Year: 1977
Duration: 01:39:05
Actors: Angela Aber, Scott Brown, Colleen Casey
Language: English
Country: USA
Also known as: Veljeskunta, Campus story, Oh Brotherhood, Die College-Gang
Description: The thing that makes FRAT ROW an interesting grace note in the cinema canon, even if it turned out to be a fairly unknown/forgotten one, is that it began life as a PhD thesis in the film program at USC and finished up being a remarkably professional movie. Following in the spirit of Rooney/Garland’s old standby “let’s put on a show”, 324 students banded together with the idea “let’s make a movie”. Despite having only six professional actors in the cast (including Scott Newman, son of Paul, who OD’d before the film was released), the result wasn’t some well-intentioned but undernourished movie, but polished in every degree – enough to get Paramount interested enough in picking it up for limited distribution.
Using a university campus as the setting of the story was a shrewd enough way to get the film made, although the film-makers were ambitious enough to set it in the 50s. To quote from the film’s advertising: They didn’t smoke grass. They didn’t take the pill. They didn’t do their own thing. They went to college in the Fifties. They pledged fraternities. They celebrated Hell Week. They were the buttoned-down, bottled-up generation. And sometimes they exploded.
Yes, those straight-arrow 50s kids figured they were so cleancut that they were able to convince themselves there was nothing wrong in dishing out systematic abuse and humiliation during Pledge Week when wanna-be frats underwent trial by hazing. One of the pledges decides that it’s just not right and so begins a battle of oneupmanship throughout the film of hazer-vs-hazed until, of course, it goes too far.
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