The Intruder (1962 film)

The Intruder is a 1962 American film directed by Roger Corman, after a 1959 novel by Charles Beaumont, starring William Shatner. The story depicts the machinations of a racist named Adam Cramer portrayed by Shatner, who arrives in the fictitious small southern town of Caxton in order to incite townspeople to racial violence against the towns black minority and courtordered school integration.

The introduction to Cramer is a simple shot of him stepping off a bus, carrying only a light suitcase, with innate confidence, a confidence which remains with him. On an interpersonal level, starting with the first character Cramer meets, the audience sees he is a charmer, but it is soon revealed that the character uses this charm quite professionally, in furtherance of a hard, cunning political effort to incite Caxtons existing racial tension into violence. At the same time, Cramer seeks personal pleasure with every interaction. Cramers racist, incendiary politics are thereby proven inseparable from his pleasure. By manipulating many of Caxtons citizens on a personal level, Cramer implements a strategic plan to incite violent action by eliciting financial backing from wealthy local Verne Shipman Robert Emhardt to form a chapter of the fictitious Patrick Henry Society and use it to mobilize the townspeople against integration. Following an inflammatory speech by Cramer in front of the town hall, the first act of open violence is when the Patrick Henry Society, headed by Cramer, burns a cross in the black district, followed by the harassment and nearlynching of a black driver and his family. It is then that a rational, internally secure character named Tom McDaniel Frank Maxwell realizes he is willing to stand up against both Cramer and the townspeoples hatred toward their black neighborsthis costs him a severe beating by his white neighbors, resulting in concussion and the loss of one eye. Realizing his grip on the mob may be fading, Cramer shrewdly manipulates McDaniels teenage daughter Ella Beverly Lunsford whom he had also seduced earlier in the movie into making a false claim of interracial rape, which causes a mob to gather around the Caxton high school.A parallel plot line has developed meanwhile, around Cramers nextdoor neighbors at the motel, salesman Sam Griffin Leo Gordon and his emotionally unstable wife, Vi Jeanne Cooper, whom Cramer seduces while Griff

Source: Wikipedia