Frat House (1998) 1h 00min

A documentary film exploring the darker side of fraternity life. The film was directed by Todd Phillips and Andrew Gurland, and largely filmed at Allentown, Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College; the majority of the film was shot in the house of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, which has since been banned from Muhlenberg. Frat House was originally intended to be shown on the HBO TV channel, but was never aired after receiving allegations that much of the final portion of the film was staged. The sequences concerned involved ‘hazing’, in which aspiring members of the fraternity (known as 'pledges’) are seen undergoing humiliating initiation rites. The allegation is that the pledges who appear on screen were in fact already members of the fraternity: the fraternity chapter was paid $1500 to film the events, and several members were paid $50 each to pretend to be pledges and re-enact things that were rumored to happen during fraternity pledging rituals. The filmmakers signed non-binding forms stating that the school and fraternity names would not be used, and that the events did not reflect the behavior of the fraternity.