The Intruder

Director: Roger Corman

Starring: William Shatner, Frank McDaniel, Beverly Lunsford

Imagine that a white separatist sect of the Klingon Empire has captured the Starship Enterprise, brainwashed its venerable captain - James T. Kirk - and transported him back in time to the rural south as a hate-mongering segregationist. Sound implausible? Well, guess again, and fasten your seatbelt for The Intruder, director Roger Corman's racially charged 1961 docu-drama featuring none other than William Shatner in one of the most powerful and provocative performance of his career.

While modern film fans may initially snicker at the combination of Corman (best known for producing reels of notorious 1970's drive-in dada, including The Big Doll House, Candy Stripe Nurses, and Rock 'n' Roll High School) and Shatner (who in recent years has become a virtual parody of his former self), rest assured that The Intruder's subject matter and presentation are no laughing matter.

Shatner - still wet behind the ears and light years away from his legendary gig on Star Trek - plays Adam Cramer, a power-hungry, professional right-wing agitator who whips up hatred and bigotry across the American south. Like any proficient pitchman, Cramer possesses the necessary tools of the trade - the gift of gab and a mastery of the art of manipulation - and has something to sell: hate. He finds more than his share of willing customers in the small town of Caxton (shot on location in Charleston), Missouri, whose white population is still bitter over "having fought and lost" the battle over school integration. As a result, it takes only a few race-baiting, inflammatory speeches by Cramer to provoke the white citizenry to lash out violently against the town's minority population - including bombing an African-American church, and hospitalizing a local newspaper publisher (credibly played by Frank McDaniel) because he dared to walk a group of black students to Caxton's formerly all-white high-school. After initially instigating the hostilities, Cramer eventually loses control over his handiwork - which culminates in a mob-organized attempted lynching of an innocent black teenager in the film's climatic scene.

For fans of Shatner, watching the actor's dramatic departure from modern Priceline.com salesman to heinous KKK pitchman is nothing less than surreal. Shatner, performing at the time in only the fifth movie of his career, is chillingly believable in the role of Cramer. Equally credible are the performances of Caxton's townsfolk (many of whom were played by local, non-actors), whose deep-rooted, endemic and often subconscious racism serves as a painful and frightful reminder of just what a lethal combination hate and ignorance can be. As a result, Corman's unsettling and unabashed look at race, bias, and intolerance in 1960's America is as valuable and powerful today as it was upon its release more than 40 years ago.

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