Welcome to Horror Secret Handshakes, a monthly column spotlighting horror stories off the beaten path which serve as an instant vibe check with new friends, acquaintances, and fellow fans. If you both know the story, you feel the bond.
A couple of weeks ago the horror world lost Scott Spiegel, a writer, director, and producer who was not a household name even among horror fans, but played a huge role in shaping the genre in the 1980s. Though he continued working in film in one form or another throughout his life, Spiegel is perhaps best known as part of the merry band of cinema tricksters assembled by Sam Raimi in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and as the co-writer of Evil Dead II.
But Spiegel was not defined solely by his work under Raimi's directorial watch. In 1989, he took the lead himself with his feature directorial debut, a slasher film set in a grocery store that remains one of the most creative and entertaining pieces of the subgenre. It's not as widely seen as other '80s slashers, but once you've seen it, you'll want to tell everyone you know about it.
So, in honor of Scott Spiegel, let's talk about Intruder.
The film is set in a small, community supermarket, the kind that dominated small towns and cities across America before chains moved in. The place is quiet, locally owned, and staffed largely by local kids. When we drop in on the place, it's closing for the night and the young staff are preparing to restock the shelves when they get some bad news: The store is being sold, and they have to begin marking down every item for a clearance sale. It casts a shadow over the whole night, but it's not the only problem the kids are dealing with. Jennifer (Elizabeth Cox), a beautiful young cashier, has a stalker in the former of Craig (David Byrnes), an ex-boyfriend fresh out of prison who wants to try to reconcile. Manager and co-owner Bill (Dan Hicks) tosses Craig out of the store and the kids get to work for the night, but when a mysterious killer starts picking them off, we're left to wonder if Craig ever really left, or if something else is at work.
When we talked about Pontypool in this column, I made it clear just how much I love single-location horror, stories that contain themselves deliberately and then unleash creativity within that space. Intruder, as far as I'm concerned, is one of the best versions of this concept ever put to film. The entire movie, with one or two exceptions in the parking lot, takes place inside this grocery store when it's devoid of customers, its aisles empty, its fluorescent lights glaring down across neatly stacked merchandise. It's not a huge store, but without the customers it's just big enough that you could murder someone in the meat locker and no one would notice until it was too late. That's exactly what happens here, and the whodunit nature of the slasher is an excellent suspense builder, but that's not the only reason we're talking about it.
Intruder's ability to sell its single-location premise is key, but what really makes the film memorable is the sheer creative force at work in front of and behind the camera. To infuse the supermarket location with even more creative energy, Spiegel shoots conversations from above dairy cases, through air conditioning vents, behind cardboard balers. At one point, to obscure the face of the killer, he even films a murder scene through a translucent, green glass bottle. It's an endless font of visual creativity, and that extends to the kill scenes, which include everything from the aforementioned baler to all the various cutting implements present in the butcher shop. It's an extremely bloody movie, but it's also infused with the bonkers style you might expect from someone who came up in the Raimi camp. It's often just this side of a cartoon, which makes it more fun than frightening, and a great midnight movie to enjoy with friends.
And friends are crucial to Intruder, arguably just as crucial as the visual and the gore effects. This is a film Spiegel made with the help and participation of his Evil Dead II cohorts. Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi, and Bruce Campbell all pop up at various points in the film, and Intruder even shares a grotesque joke story with the Coen Brothers' Raising Arizona (the Raimi camp and the Coens had a lot of close association in the '80s). This sense of interconnected filmmaking, and the sheer exuberance of the movie itself, gives Intruder the feel, much like the original Evil Dead, that it's just a group of friends putting on a show with some fake heads and gallons of fake blood. It looks like it was a blast to make, and by extension, it's a blast to watch. If you're a faithful slasher fan, and you meet another Intruder admirer, it's instant friendship every time.
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