The Intruder (1962 film)

For other uses of "Intruder", see Intruder (disambiguation).

The Intruder
File:The Intruder (1962 film).jpg
Directed by	Roger Corman
Written by	Charles Beaumont
Produced by	Gene Corman Roger Corman
Starring	William Shatner Frank Maxwell Jeanne Cooper Beverly Lunsford Robert Emhardt Charles Beaumont
Cinematography	Taylor Byars
Edited by	Ronald Sinclair
Music by	Herman Stein
Distributed by	Pathé-America Distrib.Co.
Release date	1962
Running time	84 minutes
Country	USA
Language	English
Budget	$80,000

The Intruder is a 1962 American film 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 southeast Missouri. Some of the production took place in East Prairie and Charleston (two towns in Mississippi County, Missouri). Before it was finished, local people objected to the film's portrayal of racism and segregation. Parts of the film were later filmed in Sikeston, Missouri. Although it only had a budget of $80,000, until recently it was the only Corman film to ever lose money. $6,000 paid by the recent documentary "Charles Beaumont: The Twilight Zone’s Magic Man" finally put it in the black.

The film is also known under its reissue titles as I Hate Your Guts! and Shame.

Plot

The introduction to Cramer is a simple shot of him stepping off a bus, carrying only a light suitcase, with innate confidence, a confidence which remains with him. 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 to incite violent action, which culminates in a way even more violent than he predicted.

Following an inflammatory speech by Cramer in front of the town hall, the first act of open violence is when the Ku Klux Klan, headed by Cramer, burns a cross in the black district, followed by the harassment and near-lynching of a black driver and his family. It is then that a rational, internally secure character named Tom McDaniel, played by veteran actor Frank Maxwell realizes he is willing to stand up against both Cramer and the townspeople's hatred toward their black neighbors -- this costs him a severe beating by his white neighbors, resulting in concussion and the loss of one eye. Realizing his grip on the mob may be fading, Cramer shrewdly manipulates McDaniel's teenage daughter (whom he had also seduced earlier in the movie) into making a false claim of interracial rape, which causes a mob to gather around the Caxton high school.

A parallel plot line has developed meanwhile, around Cramer's next-door neighbors at the motel, salesman Sam Griffin and his emotionally unstable wife, Vi, whom Cramer seduces while Griffin is away on business. Upon returning, Sam discovers his wife has left and confronts Cramer. Accurately assessing Cramer's nature during the ensuing confrontation, he goes on to break up the high school mob using his personal skills and natural presence, as well as a true confession by McDaniel's daughter. Rather than approach Cramer's sociopathy violently, or take revenge for Cramer's seduction of Griffin's wife, Griffin, without animosity, offers Cramer bus fare out of town.

Assessment

The plot development was unusually mature and complex for its time, contrasting with the often patronizing approaches of other films of the 1950s and 1960s to the subject of race. The final act centering on Sam Griffin focuses on political manipulation of racism rather than simply providing payback for Cramer's evil acts, concluding with neither a happy ending nor an equally artificial reverse. The same evenhandedness informs Beaumont's construction of character; the only two rational and mature protagonists are Tom McDaniel and Griffin, respectively a moderate racist and a boisterous, overbearing man partly at fault for his wife's clinical depression.

External links

• The Intruder at IMDb
• Shame is available for free viewing and download at the Internet Archive
• The Intruder at AllMovie
• Original soundtrack album released by Monstrous Movie Music