Themes: Culture Clash, Race Relations, Class Differences
Main Cast: William Shatner, Frank Maxwell, Beverly Lunsford, Robert Emhardt, Jeanne Cooper
Release Year: 1961
Country: US
Run Time: 84 minutes
Plot
The Intruder was not only Roger Corman's most daring and unusual film, but a unique movie in the history of cinema, as one of the few theatrical feature films to deal with school desegregation in the South. William Shatner gives the performance of a lifetime as Adam Cramer, a sly, rabble-rousing racist who travels the South in the wake of the Supreme Court's Brown vs. Board of Education decision, fomenting protests and riots and organizing white citizens groups with himself at their head. By turns quietly soft-spoken and boldly charismatic, Cramer arrives in a small town where the local white high school is about to get its first black students and manipulates the men, women, and students around him, quietly taking control of the debate and the agenda, and turning a tense situation into a riot. He's opposed by Frank Maxwell, playing a local newspaper editor who pays a terrible price for his thoughtful and reasonable nature, Jeanne Cooper as a woman whom he tried to seduce, and Leo V. Gordon (in a rare benevolent role) as her husband, a working man without a lot of patience for rabble-rousers. In the end, after maiming one man and nearly killing another, Cramer is stopped when he is exposed for what he is -- weak and pathetic when confronted directly. The film was shot on-location in the South despite the active opposition of local authorities and threats from members of the Ku Klux Klan, and once finished, Corman discovered that there was hardly a theater anywhere in America that was willing to play it, because the movie's subject was so incendiary. Thus, The Intruder became just about the only movie Corman ever made that lost money, and was much more widely seen in Europe, where it was greeted simply as a bold, unusual, and well-made film. For reasons not entirely clear, The Intruder turned up on various "public domain" lists in the early '80s and showed up on different cable channels specializing in such fare, but it was never actually out-of-copyright, and finally surfaced in an authorized DVD edition in April of 2001. In addition to future television star Shatner, the cast includes the future soap opera star Jeanne Cooper. Charles Beaumont, a regular contributor to The Twilight Zone, among other anthology series, and whose novel was the source for the film, portrays the school principal. William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson, best-known as the authors of the novel Logan's Run, also play small roles. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Review
Five years before becoming the voice of intergalactic understanding as Star Trek's Captain Kirk, William Shatner delivered the performance of a lifetime as a bigoted drifter fanning the flames of segregation in 1961's The Intruder. Produced and directed by B-movie king Roger Corman, The Intruder was one of the filmmaker's rare projects with a serious message and, perhaps not coincidentally, one of his few films that lost money. At a sensitive time in the civil rights movement, the producer had difficulty finding movie houses that would show the film. Despite its incendiary nature, Corman was quite proud of the movie, and rightly so. It stands as one of the most important pictures from his early-1960s output, and one of the best films that he ever directed. It also gives the world a chance to see Shatner as they've never seen him before. Post-Trek, the actor would reunite with Corman for the 1974 cult favorite, Big Bad Mama. ~ Brendon Hanley, All Movie Guide
Leo Gordon - Sam Griffin; Charles Barnes - Joey Green; Charles Beaumont - Harley Paton; Katherine Smith - Ruth McDaniel; George Clayton Johnson - Phil West; William F. Nolan - Bart Carey; Oceo Ritch - Jack Allardyce; Phoebe Row - Mrs. Lambert
The Intruder is a 1962Americanfilm directed by Roger Corman, after a novel by Charles Beaumont, starring William Shatner. Also called Shame in US release, and The Stranger in the UK release. The story depicts the machinations of a racist named Adam Cramer (portrayed by Shatner), who arrives in the fictitious small southern town of Caxton in order to incite townspeople to racial violence against the town's black minority and court-ordered school integration.
The film was shot in black and white on location in Missouri. The production was banned in East Prairie and Charleston (two towns in Mississippi County, Missouri) because the local people objected to the film's portrayal of racism and segregation. Although it only had a budget of $80,000, the film lost money, as the major studios had predicted.[1]
Plot
The introduction to Cramer is a simple shot of him stepping off a bus, carrying only a light suitcase, with an attitude of innate confidence, a confidence which throughout the film never diminishes. On an interpersonal level, starting with the first character Cramer meets, the audience sees he is a charmer, but it is soon revealed that the character uses this charm quite professionally, in furtherance of a hard, cunning political effort to incite Caxton's existing racial tension into violence.
At the same time, Cramer seeks personal pleasure with every interaction. Cramer's racist, incendiary politics are thereby proven inseparable from his pleasure. By manipulating many of Caxton's citizens on a personal level, Cramer implements a strategic plan for incite violent action, which culminates in a lynch mob, after Cramer manipulates a teenager into making a false claim of interracial rape. A rational, internally secure character named Tom McDaniel, played easily by veteran actor Frank Maxwell[2] is willing to stand up against both Cramer and the townspeople's hatred toward their black neighbors.
While staying in a motel, Cramer meets salesman Sam Griffin and his wife. While Griffin is away on business, Cramer seduces Griffin's wife, Vi. Upon returning, Sam Griffin discovers his wife has left and confronts Cramer. Accurately assessing Cramer's nature during a conversation in Cramer's hotel room while living next to Cramer in the hotel, he goes on in the movie to break up the mob using his personal skills and natural presence. Rather than approach Cramer's sociopathy violently, or take revenge for Cramer's seduction of Griffin's depressed wife, Griffin, without animosity, offers Cramer bus fare out of town. This act preserves the film's focus on political manipulation of racism rather than getting payback for evildoing.
