The Intruder (1962 film)
| The Intruder | |
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| Directed by | Roger Corman |
| Produced by |
Gene Corman Roger Corman |
| Written by | Charles Beaumont |
| Starring |
William Shatner Frank Maxwell Beverly Lunsford Robert Emhardt Leo Gordon Charles Beaumont Jeanne Cooper |
| Music by | Herman Stein |
| Cinematography | Taylor Byars |
| Edited by | Ronald Sinclair |
| Distributed by | Pathé-America Distrib.Co. |
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Release date
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Running time
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84 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $80,000 |
The Intruder is a 1962 American film directed by Roger Corman, after a 1959 novel by Charles Beaumont, starring William Shatner. 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 white townspeople to racial violence against black townspeople and court-ordered school integration.
The film is also known under its US reissue titles as I Hate Your Guts! and Shame, and The Stranger in the UK release.
In the early 1960s, Adam Cramer arrives in the small Southern town of Caxton with an agenda that soon becomes clear. Caxton's "whites only" high school is about to undergo forced desegregation and admit black students due to a court order, and Cramer, purportedly working on behalf of an organization called The Patrick Henry Society, is a racist working to incite the white townspeople to strongly and possibly violently resist the desegregation. Although Cramer is not from the area or even from the South (shown by his lack of a Southern accent), he quickly charms most of the people he meets, presenting himself as a confident, smooth-talking, well-mannered gentleman. He quickly convinces wealthy landowner Verne Shipman to back him, and seduces Ella, the pretty teenage daughter of the local newspaper editor Tom McDaniel.
The white locals are not happy about having black students attend the "white school", but prior to Cramer's arrival, most were prepared to grudgingly comply with the law. However, after Cramer, with Shipman's help, makes an inflammatory speech in front of the town hall and organizes a cross burning in the black neighborhood, the whites are moved to violence, first threatening a black family who happen to be driving through town after Cramer's speech, and then blowing up the local black church, killing the preacher. After the church bombing, Cramer is jailed, but the locals join together to get him quickly released.
Apart from his racist rabblerousing, Cramer also seduces Vi, the emotionally unstable wife of traveling salesman Sam Griffin, Cramer's next door neighbor at the Caxton hotel. Vi, ashamed of her lapse, leaves Griffin, who figures out what happened and comes after Cramer with Cramer's own gun. The terrified Cramer's confident facade crumbles for the first time; when he manages to get the gun and point it back at Griffin, he is too weak to pull the trigger, and Griffin reveals that he already removed the bullets from the gun before the confrontation. Griffin predicts that Cramer will soon lose control of the racially charged tensions that he has ignited in the town.
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