Roger Corman is best known as the producer of low-budget horror movies, including a series of adaptations by Charles Beaumont that he directed of Edgar Allen Poe stories starring Vincent Price, and the camp classics "Bucket of Blood," and "The Little Shop of Horrors." Corman's most acclaimed and serious movie (and the first one that did not immediately turn a profit) was Beaumont's adaptation of his own novel about resistance to desegregation, the 1962 "Intruder" with William Shatner in the title role.

Shatner played Adam Cramer, a northern (albeit not Canadian, as Shatner was) agitator who arrives in a Southern town that has grumpily accepted that desegregation is the law. He sweet-talks the richest man in town, the corpulent Verne Shipman (Robert Emhardt) and mobilizes the riffraff with an oration on the courthouse steps. The first ten Negro (to use the then-current term) students make their way through a howling mob. That night, Cramer organizes a KKK drive-through N-town (the "n-word" abounds in the dialogue) and cross-burning in front of a Negro church. Later that night, it is dynamited, killing its minister.

That is not good publicity and local newspaperman Tom McDaniel undertakes accompanying the student to the second day of school. He is then badly beaten by a white mob and Cramer convinces McDaniel's daughter to  claim attempted rape by the most stalwart of the new students, Joey, non-actor Charles Barnes in a very impressive turn.

In real history, at least one lynching occurred on the square in front of the courthouse used in the movie and the mob demanding Joey is frothing and as scary as anything in any of Corman's horror movies.

Shatner is very impressive as the cynical Messiah, whose libidinousness interferes with his mission of stirring up racial hatred. Shatner embodies  Cramer's the charisma and charm and his Achilles' heel very convincingly. As a neighbor in the local hotel, Leo Gordon is even better.

As with other Hollywood movies about civil rights (Mississippi Burning, Biko, even Amistad) the focus is primarily on white heroes, but "The Intruder" also shows the courage and self-discipline of the Negro students who put their lives on the line. The scene of Joey and Shipman in the school yard is especially riveting.

A half-hour conversation between Shatner and Corman recalls the dangers they felt filming on location in southern Missouri, where feeling like those of the movie mob were alive. Both have interesting stories to tell along with a lot of praise for each other. (And, eventually, the movie turned a profit.)

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD