Watch Roger Corman and William Shatner discuss the making of The Intruder.

between Premature Burial and Tales of Terror, Roger Corman's The Intruder is a gothic horror story of a different order. This harrowing film offers an unflinching look at race relations just as school desegregation is spreading through the South. In his radiant white suit and dark glasses, Adam Cramer (William Shatner) projects the big-hearted nature of a preacher, though he has come to the (fictional) town of Caxton, Missouri to spread not goodwill but unrest. An agent of the reactionary Patrick Henry Society, Adam quickly ingratiates himself with the town's most influential citizens and begins to sow his seeds of discontent, turning the already wary whites against the coming integration of the local high school. Unlike the striking black-and-white cinematography, Corman's stinging exposé, alternately titled I Hate Your Guts, adds unusual coloration to its host of local yahoos. Shatner's deceptively genial demagogue-who prods the KKK to burn down a church in “niggertown” and viciously assault the editor of the local newspaper-doesn't thrive on racist ideology, but on the pleasure to be had from manipulating the mob. To exact his comeuppance, Corman finally makes this rabble-rouser eat Jim Crow.