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Joe4.5

"I don't know about you, but I can't tell 'em apart."This came out the same year as To Kill a Mockingbird, but it has a razor-sharp venom that feels completely removed from that movie's comfortable nostalgia, even as it's set around many of the same themes and dramatic situations. I'm used to seeing southern towns like this depicted a certain way in movies and TV, usually akin to Mayberry, a small North Carolina town with no black people and no racists either, but here that illusion is punctured within minutes of Shatner's right-wing political opportunist coming to town, when the kindly old lady who rents him a room makes an out-of-nowhere racist joke. There's a lot to criticize this movie for from a progressive standpoint, mostly stemming from the fact that it's about a dramatic conflict between white people, with the black characters (when they're present at all) mostly in the margins, but there's a dark truth above and beyond even what I think the filmmakers intended about the toxicity of racism and how omnipresent and deeply ingrained it was and is in the United States. I'd assumed sight unseen that this was about Shatner whipping a bunch of innocent white people into a racial frenzy for his own purposes, but actually the movie makes it crystal clear that the only reason he's able to carry out his plans in the first place is because the white people of Caxton are receptive to his rhetoric.

T. Man5.0

Corman's best film, Shatner's best performance, based on an equally fine novel by Charles Beaumont and made during the height of the civil rights movement in Missouri.What The Intruder has besides authenticism and sudden realistic violence that erupts out of nowhere is a remarkable lack of sappy emotionalism and sentimentality. Beaumont's stark, objective realism stands in vivid contrast to Harper Lee's flowery, self-righteous attempts to seemingly extricate her white guilt.Absolutely sensational forgotten masterpiece that is superior to To Kill a Mockingbird in every way imaginable. This needs a restoration immediately.

Lexzilla4.0

I never expected to put the words Roger Corman and civil rights social issues in the same sentence, but here we are. Because, as it turns out, this man’s scariest film isn’t a gothic Poe ‘adaptation’ or a schlocky grindhouse killer flick, but a small black and white film about a race-riot inciting huckster arriving in a southern town that’s on the eve of school integration.It’s the perfect marriage of tense thriller plotting and uh-oh-stupid-people atmosphere, where each ramps the other up as it goes on, getting progressively more sweaty and more looming and more dangerous. All intense and ugly. And it’s a good surprise to see William Shatner so ably holding the centre of it all as the charismatic shark-eyed moral vacuum setting everything in motion. Is it mean if I also say there was a lot of good casting for extras where the mob-people really looked like they could be from a small southern town in that time period? Or maybe I’m just projecting because there was a lot of slurs coming out of those mouths, which was shocking to hear but didn’t feel like it was included for edginess’ sake. More like a brick to the face kind of thing.Not going to lie, It’s a tough watch. But its Cormon, so those engaging entertainment moments are still in it. And it’s aged well, which is also kind of depressing; the rhetoric may have shifted somewhat, but what you can hear nowadays doesn’t seem much different.