(To date), there are 5 Vacation movies (yes 5), and if you saw 'European Vacation', you know it was the raunchiest one of them all.  they air it on TV, they edit alot of the scenes like crazy, which is understandable and standard in most films like this, but some DVD/VHS copies have editing in them, which has over the years confused me into what scenes actually made up the original theatrical release ...

- When Clark films Ellen singing 'Big Spender" in the bathroom, she opens her Towel, and only Clark can see the good stuff.  Yet, when I saw this film as a kid, there was a scene in there where we did see Ellen naked.  I once owned 4 copies of this film on VHS (all that had different packaging) to see if this scene was in there, and it wasn't.  It's not in the regular DVD release, the 'Vacation/European Vacation' Comedy favouites double disc, or the one that comes in the Vacation Box set, and it's not in the re-packaged '4 Film Favourites Vacation Collection'.  Where did this scene go?

- When Clark is chasing the Thief, he blows a tire.  His mouth reads the F-bomb, but his voice says "Darn!".  They did this for TV, but also edited it into the VHS/DVD versions.  Why would they bleep out the F-Bomb, when there are still several scenes with nudity (That German girl Rusty is making out with, and those dancers at the Roman night club)

- When they eat at that outside Café in France, that waiter is saying all these rude things because he knows they don't understand.  One of the copies I used to have, had all the swears edited out, but the DVD copy I have, all the swears were there.

- When Rusty is kissing that German girl, she opens her top and bears her breasts.  During filming, they re-shot that scene so she is wearing a bra (so they would be able to air it on network TV), yet on one of the copies I had, she was wearing the bra.

I am starting to wonder if they edited/removed all these thigns from the DVD release because 'Christmas Vacation' became a holiday classic, and they want to keep the others more family oriented?

To me, 'European Vacation' is a crude film with perverted humour, nudity and lots of swearing, and I would not have it any other way.  If you've never seen this film before, don't let your first experience be a edited network TV airing.  Get yourself the DVD, or if you can, an original VHS copy from 1985 8)

Wal-Mart has a double DVD of the original Vacation and European Vacation.  It doesn't seem to be cut.

Eurpopean Vacation was a big disappointment to me. I was expecting a funnier film (like the two films before it) ... but it missed badly for me. Luckily Eric Idle was in it and his scenes made me laugh (at the time).

If the crudity has been cut from that film it leaves precious little to recommend it IMO.  :-\\ I too remember the bathroom nudity scene (with Ellen) and wondered where it went!  :o

You're absolutely right, Whistledog.  I too recall seeing at least a couple of the deleted scenes you mention, but as you say they are not included the Vacation Collection boxed set.

I think you're spot on in your logic; Christmas Vacation seems to have been the main reason why these scenes were taken out of the bundled collections.

Yes, European Vacation is probably the joint weakest in the series with Vegas (and I don't count the fifth as it's a insult) but it's well worth watching nonetheless.  There were a few reasons why it didn't come off for me -  the children didn't seem to be as entertaining as Dana Barron and Anthony Michael Hall in the original Vacation; in particular Audrey was very annoying.  The script bordered on the ridiculous and made the film rather unrealistic, whereas the original reached out a lot more to virtually every middle aged Father with children.  And Eric Idles cameos were irritating rather than funny.

Eurpopean Vacation was a big disappointment to me. I was expecting a funnier film (like the two films before it) ... but it missed badly for me. Luckily Eric Idle was in it and his scenes made me laugh (at the time).

If the crudity has been cut from that film it leaves precious little to recommend it IMO.  :-\\ I too remember the bathroom nudity scene (with Ellen) and wondered where it went!  :o



It lacked Cousin Eddie. :P

It lacked Cousin Eddie. :P
oh yeah..good observation  8)  cousin Eddie is the best character


(To date), there are 5 Vacation movies (yes 5), and if you saw 'European Vacation', you know it was the raunchiest one of them all.  they air it on TV, they edit alot of the scenes like crazy, which is understandable and standard in most films like this, but some DVD/VHS copies have editing in them, which has over the years confused me into what scenes actually made up the original theatrical release ...

- When Clark films Ellen singing 'Big Spender" in the bathroom, she opens her Towel, and only Clark can see the good stuff.  Yet, when I saw this film as a kid, there was a scene in there where we did see Ellen naked.  I once owned 4 copies of this film on VHS (all that had different packaging) to see if this scene was in there, and it wasn't.  It's not in the regular DVD release, the 'Vacation/European Vacation' Comedy favouites double disc, or the one that comes in the Vacation Box set, and it's not in the re-packaged '4 Film Favourites Vacation Collection'.  Where did this scene go?

- When Clark is chasing the Thief, he blows a tire.  His mouth reads the F-bomb, but his voice says "Darn!".  They did this for TV, but also edited it into the VHS/DVD versions.  Why would they bleep out the F-Bomb, when there are still several scenes with nudity (That German girl Rusty is making out with, and those dancers at the Roman night club)

- When they eat at that outside Café in France, that waiter is saying all these rude things because he knows they don't understand.  One of the copies I used to have, had all the swears edited out, but the DVD copy I have, all the swears were there.

- When Rusty is kissing that German girl, she opens her top and bears her breasts.  During filming, they re-shot that scene so she is wearing a bra (so they would be able to air it on network TV), yet on one of the copies I had, she was wearing the bra.

I am starting to wonder if they edited/removed all these thigns from the DVD release because 'Christmas Vacation' became a holiday classic, and they want to keep the others more family oriented?

To me, 'European Vacation' is a crude film with perverted humour, nudity and lots of swearing, and I would not have it any other way.  If you've never seen this film before, don't let your first experience be a edited network TV airing.  Get yourself the DVD, or if you can, an original VHS copy from 1985 8)
Jason, you are definitely on the right road to achieving MAP status and you aren't even middle aged  ;D
Ellen does have a great rack.

I hate how there are different actors playing Rusty and Audrey in every movie and they seem to get younger  :o

You're absolutely right, Whistledog.  I too recall seeing at least a couple of the deleted scenes you mention, but as you say they are not included the Vacation Collection boxed set.

I think you're spot on in your logic; Christmas Vacation seems to have been the main reason why these scenes were taken out of the bundled collections.

Yes, European Vacation is probably the joint weakest in the series with Vegas (and I don't count the fifth as it's a insult) but it's well worth watching nonetheless.  There were a few reasons why it didn't come off for me -  the children didn't seem to be as entertaining as Dana Barron and Anthony Michael Hall in the original Vacation; in particular Audrey was very annoying.  The script bordered on the ridiculous and made the film rather unrealistic, whereas the original reached out a lot more to virtually every middle aged Father with children.  And Eric Idles cameos were irritating rather than funny.




The original National Lampoon's Vacation was based on John Hughes' short story "Vacation '58," which NatLamp ran in 1979 (I think it was '79).  They just updated the screenplay to the early '80s and made up Roy Walley and Walley World, for obvious legal reasons.  In the original story, Clark Griswold shoots Walt Disney in the leg and goes to jail, so they had to change that ending to satisfy the Hollywood happy ending requirement.  What I remembered most vividly about the original story, which I must have read when I was ten (that's right, when the other kids were reading Ranger Rick's and Boy's Life, I was reading NatLamp, that's why I'm such a sick f**k), is Dinky the dog getting dragged behind the car, so I was glad they left that bit in.  Basically, the original story was a rough outline of the screenplay, but it had that perverse cynicism that made NatLamp so famous in the '70s.  The sequels made Clark a well-meaning goof and lacked the black comedy of the original.  They did get Chase, D'Angelo, and Quaid to return for the sequels, but Anthony Michael Hall and Imogene Coca were essential to what made the original Vacation so funny. 

Yeah, the kids in EV were crummy actors.  I won't speak ill of the dead (RIP Dana Hill), but there's a reason why you never saw Jason Lively in anything else.  He sucked.  BFF is right.  There was more titty in the original EV release.  I saw it in the original run in '85, and for me, that was its only redeeming quality.  That, and Eric Idle!
;)

BTW, the "Hot Wet Wife" joke came from yet another John Hughes NatLamp feature about a couple that does just that with a 1978 home video cam, and the punchline was:  "We better erase this before some asshole like Hughes gets his hands on it!"

The original National Lampoon's Vacation was based on John Hughes' short story "Vacation '58," which NatLamp ran in 1979 (I think it was '79).  They just updated the screenplay to the early '80s and made up Roy Walley and Walley World, for obvious legal reasons.  In the original story, Clark Griswold shoots Walt Disney in the leg and goes to jail, so they had to change that ending to satisfy the Hollywood happy ending requirement.  What I remembered most vividly about the original story, which I must have read when I was ten (that's right, when the other kids were reading Ranger Rick's and Boy's Life, I was reading NatLamp, that's why I'm such a sick f**k), is Dinky the dog getting dragged behind the car, so I was glad they left that bit in.  Basically, the original story was a rough outline of the screenplay, but it had that perverse cynicism that made NatLamp so famous in the '70s. 

Yeah, the kids in EV were crummy actors.  I won't speak ill of the dead (RIP Dana Hill), but there's a reason why you never saw Jason Lively in anything else.  He sucked.  BFF is right.  There was more titty in the original EV release.  I saw it in the original run in '85, and for me, that was its only redeeming quality.  That, and Eric Idle!
;)

BTW, the "Hot Wet Wife" joke came from yet another John Hughes NatLamp feature about a couple that does just that with a 1978 home video cam, and the punchline was:  "We better erase this before some asshole like Hughes gets his hands on it!"

You pretty much nailed it Max.

I too was one of the freaky kids that went from Mad, to Cracked, to Crazy (anyone remember that magazine?) to NatLap pretty quickly in my early teens, by the early 80's my newest subscription copy of Lampoon went missing for a least two days (i.e. my mom, who publicly berated me for reading such "trash", stole it for her own enjoyment) but I never said a word. :-X

The first movie was a good rendition of a original NatLamp story, but just like real life, both the magazine and the Vacation series of films went downhill pretty fast after the mid 80's (once Tim Matheson took over the reigns)...a lot of the reason the later Vaction films turned out the way the did was to appeal to a larger, more mainstream market, which was NEVER what National Lampoon was about to begin with...man could I go for a good set of Foto Funnies or reading some letters to the editor right now. *sigh*
There are so many great stories (the mop man and NY taxi driver series for one) from that magazine that will probably never see the light of day. :-\\

I won't speak ill of the dead (RIP Dana Hill)

I had no idea she had passed away!   :(

Have some Karma  ;)

I had no idea she had passed away!   :(

Have some Karma  ;)


Thanks.

It's easy to get the Danas mixed up.  Dana Barron (b. 1966) was the original Audrey Griswold, who remains a moderately successful actress.  She even got to reprise the role of Audrey for the "Cousin Eddie" TV movie, which I never saw.  Dana Hill (1964-1996) played Audrey in "European Vacation," and was also a successful actress.  That is, like Barron, she never became a huge celebrity the way Anthony Michael Hall did, but she got more roles than 99% of aspiring actors in Hollywood.  She also did a lot of voice work, most notably as the original "Charles" on one of my favorite animated series "Duckman."  Charles was one of Duckman's conjoined twin sons, Charles and Mambo.  Hill died of complications from diabetes at the age of 32.  She was actually a talented actress (unlike Jason Lively).  It would seem like "European Vacation" would have been a better movie even without comparing it to the original "Vacation."  John Hughes did write and Amy Heckerling (whose previous directing credits included "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Johnny Dangerously") did direct it.  Add Chevy Chase and Beverly D'Angelo, what 20-year-old actress is going to turn down the offer?

You pretty much nailed it Max.

I too was one of the freaky kids that went from Mad, to Cracked, to Crazy (anyone remember that magazine?) to NatLap pretty quickly in my early teens, by the early 80's my newest subscription copy of Lampoon went missing for a least two days (i.e. my mom, who publicly berated me for reading such "trash", stole it for her own enjoyment) but I never said a word. :-X

The first movie was a good rendition of a original NatLamp story, but just like real life, both the magazine and the Vacation series of films went downhill pretty fast after the mid 80's (once Tim Matheson took over the reigns)...a lot of the reason the later Vaction films turned out the way the did was to appeal to a larger, more mainstream market, which was NEVER what National Lampoon was about to begin with...man could I go for a good set of Foto Funnies or reading some letters to the editor right now. *sigh*
There are so many great stories (the mop man and NY taxi driver series for one) from that magazine that will probably never see the light of day. :-\\


NatLamp evolved out of the Harvard Lampoon, which is still an institution today.  NatLamp's short-lived status, IMO, is that it was a seventies-oriented phenomenon that relied on a few talented writers and cartoonists (John Hughes, P.J. O'Rourke, Doug Kenney, Chris Miller, Charles Beard, Robert Hoffman, Gahan Wilson, B.K. Taylor, Shary Flanniken, etc.) who either reached their creative peak in their twenties or went on to bigger and better things, such as John Hughes becoming an influential Hollywood writer/director or P.J. O'Rourke becoming an eminent political satirist and libertarian commentator.  Cartoonists such as Gahan Wilson and Sam Gross were regularly published in magazines such as The New Yorker, Playboy, and Collier's.  They didn't need National Lampoon.  However, Wilson's "Nuts" comic strip was one of the best features NatLamp ran, and I suspect it influenced the creators of "South Park." 

Following the sexual revolution and the liberalization of American media in the 1960s, there was a sense of freedom -- we can say what we couldn't say before, so let's say it!  However, when the staples of your humor the shock values of raunch, ethnic jokes, homosexuality, and drugs, it gets tired quickly.  NatLamp also played well with people like my dad who believed in the values of sixties counterculture, but were increasingly disillusioned post-Watergate.  P.J. O'Rourke especially liked to roast both the repressive establishment my father grew up with AND the counterculture which collapsed under its own naivete.  The problem was the central message (which many readers didn't get) was aimed at a unique time for a unique class of people:  Embittered Ivy League-educated post-hippies. My father was one of those.  A deeper sophistication was the engine that drove the humor which made the manifest misogyny and racist jokes palatable.  Without that certain je ne sais quoi you ended up with outright pornography, such as Hustler, or the insipid spoofing found in Mad rip-offs, such as Crazy and Cracked. 

The economy also changed in the late seventies. We will never see the halcyon days of the post-WWII boom again.  When they hit middle age, my parents' generation had less money, less leisure time, and more worries of their own.  Smoking pot and poking fun at the rest of the world lost its charm.  In other words they all had to grow up at long last.

Thus NatLamp lost its writers, its readership, and its pop culture relevance after peaking with "Animal House" in 1978.  When I got old enough to understand enough of the jokes to make NatLamp funny, it was declining fast.  Incidentally, my values are not the same as my parents.  I would not have exposed my kids to NatLamp, not because of the nudity, but because of the misogynistic and racist bent of so many of the jokes.  The precipitous drop-off of NatLamp was 1982.  That's when the "O.C. and Stiggs" mentality took the whole thing over.  It wasn't really parody or satire anymore, it was just raunch without redemption. 

NatLamp failed with Generation X because irreverence doesn't work when you were not asked to revere anything in the first place.  It's the difference between Monty Python and "South Park."  National Lampoon dwindled to six pathetic issues a year before disappearing completely.

So that's why the "Vacation" franchise doesn't work.  The first one had its roots in actual parody of middle class American life.  The rest are just screwball comedies about the goofy Griswold family sweetened by John Hughes' made-for-Hollywood sentimentality. 

Dana Barron (b. 1966) was the original Audrey Griswold, who remains a moderately successful actress.  She even got to reprise the role of Audrey for the "Cousin Eddie" TV movie, which I never saw.

Nobody saw it, so you're not alone lol

Jas - you have now made me want to watch the movie again! I have all 5 of them, but must admit that I haven't watched Christmas Vacation 2 - as I fear that it is riddled with nothing but toilet humour and it will make me like the series less.

I guess I am going to go watch EV tonight ;D

As a matter of fact - I might just live blog it too! ;)

And so I did!

http://www.inthe00s.com/index.php?topic=37904.msg2324485#msg2324485

Seems I have a version that was released before all the family friendly crap!
The only thing that was edited was the tire blow out F-bomb on my dvd! 8)

Favorite lines.  They're in Germany looking for their relatives' house on the street:

Clark:  What are we looking for?
Audrey: Sex, daddy!
Clark: That'll do, Audrey.
Rusty: Dad, that's German for six.

;D

Favorite lines.  They're in Germany looking for their relatives' house on the street:

Clark:  What are we looking for?
Audrey: Sex, daddy!
Clark: That'll do, Audrey.
Rusty: Dad, that's German for six.
;D


Too funny!!  ;D

In the French restaurant:

Rusty: Dad, Dad...I think he's gonna pork her!
Clark:  He's not going to pork her Russ.
Rusty: He is so ,Dad!
Clark:  He may pork her Russ....

Favorite lines.  They're in Germany looking for their relatives' house on the street:

Clark:  What are we looking for?
Audrey: Sex, daddy!
Clark: That'll do, Audrey.
Rusty: Dad, that's German for six.

;D


Or when he goes to that door:  "Gutentach, my family and I are looking for sex"

The part that always kills me the most was when they get to Rome, and Clark bounces off that hard bed, so to cover why he's on the floor, he opens the desk drawer and says "Just looking for the Bible.  There it is!"


Too funny!!  ;D

In the French restaurant:

Rusty: Dad, Dad...I think he's gonna pork her!
Clark:  He's not going to pork her Russ.
Rusty: He is so ,Dad!
Clark:  He may pork her Russ....


Clark:  European standards of public behaviour are very different than ours
Rusty:  But they're from Akron

Or when he goes to that door:  "Gutentach, my family and I are looking for sex"


And the old German guy indignantly yells something like: Sie Schwein!!!
and slams the door in their faces!
:D

(Driving in England, Clark's mad at Audrey for running up a $200 phone bill talking to her boyfriend)

Ellen:  Your father didn't mean what he said.
Audrey (crying): Yes he DID!
Ellen: No, your father is no going to cut Jack's balls off.