For Men Only

Paul Henreid is a professor at a small, fraternity-driven college. When the hazing at one of the frats becomes manslaughter, there's a move to cover it up as a simple accident. but Henreid investigates, and gets into trouble for the effort.

It's Henreid's first credited directorial effort -- he had done uncredited work on HOLLOW TRIUMPH -- as well as starring and producing, and he offers a low-key but competent effort. Russell Johnson is here in his first film appearance as the head of the deadly fraternity, and Vera Miles also has her film debut.

"For Men Only" is a film designed to expose the excesses and cruelties of fraternity hazings. It's apparently based on a real incident where a fraternity informed its pledges they needed to kill a dog to join! A nice group of 'kids', huh?!

Tod is trying to join a fraternity at Wake College. However, the leader of the fraternity rush program, Ky Walker (Russell Johnson...the Professor from "Gilligan's Island"), is a read sadist and has made it his job to break Tod...though so far, Tod has accepted Ky's torments without complaint. However, on initiation night, Ky tells Tod to murder a puppy...and Tod naturally refuses and goes to the faculty about this. But the police and faculty mostly ignore the accusation...particularly when the frat brothers uniformly lie about the puppy killing. What's next for Tod? Well, it only gets worse...yes worse than just a dead puppy! And, it also gets pretty bad for a professor who tries to stand up against this evil fraternity system.

This is an interesting film because one of the only faculty members who believes Beanie is played by Paul Henreid...who also directed and produced the film. He's excellent in all these roles and the movie is exceptional considering it's a cast of mostly unknowns aside from Henreid (Johnson was in his first film...so he, too, was an unknown at the time).

So is it worth seeing? Of course. It makes a strong statement economically and is never dull nor schmaltzy.

This was Paul Henreid's debut as a director, and more films would follow. Vera Miles makes her debut as one of his students and as the girl friend of the real protagonist, Robert Sherman as Tod Palmer, the student who gets harassed to death. The film and story exposes a problem of rather universal and omnipresent actuality, as there are bullies everywhere, who unfortunately tend to get organised, hiding behind authorities and groups and riding high on group mentalities. The "fraternity" here gives you associations to mobs like Ku Klux Klan and mafia syndicates, and boys like this could very well develop into bosses for such kinds of fraternities. We find the same problem in for instance English public schools and Swedish boarding schools (like in Jan Guillou's "Evil" (2003). Paul Henreid had never directed before and could not resist the urgency of a matter like this being treated and exposed, as it apparently was common in colleges all over America. It is still an urgent issue probably all over the world, so it could never be enough discussed and brought to light.

Paul Heinreid was moved enough by this script and recent college deaths due to hazing that he produced, starred and directed this B picture. It's surprisingly good, not only for the snapshot of the early 50s, but also for some of the supporting players. This film introduced a gorgeous Vera Miles in her first big role(The Searchers,Psycho and tons of tv work came later) - also Russell Johnson, later in This Island Earth and Gilligan's Island, practicing his sneer. Robert Johnson also debuts, altho he had better claim to fame as a writer for classic tv like Rawhide, The Invaders, Kung Fu and MacGuyver among many others. (I had to look that up here, but I recognize the face). For its time, this was a fairly advanced social picture when the genre wasn't doing well against monsters, Westerns and the 50s gimmicks of 3-D, Cinemascope and the like. It even manages to sneak in some anti-Semitism and homoerotic tension during some of the college "boys" hazing(back when "boys" were in their 20s). Johnson is particularly interested in a hairy,wet barechested Sherman during opening credits, proving to be a sadist in the making thruout. However, Heinreid is clearly 'the star', trying to ease his accent into the dream of 50s suburbia, with a wife in pleated skirts, slippers and martinis. His trademark staring into the corner of the room with honor and morality (aka Casablanca, Now Voyager,etc.)comes into play thruout. In the plot, a young man going thru a grueling hazing balks at the last step, which involves a horrible cruelty to an animal. For this, he is hounded out of school and to his death. Heinreid, the good chemistry professor, finds out the death wasn't accidental and starts digging, unearthing more than his marriage or social position can shoulder. I saw this once on 16MM ,remember many key scenes and would recommend a viewing to recall how much the 50s were hiding and what they couldn't hide. Three and a half to four stars of five. - MDM

I saw this film (at age 21) on its original release and thought it handled its theme (anti-hazing) very well, but its important and strikingly new element for me was that the marital relationship between the Henreid character and his wife had a subtle but pervasive erotic element (a continuous low sizzle) that I'd not previously seen enter any on-screen marital relationship that didn't involve psychosis (In the "Thin Man" films, the closest detective Nick and apartment-wife Nora exhibited to mutual erotic attraction was steady but bland repartee). I've intended to watch "FMO" again, but the DVD remains long on my shelves and still unplayed.