Also called “I Hate Your Guts,” “Disgrace,” and “The Stranger,” Corman’s 1962 race drama “The Intruder” is maybe probably the most biting of his total filmography. Shockingly debuting the identical yr as “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a pre-“Star Trek” William Shatner stars as Adam Cramer, a white supremacist who infiltrates a small city aspiring to incite a race struggle as soon as he hears that the varsity district shall be integrating.
Corman was deliberately pushing again in opposition to the “Depart It to Beaver” and “The Andy Griffith Present” presentation of American life within the Sixties, and there is a brutal layer of “saying the quiet half out loud” lingering over the movie. Given the shortage of time given to Black characters on display screen, it is vital to acknowledge that this is not a film about racial injustice a lot as it is a film about racists and the way in which racism is ingrained in America and permitted as a result of white persons are too passive and too snug with the established order of white supremacy to combat for change.
Shatner is downright diabolical in his efficiency, and it is nauseating to see how related this ahead-of-its-time story nonetheless stays as we speak. On the time of launch, “The Intruder” struggled to seek out distribution, inspiring Corman to launch the movie independently, and it was the primary movie the place he ever misplaced cash. Black audiences needn’t watch this movie to know the realities of America’s white supremacist society as a result of they stay with it on daily basis, however for white people who fancy themselves “progressive” or “past race,” Corman’s “The Intruder” is a reminder that until you are actively preventing for an anti-racist society, you are inclined to perpetuate hate. You will by no means see Shatner the identical method once more.