Cody visits the night crew at Walnut Lake Market.
BACKGROUND
Sam Raimi is a legendary filmmaker these days, having gifted the world with the likes of the Evil Dead franchise, a trilogy of Spider-Man movies, and a whole lot more. He got started making movies when he was a kid growing up in Michigan, shooting Super 8 short films with his friends and family – and among his childhood collaborators were Evil Dead franchise star Bruce Campbell and Evil Dead II co-writer Scott Spiegel. When Raimi and Campbell were gearing up to make the first Evil Dead movie, they shot a proof-of-concept short film called Within the Woods, which they could show to potential investors when they were raising funds for their feature film. Spiegel was in the cast of that short, playing a character that was named after him. And right before his pals went down to Tennessee to start filming The Evil Dead in 1979, he invited them over to his place of employment, a grocery store called the Walnut Lake Market, to shoot a proof-of-concept short of his own.
While working in the market, Spiegel had come up with a slasher story he called The Night Crew, which would be about a masked killer knocking off the store’s employees one-by-one. With Raimi as a cast member and Campbell as the cameraman, Spiegel shot a 20 minute version of the concept, with the killer managing to kill three people within that short running time. When Raimi and Campbell were done filming The Evil Dead, there was some thought given to producing a feature-length version of The Night Crew as a follow-up. But the post-production process on The Evil Dead stretched on for a while and it took years for the movie to make it to the screen, so Raimi and Campbell's attention was diverted from The Night Crew along the way. The idea didn't come up again until the late '80s, by which time Spiegel had lost the only complete copy of the short film. Thankfully, he still remembered the major moments well enough that he was able to include them in the feature film that ended up being called Intruder.
Intruder happened because a man named Lawrence Bender, who would go on to make several movies with Quentin Tarantino, had decided to set aside his dream of being a dancer and got into producing movies instead. He approached Spiegel and asked him if he had any stories in mind that could be made on a low budget. Spiegel pitched him The Night Crew: a film that would take place entirely in one location as a handful of characters are picked off by a slasher. Bender was sold on it immediately. An initial budget of one hundred thousand dollars was secured, and Witchcraft franchise producer Jerry Feifer was consulted. Then more money came in when Raimi and his producing partner Rob Tapert were able to get B-movie legend Charles Band to join as an uncredited executive producer, with the plan being that the movie would receive a theatrical release through Band's company Empire Pictures. That plan fell apart when Empire Pictures went bankrupt. Luckily, Band was able to take a few films with him when he left the company behind, and one of them was Intruder. He was quickly able to set up a new distribution deal with Paramount – but it was for movies that would be released straight to video. This deal was the beginning of Band's company Full Moon, but Paramount gave a video release to Band's Empire leftover Intruder before Full Moon officially launched with the first Puppet Master movie.
The Intruder title only came about after Band suggested that the movie should be called The Final Checkout, and a trailer was put together that combined the two titles: Night Crew, with the subtitle The Final Checkout. Then someone in the marketing department decided a generic slasher title would be the most appealing to audiences. So the film came to be known as Intruder... which isn't very fitting, but works well enough if you don't think about it.
SETTING
Spiegel couldn't film this version of The Night Crew at the actual Walnut Lake Market in Michigan, so he had to find a suitable alternative in the Los Angeles area. Bender came across a store that was closed, but still had all the shelves and equipment in place. The manager allowed the production to move into the store and film there for a two week period while the owner was out of town on vacation. Getting this place for two weeks only cost two thousand, five hundred dollars. For another thousand dollars, Bender scored ten tons of "scratch and dent" merchandise to stock the shelves with, then donated the food to charity once filming was over. Sadly, the dog food and slabs of meat couldn't be donated; they spoiled during production and started to stink up the store. Seeing how the store looks in the movie, thankfully not being able to smell it, it's mind-blowing that the production was able to get this place and make it look completely functional for a total of just three thousand, five hundred dollars. Spiegel certainly made the most of the location, seeming to get every inch of it on camera. He also did a great job of turning such a familiar location into a creepy crime scene.
KILLER
Intruder doesn’t feature a masked slasher like the Night Crew short film did, but Spiegel keeps the murderer’s identity hidden for most of the movie, not showing their face until a shocking climactic reveal... so I feel a bit awkward writing about the killer’s identity here. But the marketing has been spoiling the reveal ever since the movie first reached VHS, so it’s a poorly kept secret anyway.
When the murders start, the prime suspect is Craig Peterson (David Byrne), the ex-boyfriend of a cashier named Jennifer. Craig is known for having a violent temper, which earned him a year in jail after he accidentally beat a man to death. Now, Craig has been released, and he has stopped by the Walnut Lake Market to demand an explanation from Jennifer for why she's been ignoring his letters and calls. That situation blows up into a physical confrontation that involves most of the store employees. Craig is thrown out of the store – and locked out, since it’s closing time. But it’s made clear throughout the movie that he’s still lurking around the place, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if he has gone completely insane and become a mass murderer.
But he hasn’t. Craig is a red herring. The motive behind the murders is not a fatal obsession with Jennifer. Instead, the store’s co-owner, Bill Roberts (Danny Hicks) has been driven mad by the fact that the store's other owner, Danny, holds a majority stake in the place and has decided they need to sell it. Bill is “just crazy about this store,” so he has decided to kill not just Danny but also anyone else who happens to be in the place.
Hicks, who also had a memorable role in Evil Dead II, gives an awesome performance in this movie. Bill is likely to end up being the favorite character of most viewers, even though he turns out to be a bloodthirsty maniac. That’s because he comes off as a really good guy for the majority of the running time. He’s friendly, he seems to care about Jennifer, he has nice interactions with her and his other employees, and he’s funny. Then, it all changes around when Bill is revealed to be the killer. From the moment we know he’s a bad guy, he comes off like a total scumbag. It’s a great reversal, and Hicks played it perfectly. The actor himself felt that some of the moments he had as Bill Roberts ranked as the best work he ever did on the film.
Sure, being crazy about a store may not sound like the best motivation for a slasher, but Intruder has a sense of humor and a lightheartedness to it that ensures you never take any of it too seriously, so Bill’s motivation goes right along with that.
A co-worker once told Spiegel the story of a volunteer fireman who reported to the scene of a deadly accident while eating a sandwich. This guy was later seen walking down the road, carrying the accident victim's severed head in one hand and his sandwich in the other. Spiegel told this story to Raimi, who passed it on to the Coen brothers, who wrote it into Raising Arizona; M. Emmett Walsh tells the story to Nicolas Cage early in the film. Spiegel was disappointed that the story had already been used in a movie because he wanted to put it in a film of his own. So, undeterred, he put it in Intruder and doubled down on it. Bill tells the story twice, and it's memorable both times. The first time he tells it, he's in nice guy mode, grossing out his employees during their break. The second time he tells it, he's out of his mind and actually carrying a severed head in one hand and a sandwich in the other. It's a troubling sight, and yet also another one of the movie's many amusing moments.
Spiegel wrote a likeable group of characters for us to watch get brutally murdered. The Walnut Lake employees aren't the most fascinating or deep people, they don't have a whole lot to do before we see them get killed, but they come off well during the scenes they have, and the cast did a good job bringing them to the screen for their final moments of life.
Eugene Glazer was cast as the store's majority owner, Danny, an unpleasant fellow whose business decisions get a bunch of people killed. As the employees who make up the night crew, we have: Sam Raimi as Randy, the butcher; Ted Raimi as Joe, who prepares the produce while listening to a seemingly endless song; Craig Stark as Tim, who spends most of his time hanging out by the beer supply; Burr Steers as stoner stockboy Bub; Renee Estevez as cashier Linda; Billy Marti as stockboy Dave, who may be entering into a relationship with Jennifer (but first Jennifer has to deal with her drug-abusing ex Craig); and Jennifer herself.
Most of these characters do not make it to the end credits. While they're not victims, it's worth noting that we get cameo appearances by Green Actres co-stars Alvy Moore and Tom Lester, reunited to play a pair of police officers; Three Stooges cohort Emil Sitka as an elderly customer; and Lawrence Bender and Bruce Campbell as another pair of police officers.
Spiegel himself also shows up as an ill-fated bread delivery man.
FINAL GIRL
Elizabeth Cox, who had small roles in The Wraith and Night of the Creeps, plays cashier Jennifer, the final girl – and Spiegel really put his lead through the wringer. She's having a bad night even before the killing starts. Her obsessive ex is out of jail. She's terrified of the guy. He gives her a nosebleed that won't quit. And then all of her co-workers and her new love interest are murdered. She's left to fight for her life while stumbling over their corpses. The script gave Cox a lot of different types of scenes to play and emotions to convey. She took it all on and made for a fine heroine. She was so dedicated to her role, which required abundant screaming, she even came up with four different types of screams to do. There’s the High C scream, the whistle scream, the tarantula scream, and the suck-in gasp. See if you can spot them all when you watch the movie.
DEATHS
The biggest selling point of Intruder is the impressive gore effects, which were supplied by KNB, the company that had just been formed by Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger. They had never been the effects supervisors on a film before, and were stuck in a Catch 22: companies don't get hired to be effects supervisors on productions until they've already worked in that capacity on another production. Knowing the three artists from their work in the Evil Dead II FX department, Spiegel assumed KNB would be out of his price range. He thought they would just refer him to some other effects artists - but they were so eager to be the effects supervisors on something, they took the job. All they asked for was credit in the opening title sequence and seven hundred dollars a piece.
The unrated cut of the film greatly benefits from the fact that KNB were out to prove themselves with this film. The death scenes are incredible, ranging from the usual stabbings to heads being crushed and cut in half, with blood spraying across the screen. A scene involving someone's head being run through the butcher's bandsaw is the standout of the bunch. Even genre fans who haven't seen the movie seem to be aware of the bandsaw scene. It's a repeat of a kill that was done in the Super 8 version, but there the saw cuts into the top of a person's head. KNB told Spiegel they could create a fake head that would look so good, he'd be able to show the saw cutting the face in half, cheek to cheek. That’s exactly what they delivered.
Unfortunately, for more than fifteen years the only way to see the uncut death scenes was by watching a low quality bootleg. Like many '80s slashers, Intruder was hacked up by the ratings board even worse than the characters are hacked up by the killer. The problem was, all of the movies released through Charles Band’s deal with Paramount had to receive an R rating before Paramount would put them out. And to achieve an R rating, Intruder had to lose almost all of its bloodshed. The amount of gore had already been hyped in the pages of magazines like Gorezone and Fangoria, so when horror fans rented the VHS from their local video stores, they were upset to find that the gore was missing. The bootleg started floating around very quickly; Spiegel himself would even send out copies. But it wasn't until 2005 that an official, good quality version of the unrated cut was released on DVD. Multiple Blu-ray releases have followed over the years, including a special edition release from Synapse Films. Now the unrated cut is the most readily available version of Intruder out there. As it always should have been.
CLICHÉS
The grocery store setting is rather unique, but the basic set-up of Intruder is cliché; that classic “people in a single location get knocked off one-by-one” set-up. They do some looking around in dark rooms before they die. And, as usual, it all builds up to the final girl fighting for her life against a crazy person whose identity is revealed just in time for the climactic chase and confrontation. There’s the red herring cliché and the fact that Tim gets killed while sneaking off for an alcohol break. Bub is also assumed to be a stoner, although we don’t see him smoke up. But the movie avoids some of the usual clichés, as the characters don’t have the chance to prove that sex equals death, since they’re at work in a grocery store, and the police show up not just once, but twice. Of course, the cops who stop by are completely ineffective, but at least the characters were able to contact them and they do come to the location.
POSTMORTEM
Despite its troubled release, Intruder was quickly able to gain a devoted cult following due to its fun tone, its unique style, and its quirky, likeable characters. Viewers weren't seeing the death scenes in the way they were meant to be seen, but that wasn't a deal breaker - and when fans finally got the chance to see the unrated cut, with those gore sequences intact, it boosted the movie up to a whole new level of entertainment.
The playful tone of the film is enhanced by some of the unusual camera angles Spiegel chose. He's a director who loves point-of-view shots, capturing moments in ways most filmmakers would never think of. When Linda takes a phone call, we get a point-of-view shot from inside the base of the phone, looking at her through the rotary dial. As Jennifer sweeps up trash, we see her from the floor's point-of-view. A conversation between two characters is shot through their reflections in mirrors above their heads. In a moment where Bill sees a doorknob slowly turning, we see him from the point-of-view of that turning knob. These goofy angles are really clever, and bring a smile between moments of seeing amiable people getting knocked off in horrific ways.
This movie delivers everything a slasher fan could hope for. There were a lot of awesome slasher movies released in the 1980s, and Spiegel's ranks up there among the best of them. It's never been one of the most talked-about slashers out there, but it has been nice to see its cult following grow as more and more horror fans have had the opportunity to watch the movie in all its uncut, gory glory.
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