 Jocko De Paris (Ben Gazzara), cadet leader in a Southern military academy, so manipulates events that George Avery, Jr. (Geoffrey Horne), son of the school s executive officer, is found drunk and expelled. Through various pressures, Jocko silences such involuntary accomplices as his roommate Harold Koble (Pat Hingle), football star Roger Gatt (James Olson)and freshmen Robert Marquales (George Peppard) and Maynard Simmons (Arthur Storch), a girl-fearing cadet whom Jocko terrorizes into dating Rosebud (Julie Wilson), a town girl.