Two Views of Charles Beaumont's The Intruder

To the knowledgeable few that even know who Charles Beaumont is, he is celebrated as a scenarist. Mostly for The Twilight Zone. And quite rightly so. He wrote some of the best episodes of that revered program. But those of us that live for fantastic fiction, Charles Beaumont is known as one of the finest short story writers the genre has ever seen.

Beaumont is also a tragic figure in fantasy. He died way too young, depriving the world of countless works of fiction that he could have given us. I genuinely think he would have been as big as Matheson or Bradbury.

For me, Charles Beaumont's masterpiece isn't a fantasy, horror, or science fiction story. It dealt with a searing social issue of its day: Racial segregation in public schools in the American South.

It seems almost impossible now. That black people could not attend the same schools as white children. Beaumont deals with this in The Intruder, which is the only full-length novel he published.

The Intruder was originally published in hardcover in 1959 and it deals with an instigator that comes to a fictional southern town to prevent the integration of black children into white schools. The young man is handsome, charismatic, and passionate. He stirs the prejudice that lurks in the minds of the citizens of the town.

Yet Beaumont isn't telling a simple story of a bad ol' racist that stirs the Klan into action. Most of the people in the town aren't really racist. They only know what they've been programed to dislike. Most can't even articulate why they are against integration, other than to say "It's wrong". Beaumont's lead sympathetic character changes his own views on the subject in the course of the novel and he realizes that people simply need time to adjust to new ways of thinking.

I was most shocked to learn that the intruder isn't simply rabidly against integration, but something perhaps more sinister. You'll have to find a copy of the book to find out exactly what he is and what is motivations are.

The Intruder is astonishingly well-written. Beaumont presents the reader with perspectives of numerous characters from the town. Some are decent and fair-minded. Others are steadfast in their revulsion of the very idea of integration. He also gives intelligent arguments against integration. For Beaumont warns us that there is little to fear from those filled with dumb hatred. The really dangerous enemies are the intelligent individuals that are against basic human freedoms. And they're out there, now just as they were when he wrote The Intruder.

I found a hardcover of The Intruder for under ten dollars recently from abebooks.com. I urge all readers to do the same. But what I'd really love to see is a savvy small press publisher do a nice edition of it. I'm thinking Subterranean. They did a collection of Beaumont's short stories called A Touch of the Creature about a decade ago.





It's ridiculous, but there are people that still consider Roger Corman nothing but a hack that made bad B movies. And, to be sure, he has a lot of extremely corny movies under his belt. However, Roger Corman has been responsible for many, many smart, important movies. Most of us know that he hired Richard Matheson to adapt Edgar Allen Poe stories for him. Corman also used Ray Russell and R. Wright Campbell. John Sayles. William Hjortsberg. Charles Willeford.

Corman also chronicled the turbulent times he lived in, notably in films like The Wild Angels, The Trip, and Suburbia. And he also hired Charles Beaumont to adapt his own novel, The Intruder, for a motion picture that he directed himself. A film that is arguably the best one he ever helmed.

It was also the first (and one of the only) movies that Roger ever did that lost money. He misjudged this production. Thinking it would be controversial in the South, where there were many drive-in theaters that made him a lot of money. It backfired and and was shunned by the public. Despite acclaim around the world.

A pre-Star Trek William Shatner essayed the role of the intruder and this early performance showed the passionate conviction he had that made him so popular and famous as Captain Kirk. Shatner has become a self deprecating ham by now, but The Intruder shows how talented the man really is. It's a fantastic performance. Quite possibly the best of his career.

Beaumont's screenplay captures the essence of his novel, and if it's a Cliff's Notes version of The Intruder, it's impossible to blame him. Corman's budget demanded a modest running time.

The Intruder was shot in black and white and I think that makes it far more effective than if it had been made in color. As with Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show, the stark black and white photography portrays the dreary, dusty, desolate climate that breeds backward thinking.

Locals were employed in the cast and they are mostly surprisingly effective. Beaumont himself plays the school principle that is sympathetic toward the social change the town and the nation are going through. William F. Nolan plays a townsperson too, but it is George Clayton Johnson that really stands out. His portrayal of an ignorant racist is genuinely unsettling.

The Intruder was an important film of its time and it's still important today. Sometimes I think that our society is more enlightened and other times I wonder.

Sadly, The Intruder is out of print on DVD. Happily, copies are still available for very reasonable prices. I urge everyone reading this to find one while they're still cheap.