National Lampoon's Vacation

Clark Griswold loads his family into a car to drive to Wally World and everything breaks along the way. John Hughes wrote the first version as a short story, Vacation '58, during the 1979 Chicago blizzard. It ran in National Lampoon that September and Warner Bros optioned it almost immediately. The ending everyone knows is not the one they shot first. The original, in which the Griswolds take Roy Walley hostage, died with test audiences, and a new finale featuring John Candy was filmed months later. That is why Anthony Michael Hall is visibly taller in the last scene than in the rest of the film. The car is its own joke. The Wagon Queen Family Truckster was built on a 1979 Ford LTD Country Squire in metallic pea green, with fake wood panelling decals, eight headlights including an inverted pair, and a bin-liner airbag. Warner had it designed to be ugly on purpose. Made for 15 million dollars, it took 61.4 million domestically and opened at number one. Who it is for: fans of the eighties road comedy and of Chevy Chase's ruinous father. Who it is not for: anyone who would rather not meet several jokes that have aged badly.