The Intruder (1961)

(aka "Shame", "I Hate Your Guts," and "The Stranger")

"This was - and remains to this day - the greatest disappointment in my career."
- Roger Corman on the commercial failure of "The Intruder"

Sandwiched somewhere in between his B-movie monster and horror flicks, somewhere around the times he began working on adapting Edgar Allen Poe works for film, Roger Corman made this masterpiece. "The Intruder," which had several awful and misleading alternate titles, is no less than the definitive film on race relations made prior to the civil unrest of the late 60's. In it, William Shatner (pre "Star Trek") plays a charismatic and overly dramatic Pied Piper who comes to a small southern town during it's initial phases of desegregation. As a sort of anti-Music Man, a perverted Harold Hill, Shatner  rallies the white, southern, townspeople into a frenzy of bigotry and racism that leads to the appearance of the Ku Klux Klan and several violent incidents.

It is compelling viewing, whether seen now in the context of a period piece or not. Shatner, dressed always in a white suit, is a shimmering black and white bedazzler. The film always looks wonderful and Corman films the piece like a pseudo-documentary, giving it a feeling of realism and artistry which combines to make all that happens seem important and paramount. It's, quite simply put, a visual masterpiece.

The film may work, now, as a history lesson. Who could believe that such times ever existed? Corman has it all here. The humble and respectable black people, the silly and ignorant white people who don't understand change and often go along with the crowd, the one white man willing to stand up for what he believes is right - even if it means taking on the whole town, the cross burnings, the black children mocked and confronted as they enter the formerly all-white school, and most profoundly of all, the stereotypical and subconscious fear that, at one time, acted as the bedrock for almost all racism in America: The fear that black men would rape white women given any opportunity. This one idea laid waste any focus on reality and subjugated all black people to the level of animals. "The Intruder" faces this problem head- on and comes out with a shining hopefulness that is not trite, that does not ring false. In 1961, "The Intruder" surely left it's audience asking many more questions than it ever answers - about who they were, what they believed, why the believed it, and how they might face it. No wonder the film was a critical success and a financial disaster. Corman is truly ages ahead of his time here. It would be some 15 year later, before "Roots" was shown on television and white America was ready to face the past and come to grips with the notion that things truly must change. Now, "The Intruder" is a valuable history lesson. It shows us exactly how fear and hatred and bigotry spread. In 1999, this is still as relevant as it ever was. We can still use the film to show how bigotry against black people is spread - But it also works for Jews, gays, Arabs, and any other minority group that is ostracized because they are different. This isn't just a film about racism, it's a film about power and corruption, about those who would pervert hatred for their own gain. This is still an important lesson for America. This film should be shown every year, in every school, in every state, in every town in America.

Note: Written by Charles Beaumont, who also wrote "The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao" among other films. Beaumont's only film appearance came here as Harley Paton.

Filmed in black and white in Missouri and Mississippi on a budget of $80,000.

Corman experienced some opposition to the film, both from production companies and from the local townspeople once filming began. The shots in the finale, on a schoolyard swing, were actually filmed in 3 different locations due to local police interference.

Co-produced by Corman's brother, Gene.

Report Card

Script: A

Acting: A

Cinematography\Lighting: A+

Special Effects\Make Up: A+

Music: D

Final Grade: A