a pair of topless coeds.

Feeling nostalgic for ye olde school days yet?

``You definitely hear about stuff that is more gross than what you want to put in the movie,'' says Phillips. ``We kind of consciously chose not to go there with a lot of that stuff.''

Phillips elected to follow up ``Road Trip'' with another raunch fest. Let other people make the serious stuff. Phillips says he'll stick with the laughs.

``Where I'm at as a director, these movies are just fun to make,'' says Phillips, whose next film will be a screen version of ``Starsky and Hutch'' with Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. ``I can't imagine how heavy it would be to make a movie like 'About Schmidt' which is (expletive) brilliant, a far better movie, and I understand that. I don't know that I want to surround myself with that heaviness.''

Now it's an institution

Fraternity advocates will tell you that the shenanigans depicted in ``National Lampoon's Animal House'' are in no way a reflection of actual campus Greek life. They'll sometimes use words like ``offensive,'' ``misrepresentation'' and ``demeaning'' to describe the 1978 comedy.

They'll also admit that the film - considered a classic - is a scream.

``Loved it,'' says Jon Williamson, executive vice president of the North-American Fraternity Conference, which represents 350,000 men on 800 college campuses nationwide. ``I thought John Belushi and everybody else were very entertaining. I never thought the movie intended to portray real life.''

In the late 1970s, screenwriters Harold Ramis and Chris Miller - both of whom had been in fraternities - set to work on separate scripts for a National Lampoon film project. Miller had actually written several stories about college life for the Lampoon.

``We believed we were working on something that hadn't been seen before, a comedy with an edge that was familiar to our generation,'' recalls Ramis, the director of ``Groundhog Day,'' ``Caddyshack'' and ``Analyze This.'' ``I did my treatment the year 'Saturday Night Live' went on the air. In a way, 'Saturday Night Live' not only made John Belushi a star, it conditioned the mass media for this kind of comedy in the mainstream.''

The project was originally configured for ``SNL'' mates Belushi, Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray and Brian Murray. According to Ramis, all of the actors balked because they didn't want to be defined only as a comic ensemble beyond ``SNL.''

All except Belushi, who memorably played belligerent party animal John ``Bluto'' Blutarsky. Surrounding him were a bunch of relative unknowns, including Tom Hulce, Tim Mattheson, Karen Allen, Peter Riegert, Stephen Furst, Kevin Bacon and James Widdoes. In a nutshell, the Delta fraternity house and its collection of charming boozers and slackers takes on the dean at Faber College, who is looking to flunk them all out of school. The year is 1962.

``All I can tell you is that it had a genuinely witty screenplay and was a relatively minor production that the studio (Universal) was able to get away with a lot in terms of casting,'' says director John Landis.

``Animal House'' cost approximately $2.7 million and grossed $141 million. Fraternities saw their enrollments spike in the wake of the film's success and revelers at every college campus in America put together a toga party.

``Certain comedies stand the test of time, and I think 'Animal House' will,'' says Todd Phillips, director of the recently released ``Old School,'' another raunchy comedy set at a fraternity. ``Some of those movies you could watch over and over on cable and think, 'Boy, this is going to be around in 10 or 15 years.' ''

Sequels were proposed but never made. A few of the actors signed up for the short-lived TV spin-off, ``Delta House,'' which also starred Michelle Pfeiffer as a character known only as ``The Bombshell.''

Ramis resisted the call to write a sequel because he had no interest in doing another college movie. ``I wanted to progress them four years out of college to 1967, the Summer of Love, and put them in San Francisco,'' he says.

``We hit that little historical crease between the early 1960s when Kennedy was killed and the world got very serious,'' says Ramis.

- Evan Henerson

CAPTION(S):

7 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Frat chance

Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell and Vince Vaughn tap into their college past in `Old School'

(2) Marriage sends Will Ferrell's Frank ``The Tank'' back to his college mentality in ``Old School.''

(3) Luke Wilson, left, stars in what writer-director Todd Phillips calls ``an anti-growing up movie.''

(4) VAUGHN

(5) WILSON

(6) FERRELL

(7) John Belushi, left, and Stephen Furst in ``Animal House''

Box:

Now it's an institution (see text)