John Belushi headlined less than a half-dozen movies during his short career.
He had smaller roles in a handful of films leading up to his breakthrough performance in 1978’s National Lampoon’s Animal House. Some – like the Jack Nicholson-directed 1978 western Goin’ South and the same year’s Beatles satire The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash – weren’t entirely insignificant, but they’re basically cameos on his path to bigger things.
And even when he reached name-above-the-title status, the results weren’t always stellar, as the below list of John Belushi Movies Ranked Worst to Best shows.
Still, he made the most of his limited time on the big screen, just as he did when he became one of Saturday Night Live‘s breakout stars during the show’s first four seasons.
And for the most part, his five starring movies featured him in roles that didn’t always rely on the close-to-real-life persona he exemplified in Animal House. Along the way, he was also cast as a gonzo World War II fighter pilot, a straight man in a dark comedy and an out-of-his-depth journalist in a rom-com.
Still, Belushi was at his best playing characters who grabbed inspiration from his personal tastes – whether it’s the hard-partying John Blutarsky from Animal House or the R&B-loving bad boy Joliet Jake in The Blues Brothers. Saturday Night Live was his playground, and many of his best screen moments can be found there, but he also carved out a brief film legacy, which we outline below in our list of John Belushi Movies Ranked Worst to Best.
