The makers of the hit Borat movie by the British comedian, Sacha Baron Cohen, have been sued by two American college students who claim they were duped into taking part in the film.

In papers served at a court in Santa Monica, Los Angeles, the two plaintiffs, identified as John Doe I and John Doe II, said that they "have suffered and will continue to suffer humiliation, mental anguish, and emotional and physical distress, loss of reputation, goodwill and standing in the community" after being shown drinking with Borat Sagdiyev, a fictional Kazakhstani television reporter, in a camper van.

In the scene, three young men, identified in the film as students from the Chi Psi fraternity of the University of South Carolina, get drunk with Borat, watch a sex video that purports to show Pamela Anderson, the American TV star, and make disparaging remarks about slavery, women and ethnic minorities.

Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is top of the box office charts in America, Germany and the UK after being released this month.

It has enjoyed the most successful movie release ever in the US for a film showing at fewer than 1,100 cinemas.

According to Box Office Mojo, a database of cinema release statistics, its haul of $26.5 million surpassed that of Fahrenheit 9/11, the last film publicised and released in a similar way. Next week, the film will be shown at more than 2,500 screens.

But its enormous success and publicity have made unknowing victims of Baron Cohen laughing stocks across America.

Several people featured in the film, including Linda Stein, an artist and veteran feminist from New York, a car salesman called Jim Sell and Pat Haggerty, a "humour" coach from Washington, have complained that members of the production team tricked them into thinking that the crew were from Belarus, not Kazakhstan, and that they were hurried into signing confusing consent forms thick with legalese.

Ms Stein has written of her experience, saying she was left "confused and sad" after the filming. "Maybe it's his way of gaining power over the childhood sting of religious animosity or the feelings of inferiority from a woman’s beating him at Scrabble," she wrote in a local New York newspaper.

Organisers of a rodeo in Virginia, whose producer, Bobby Rowe, is shown in the film making homophobic and anti-Islamic remarks, have joked about teaming up with the Kazakhstani Embassy in Washington to burn an effigy of Borat.

In the lawsuit filed by the college students, the plaintiffs said they were paid $200, promised that the film would not be shown in America and that they would not be clearly identified.

The suit claims that the three students, one of whom was under the legal drinking age of 21, were plied with drinks and "well under the influence of alcohol before they signed the (consent) Agreement".

"Believing the film would not be viewed in the United States and at the encouragement of Defendants, Plaintiffs engaged in behaviour that they otherwise would not have engaged in," the suit claims, according to copies of the documents posted on the website TMZ.

One of the three students -- it is not known whether he was one of the plaintiffs -- has described the experience on the record. David Corcoran told the men's magazine, FHM: "My first thought was, 'What if my mom finds out?'"

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