The Intruder (1962)

Compulsory segregation, like states' rights and like 'The Southern Way of Life,' is an abstraction and, to a good many people, a neutral or sympathetic one. These riots, which [through television] were brought instantly, dramatically and literally home to the American people, showed what it means concretely. Here were grown men and women furiously confronting their enemy: two, three, a half dozen scrubbed, starched, scared and incredibly brave colored children. The moral bankruptcy, the shame of the thing, was evident.

Alexander Bickel, writing in 1962

Roger Corman's rather amazing low-budget drama The Intruder, shot on location and under rather dangerous conditions in the Deep South, captures exactly the ugly moment in history that Bickel writes about. Corman, a genre film-maker, never made more of a monster movie than this, and the monster is virtually the entire population of a a small Southern town, rising against the court-ordered integration of their high school. The rabble-rousing "intruder," played suavely by white-suited William Shatner (his best performance? certainly a great one) and based on the real-life racist activist John Kasper, only brings into action the nastiness that is already right on the surface.

The Intruder benefits enormously from its location shooting, even if it did put Corman's cast and crew in harm's way once the locals in the towns he used realized that this was a pro-integration movie. The filmmakers made off like bandits in the middle of the night once the shoot was done; Shatner describes the whole experience as "harrowing" (but also notes that he would have paid Corman to play this part). The faces, the attitudes, the language of the many locals that Corman used as extras and in bit parts come across as extraordinarily genuine, un-self-conscious. The hair-raising references to "niggers," "coons," and "commie Jews" that come out of even sweet old landladies' mouths disturb us but were ordinary speech for them. Which is the issue, of course.

I found it interesting that my cat Claire, who usually "watches" movies with me, retired to another room in the apartment for the duration of The Intruder. I think what she meant to convey was, "I can't watch a movie about a nasty racist even if he is wearing a spiffy white suit!" In fact, the movie, although very impressive, is quite hard to take.

Some miscellaneous notes on this unusual film: It stars three science fiction writers in smaller roles -- Charles Beaumont, whose novel it is based on; George Clayton Johnson, like Beaumont (and Shatner) a repeat Twilight Zone contributor; and William F. Nolan, who co-wrote Logan's Run with Johnson...
John Kasper, the actual provocateur, was, like CIA legend James Jesus Angleton mentioned in an earlier post, a disciple and correspondent of poet and anti-semite Ezra Pound...Corman regular Leo Gordon, excellent as a traveling salesman, gets off a great line to his wife (whom Shatner seduces, and who is later revealed as a nymphomaniac): "Didn't make too many demands on you last night, did I?" The movie is racy as well as as politically controversial; Corman has more than a little of the provocateur in him, too.