El intruso

Roger Corman is most famous for making cheap movies that turned in a big profit. As you might expect, therefore, a vast number of these were absolute rubbish that made you wonder how they ever managed to make a penny, let alone a profit. It is highly ironic therefore that The Intruder is both Corman's first non-profit making film, and one of his very best. Most of Corman's films, while at times entertaining and fun to watch, don't have much in terms of substance; but this is not the case with The Intruder - a film which both entertains and makes you think. The film focuses on Adam Cramer - public speaker and devout racist, dedicated to turning small towns across America against the idea of social integration. The courts have ordered the policy, and so Cramer sets out about inspiring hatred to create a mob to put an end to social integration by brute force. All is going well for the man and his hateful agenda, but when events start to escalate, he finds that the mob he has created is stronger than its leader.

I know that this film didn't cost much to make because it was directed by Roger Corman, but if you didn't know that; you'd never have guessed. There are no big stunts in the film, but the production values are surprisingly high and the acting surprisingly good. The Intruder is bolstered by an excellent performance from William Shatner. Corman apparently blamed the poor box office run on Shatner - but I have no idea why! Shatner does a great job of providing a great portrait of his character - suitably slimy, yet obviously cowardly beneath his confidant public persona. Perhaps the best thing about this film is its simplicity. Bigger films such as American History X have attempted to make a point about racism with not as much success as Corman has here. The scenes that show the crowds really getting behind Cramer's words of hatred are poignant indeed, and the conclusion to the tale both makes a point about bigots and provides a suitable conclusion to Adam Cramer's character arc. Overall, The Intruder is one of the best and most though-provoking films on the tentative subject of racism that I have ever seen, and it comes highly recommended to all!

With 100 times the budget ($80K) of Roger Corman's The Intruder, lesser directors have created thousands of films with less than a hundredth of the intelligence, sensitivity, entertainment-value and raw power of this film. Charles Beaumont, the unfortunately short-lived author and screen-writer, was contracted to produce a screenplay from his novel (and appeared in the film as the beleaguered but morally just principal of a newly integrated school), a young but accomplished William Shatner was hired, and a few veteran character actors were brought on board. Most of the actors and crew were locals who, according to Corman, didn't know very much about what they were getting into. The rest is legend.

Corman indulged in a form of guerilla film-making to make a statement that he felt needed to be made. Corman, the cast and the crew were thrown out of two locations, worked under constant threat of physical violence, and wrapped this lean, tight, morality play in a grand total of three weeks. Most of the cast had literally NO acting experience. Does it show? Occasionally - but in the end the odd representations of some of the extras in the mob only adds to the film's realism.

The Intruder is a story which examines the ease with which a charismatic leader with a pernicious all-consuming hunger for power can exploit fear to rally otherwise normal people into irrationality, violence and hatred. William Shatner stars as Adam Cramer, a northern hate-monger who has just arrived in the small southern town of Caxton to sow the seeds of racial violence just as the town has begun to integrate its schools in compliance with federal law. Cramer preaches non-violent resistance, but is unwilling to stand in the way when his followers escalate the issue in their own way. His powerful and dramatic speaking ability and his cunning turn most of the town's white minority against their black neighbors, culminating in his orchestration of a vicious frame-up of an innocent student.

Cramer is, in one way or another, behind almost everything that happens in this film. Yet the film does not permit facile scape-goating of this single sociopath. Rather, it indicts ignorance in general, and racism, hatred and intolerance much more specifically. Amazingly, it does so without exploiting stereotypes of southerners, yankees, blacks, whites, or anybody else. The Intruder deals with its subjects without reducing them to anything that could be wholly represented or analyzed in the hour and half of intense drama the film gives us. Instead, the Intruder leaves its subjects wide-open and raw. If you view this film about once every 6 months, you might just take something different away from it each time.

I do not believe the rumor that Roger Corman has ever, in any way, suggested that William Shatner's performance destroyed this film's box office potential. In interviews, Corman has consistently given Shatner a great deal of praise for his award-winning portrayal of evil incarnate. And rightly so. Shatner is nothing short of incredible in this film. He clearly dedicated everything he had to this film, and it shows. Other noteworthy performances are given by Frank Maxwell, Robert Emhardt and Charles Barnes.

The film is pristinely directed - lean and economically edited, even for Corman. The cinematography is straightforward and clean. And the locations are entirely appropriate - another Corman trademark.

Possibly the best truly low-budget film I have ever seen. Would-be film-makers, even some established big-budget purveyors of modern junk-food-film should learn a great deal from a careful study of the Intruder.

After years of debate, the courts have finally ordered the desegregation of the nation's schools. A small (and fictitious) Missouri town must deal with the issue as black students go to the previously all white school for the first time.

Enter Adam Cramer (Shatner), a representative from Washington of the Patrick Henry Society. He claims to be a social worker, but it turns out that this society is a racist organization opposed to desegregation. Cramer hopes to interfere with the court-ordered policy and begins to stir up the community with fiery rhetoric and bold tactics. Cramer soon discovers that the mob he has helped create is beyond is ability to control.

"The Intruder" is a little known film written by Charles Beaumont (a core writer for "The Twilight Zone" and a screenwriter for many of American International's classic 1960s horror films) and directed by Roger Corman. It shouldn't be little known. This is arguably the best and most important film ever made by Corman and perhaps by Beaumont as well. Shatner puts in a sterling performance as the racist Cramer and the supporting cast, which included both veteran actors and local citizens from the town of Charleston, Missouri (where it was filmed), is also excellent. Corman and Beaumont took on some seriously volatile subject matter and used both tact and intelligence to tell a story and send a message. For those who are more sensitive to racist language or who are caught up with political correctness, "The Intruder" might be somewhat abrasive or uncomfortable to watch. Personally, I think that this would be ideal for viewing in high schools and colleges that are studying the subject of racism and integration in the United States. Regardless, for those seeking a well made, well acted film

Roger Corman's "The Intruder" is both fascinating and frustrating to watch. Fascinating because you suddenly realize what a great and promising "serious" film-maker that was living in the young Corman, and frustrating because the movie was so provocative it scared Corman's investors and was such a financial failure that it discouraged the producer/director from ever trying to make a real serious piece of fiction again.

"The Intruder" is so harrowing, frightfully realistic and effective that had it gained the success and attention it deserved Corman today would be up there with names like Norman Jewison, Sidney Lumet, Milos Forman, John Schlesinger and other great film-makers of his generation!

The atmospheric use of real southern locations just adds to the drama, and the racism portrayed by many of the actors feels almost to close to comfort. One final note: Anyone who still considers William Shatner a grade-b actor should also try and get a hold of this film to witness a fine actor in good form.

Watch this if you can, one of the greatest unsung movies of the 1960's!

The Intruder (1962)

Daring, bare bones, raw, insensitive, necessary, superb. And flawed. And terrific.

It's what a good movie strives to be--saying something, sucking you in, chewing you up, leaving you impressed and interested and glad.

Where to start? Rather than mention the main actor, it's better to say that here is a rare film, a low-budget black and white drama, that deals with racism in the early days of de-segregation directly. It mostly shows the bigoted South--the map on the wall implied Missouri, so it's not even the deep South of Alabama. When ten black children are told by Federal law to attend the white school, the town has largely and bitterly gone along. It's the law. But a troublemaker comes in to stir things up, and we see a caricatured but not so wrong impression of the worst sides of ordinary people who grew up thinking segregation was normal and good.

That actor? William Shatner, of Star Trek legend (beginning in 1966). Here he shows he can pretty much act. I say pretty much as a kind of compliment to the movie makers, especially the big force behind the film, its look and its theme, Roger Corman. Because this is no Brando or Newman coming in to really command the town, the movie, the racial injustice. That would be too impressive, and with Shatner we have something is almost what you picture really happening. The rest of the movie is no documentary, for sure, and so the need to be cinematic and theatrical is met. The cast is a gritty, drawling bunch of regular folk, and my guess is that Southerners didn't appreciate the typecasting. But I've lived in a small Southern town much like this one, and it is not so far from the truth. Simplified for the movie, but the general drift is there.

The themes (segregation, racism, etc.) are clichés, kind of, and a little uncomplicated, but if you think of when the movie came out you can appreciate how it might have resonated then. It's not a masterpiece of slick filmmaking, not at all, but it's a masterpiece in some other sense of high drama, fast editing, and pertinent material. It was shot in several locations in Missouri. To compare them even briefly to the high profile films about race and racism, many of them starring Sidney Poitier, you can see how polite and restrained those films are, and how really afraid they are. This one is above all fearless. It hams, it exaggerates, it uses stereotypes, it ignores human complexity. But it works. Very much. See it.