Entre hommes

Paul Henreid made this disappointing expose movie about fraternity hazing on a college campus, way too tame for its "explosive" subject matter. Happy ending belies the fact that seven decades later the abhorrent practice still occurs.

New faces in the cast include Vera Miles as an innocent heroine and Kathleen Hughes as a sort of junior varsity femme fatale. She is posed sexily in the advertising and marketing of the movie, strictly phony since her role on screen is relatively tame.

As a preachy hero, Henreid is too good to be true, and the severity of the hazing is not graphic enough to qualify for the trashy content one expects for exploitation cinema. A far better, more serious treatment came decades later in "Fraternity Row".

Excellent movie, gives insight into what goes on during fraternity pledges. Greast cast. Thanks for recommendation mike. Make American great again.

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.

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.

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.