AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Kaelan Mccaffrey Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Fatma Suarez The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Marva It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Tom Willett (yonhope) I watched this for free at YouTube. I was expecting cardboard characters and clichés from the mouth of a virtually unknown William Shatner.William Shatner is brilliant. Charleton Heston or Burt Lancaster or Gregory Peck could not have done better.In a confrontation scene between Shatner and Leo Gordon the tension builds to a magnificent and believable ending. Each actor and actress is wonderful. The local townsfolk come across as the real thing.This is a movie about racism that does not have a filter. Nothing is corrected to protect the ears of the viewer and listener. Not all white folks are bad or stupid or anything. This was an era. These are the kinds of people we might find dealing with a national issue. Some of the people black and white wanted integration and some were opposed and some were violently opposed.I don't think there is a more accurate movie about the times represented here. There are bigger budget movies.This one is too bold for TV. Maybe the internet will bring it back to some top ten lists. Well worth watching.

kapelusznik18 ****SPOILERS*** With the racial atmosphere of Caxton reaching a fever pitch in it's schools ordered by the Federal Government to be immediately desegregated in pops out of state social worker Adam Cramer, William Straton,claiming to have the best interest in the matter of race relations. But as it turns out the smooth talking and peace loving Cramer is really trying to undermine the process in the most sinister of ways. Cramer quickly starts to work on the whites, who are violently against segregation, in town to organize and start making trouble not only against the black population in Caxton but the town's newspaper's white editor Tom McDaniel, Frank Maxwell, who despite being against segregation goes along with it saying that it's the law and the law is the law.Cramer for his part rallies the people in a number of fiery speeches as well as a fiery cross burning incident that the once quite little town of Coxton is now about to explode as soon as the first black student, escorted by Tom McDaniel, enters the towns all white high school! Meanwhile besides inciting racial violence Cramer takes time to force himself on his good friend traveling salesman Sam Griffin's , Leo Gordon, wife Vi, Jeanne Cooper, while he's away out of town on business. This reveals what a both racist as well as despicable character that Cramer really is. It' later when a mob beats and almost kills Tom McDaniell for siding with the blacks in town that Cramer pulls out his ace in the hole by getting McDaniel's teenage daughter Ella, Beverly Lunsford, to go along with his plan. That in Ella claiming that the first black student to desegregate the school Joey Green, Charles Barns, attempted to rape her in the school's storage room while they were alone handling a new shipment of school books.****SPOILERS*** With the news of Green's attempted rape of Beverly a mob is organized by outraged town bigwig Verne "Slapsly" Shipman, Robert Emhardt, to drag Green out of the town jail and lynch him before he's tried or even indited! With everything about to blow sky high it's Big Sam Griffin who's back in town who defuses the madness by exposing Cramer, who's leading the lynch or necktie party, for the exploitive lowlife that he really is. With the truth now out in Cramer using Ella to lie about being raped by Green and what he in fact did to his wife, by forcing himself on her against her will, Griffin had the entire town including "Slapsly" Shipman see Cramer for what he really is. And as it turned out Cramer couldn't leave the town of Coxton fast enough before he himself ended up getting lynched by the very lynch mob that he organized!

Robert J. Maxwell We usually associate the name of Roger Corman with cheap exploitation movies, or maybe cheap horror movies with an Edgar Allan Poe theme, but this one isn't at all like his others -- except that it's cheap.William Shatner steps off the bus in a small Southern town whose high school begins its racial integration next Monday. He's handsome, well dressed, charming even. He's smooth, especially when speaking before groups or cozening lonely women or young girls. He even alludes at one point to Socrates, without being pretentious about it. I mean, he's a likable guy.The problem is that he's an agent of The Patrick Henry Society. Kids, Patrick Henry was a well-known orator (that means "public speaker") during the American Revolution and his most famous quote is, "Give me liberty or give me death." This is a logical fallacy known as a false dilemma, but never mind that. Anyway, Shatner considers himself an American patriot and arouses the benighted town with speeches in which he argues that blacks (he used the N word) can't go to school with our white girls -- law or no law -- because pretty soon they'll be sleeping with them. This whole business of integration is part of a communist conspiracy led by Jews.He succeeds is stirring up the town and it almost leads to the lynching of an innocent young black high school student, saved at the last minute by a beefy salesman played by Leo Gordon, who is usually a villain.It's a cheap movie but it's not entirely a thoughtless one. It was shot in a small town in Missouri and the locations are reasonably convincing. It was written by SF writer Charles Beaumont, who penned a lot of Twilight Zone episodes, and in fact this somewhat resembles The Twilight Zone except for the absence of any supernatural element. It's pretty hard hitting and carries a typical Twilight Zone moral message.I applaud the ambiguity of the central character, William Shatner. It's only gradually we realize how thoroughly rotten he is, and how gutless. At the same time, this isn't a very sophisticated movie. Corman has gathered together a group of racist townsmen who really LOOK like they're just off the ridges -- toothless, bearded, wizened, rheumy eyed stereotypes. The African-Americans are all good, polite and suffering. Nobody shows any irritation, not even in receptive company.And the movie completely collapses at the end. Leo Gorden, the traveling salesman, has issues with Shatner. (Shatner seduced his horny wife.) But Gordon has never shown any sign of social engagement. He has no reason to care one way or another about the fate of some anonymous black high schooler he's never heard of. Yet he intervenes at the end, saves the kid, and humiliates Shatner in front of the mob and the town's leaders. Shatner is reduced to the predictable, running around hysterically shouting "Wait! Wait! Listen to me! I can explain!" -- that sort of thing, which you or I could write as well as Beaumont. It's redeemed somewhat because it doesn't end with Shatner's dashing around. It ends on a downbeat, with the not-entirely-unsympathetic Leo Gorden giving the chastened Shatner enough money to leave town quietly.But -- that disillusioned mob, slouching away from Shatner, ashamed of themselves, leaving him a lone and despairing figure. I think if I see another scene like that, even in "To Kill A Mockingbird" or "A Face In The Crowd", I'll -- well, I'll just hold my breath to death.

Steve Skafte I expected "The Intruder" to be a great film. I'm not sure what I based that assumption on. It certainly wasn't director Roger Corman, who never showed much promise for drama. And it wasn't the fact that it was filmed in the same era in which it takes place. And it wasn't the cast, which, save for William Shatner, I'd never previously heard about. But, still, I wasn't disappointed. A combination of all these factors make it a lean, straightforward film. Corman brings a B-movie sensibility in the best possible way. Budget and time constraints make for quick scenes, edgy attitudes, and a feeling of extreme immediacy.Most of all, this film rests on the terrifying performance of William Shatner (as the "social worker" Adam Cramer). He is unstable, he is inflammatory, he is seductive. He is an almost unbearably intense on-screen presence in this film. He has the unnerving ability to play a character who overacts, who is unhinged, without appearing to be so as an actor. Not that it would matter. Even if he truly was as unstable and complex as the character he portrays, it doesn't take away from the stunning performance.There are artifacts of the time present of course, things which place it in the time in which it was filmed. But these are at a minimum. The actors are remarkably restrained, and straightforward. People speak conversationally, like friends you might know. This is especially evident with Frank Maxwell (Tom, the newspaper man) and Leo Gordon (Sam, the traveling salesman). Both men play men of deep intelligence and a way with words. They are immensely identifiable in their respective roles. The most powerful scene in "The Intruder" is, perhaps, the hotel room confrontation between Maxwell and Cramer. It is the first hint of both Maxwell's strength, and of Cramer's weakness. It is a reversal of sorts, the exposing of the man behind the curtain. There's a dramatic quality to this revelation that hits with real force."The Intruder" is worlds above what its pedigree might suggest. Unlike other, higher-budgeted films on this subject from the era, this one holds up. It's in the trenches, so to speak. In your face, and under your skin. Few films can do that, and do that believably. This one does. Feel free to disagree, but be certain to see for yourself.