Adam Cramer (played by a young and lean William Shatner) is a smooth-talking, fast-moving agitator that arrives in the small Southern town of Caxton just in time for the first day of integration at the local high school. Setting himself up in a boarding house, he meets traveling salesman Sam Griffin (Leo Gordon) and his nervous wife Vi (Jeanne Cooper), as well as impressionable high school girl Ella McDaniel (Beverly Lunsford), whom he talks into a date, putting some pretty serious moves on her. Ella's parents are fairly conflicted on the issue of integration, but pops Tom (Frank Maxwell), being the editor of the town newspaper and therefore a man of some amount of reason, ultimately feels that it's a human right, above and beyond any law. Meanwhile, Adam (announcing himself as a representative of the "Patrick Henry Society", whatever that is) gains the support of local business magnate Verne Shipman (Robert Emhardt) and starts preaching to the town in no uncertain terms: today the schools, tomorrow, GOVERNMENT!! Not only are the blacks a threat, but it's all a communist plot! The group reacts approvingly, and as quick as lightning, they are harassing the town's people of color in an extremely threatening manner, a manner which can only get worse, and it does: a cross-burning and church bombing that kills a black minister are the result, with Cramer's angry horde now beyond his control, yet he's too busy seducing the now-alone Vi to notice (when the hubby's away....). Feeling the pangs of remorse, Vi takes it on the run, leaving Sam to confront Adam about this indiscretion, and talk as he may, he cannot fight his fellow pitch-man's seeing right through to his weaselly core. Now realizing that his need for importance and manipulation have rendered him blind him to the very fact that his desired control is beyond his grasp, he sets one final desperate plan into motion, one that will forever alter the lives of several innocent citizens..... 

Long considered by many as one of the most personal films in Roger Corman's directorial ouvre, THE INTRUDER has lost very little of it's power in the time since it's troubled release in 1962. Whereas Corman's personal quirks and attitudes were previously shrouded in the safe confines of the Western or gangster epic, here was a story that spoke to the here and now in such a direct fashion that it could have only scared the majority of it's potential audience away, and it did. Most drive-in audiences were just not ready to have their face shoved into the prescient issue of race relations, though the film did receive rave notices in such papers as Variety, The New York Times, and The Saturday Review, whose Arthur Knight said: "This portrait of a slick, sick power-hungry demagogue is not easily forgotten". Much of it's artistic success can be attributed to the astounding performance by William Shatner, who fleshes out the character of Adam with a lot of subtle (and not-so-subtle) touches, some of which would turn into the more full-blown hamminess of his later work as Captain J.T. Kirk. By turns bug-eyed, nervous, and maniacally impassioned, Shatner's work here is obviously that of a young actor finding a role that he can sink his teeth into. The production is also helped immeasurably by the location shooting in East Prairie, MO, as well as the judicial use of local, non-professional actors portraying the townspeople, all captured in stark monochrome by cinematographer Taylor Byers. While not the final word on the subjects of racism and how power can corrupt, THE INTRUDER a film that deserves to be seen, not only by fans of Corman and Shatner, but by enthusiasts of maverick film-making in general, as it displays a fearlessness in content and approach that is sorely lacking in the genre product of today.