Intruder
(AKA: Night of the Intruder/Night Crew-
The Final Checkout)
(Screen Entertainment PAL Region 0 DVD)
(1988)
review by Blackgloves

The much reviled "Slasher" movie, when it's done properly, can be the most immediate and visceral of cinematic experiences; the purest, most perfectly honed, expression of the horror film—a finely tuned vehicle for exploiting the "fight-or-flight" reflex that should leave you with a feeling of great satisfaction once the harrowing experience of watching it is over. But when it's done badly, there is nothing more wretched or soul-destroying to sit through. The structure of the slasher is so deceptively simple, so precise and predictable, that any ineptitude in the realisation leaves the viewer with little else of originality to appreciate in the content . Slasher movies have one simple objective and they either succeed in it or they don't—there are rarely any in-betweens! It's ironic then, that so many first-time directors have seen the humble stalk & slash (or variants of it) as a quick & easy route to recognition—especially in the early-eighties when they were all the rage—since it's probably one of the riskiest undertakings for a fledgling director to embark upon: any deficiency in pacing, editing etc., and the whole effect is likely to be ruined, and your horror masterpiece becomes an embarrassing b-movie mess!

There must have been added pressure on Scott Spiegel when he came to helm his first full-length feature, "Intruder" (at that time burdened with the ironic title "Night Crew-The Final Checkout"). Spiegel was a friend of Horror wonder-kid Sam Raimi, whose own debut "Evil Dead" (it's self a variant on the slasher formula, with it's small cast menaced by supernatural forces in an isolated log cabin in the woods) was notorious in it's time and had since become a much loved classic, spawning a big-budget sequel that Spiegel himself co-wrote! But "Intruder" delivers magnificently, despite sticking to the classic slasher formula unvaryingly. Although it was shot at the end of the eighties, when the boom in the sub-genre had all but completely petered out, "Intruder" feels like it could have been made much earlier in the decade. Spiegel—evidently a fan of this kind of horror variant—made a loving tribute that, while repeating every one of the genre's hackneyed motif's, recaptures all the suspense and pent-up energy of it's most influential examples. In fact, it is probably better than most of the films that inspired it, and, in it's uncut form, is also one of the goriest slasher films ever made! Unfortunately for Spiegel, the film was released at a time when the paranoia surrounding the issue of screen violence was on a high. Paramount released the film with all of the gore cut out and the film sank without trace until uncut bootlegged VHS copies started turning up, and it's reputation finally began to build. The film faired little better at the hands of the BBFC, who considerably toned down the impact of some of the film's most deliriously violent scenes. Now, Screen Entertainment give us a brand new release of Spiegel's cult classic, completely uncut and boasting a rather fine transfer that highlights every gory detail to great effect!

The venue for this particular bloodbath is a supermarket where Elizabeth Cox plays a checkout girl with severe boyfriend trouble. When she and her colleagues stay behind late to do the store inventory, said boyfriend (David Byrnes) turns up, having just been released from serving a term in prison for murder! After causing a scene in the supermarket he is ejected from the premises; but he is not going to leave the scene without a fight! Around this time both the store boss and it's workers (which include brothers Ted and Sam Raimi) start getting killed off one by one in an extremely unpleasant fashion. Eventually Cox finds that she is the only survivor, trapped in the locked store, with only a maniac killer and the mutilated bodies of her fellow workers for company!

"Intruder" follows the classic slasher formula to the letter: we start with an introduction to the characters and the establishment of an isolated setting, follow up with a middle section in which most of the cast are brutally bumped off, and finish with the only survivor in a (hopefully) suspenseful struggle for survival. But working within these well-worn parameters, Spiegel injects huge amounts of restless inventiveness into his film. He spends a vast amount of time introducing characters and setting up various red-herrings relating to the killer's identity (the true identity of which isn't revealed until the final third of the film) and almost leaves things too late before unleashing a catalogue of ferocious killings. But like his friend Sam Raimi, Spiegel is in love with the aesthetics of cinematic expression. To that end, the audience of "Intruder" are, from beginning to end, virtually assaulted by an onslaught of outrageous point-of-view camera shots and distorted lenses, etc. We get shopping trolley-cam, door knob-cam, strip-light-cam; there is even a pov shot from inside a telephone at one point! The craziness of all this works well to keep us on edge until the film finally gets to the real business of the procedings: killing off all of the characters that it has just spent thirty-five minutes of it's running time introducing! This is where it really surprises—because most of the murder scenes are quite phenomenally brutal and realistic, despite the rich vein of black humour that runs throughout the whole movie. One character gets a spike pushed into his eye, another gets his head crushed by a box baler, and the future director of "Sider-Man" gets hung up with a meat-hook through his face! The special effects are handled very well throughout & Spiegel gives each kill a great build-up and a satisfactorily bloody conclusion. But two scenes stand out in particular as, perhaps, some of the bloodiest ever committed to celluloid. The infamous band-saw scene—where a character's head is bisected in forensicly detailed close-up by said machine—looks incredibly realistic and even outdoes Lucio Fulci's equally talked about head-drilling scene from "City of the Living Dead" for sheer, unadulterated nastiness! There is also a magnificently brutal scene when a character is virtually hacked to ribbons by about twenty blows from a machete! No one can say that Spiegel doesn't deliver on the gore front! The last twenty minutes of the film are then given over to the traditional "last survivor" being stalked by the killer in a now darkened supermarket, while stumbling across the dead bodies of her friends, which are always stashed away in the most unlikely of places. The film concludes on an unexpectedly cynical note curtesy of a brief cameo from Bruce Campbell as a cop who comes to investigate the scene. That, together with the involvement of Sam Raimi, guarantees this release will be of interest to mainstream horror fans—and it's unlikely they will be disappointed!

Spiegel has created one of the most enjoyable entries in the slasher sub-genre and although it may not contain any big surprises, the material is always handled expertly and enthusiasticaly. This new release from Screen Entertainment is released, rather appropriately, under their Hard Gore label. It is uncut, and comes with a strong-looking transfer that looks very detailed. There is mild grain apparent at various points, but I seriously doubt that this low budget effort has ever looked better than it does here. The extras may be light but what is here is quite interesting: we have the original trailer for the film under it's original title "Night Crew" (which looks like it has been sourced from VHS), together with a brand new trailer. It's probably best to avoid looking at these until after you've seen the movie, since they make it fairly obvious who the killer is! Next we have some readable production notes by genre journalists Kevin & Nick Wilson and a lengthy and enjoyable text interview with Scott Spiegel conducted by Calum Waddell. Spiegel seems to have lost none of his enthusiasm for horror since he directed his slasher epic over fifteen years ago! Finally, we have some cast & crew filmographies rounding off this essential and highly recommended horror classic.