One of the great things about the slasher genre is its willingness to turn practically any location into a murder playground. Cabins, campsites, hotels, hospitals, schools, and even outer space – you name it, someone has probably been stabbed there. Intruder takes the action somewhere considerably less glamorous: a fucking supermarket. Yet it’s surprisingly effective, because once the doors close for the night, all those aisles, stockrooms and industrial bits of machinery suddenly look like an enormous collection of implements for dismembering the human body.
Directed by Scott Spiegel in his feature debut, Intruder was partly inspired by his experience working at a real grocery store in Michigan. The production rented an empty supermarket and filled it with more than two tons of defective merchandise so that the place actually looked like a functioning store. That attention to the setting pays off, because the supermarket isn’t merely a backdrop; it’s practically another character. The endless aisles and stockrooms create a wonderfully enclosed environment, while the mundane setting makes the increasingly elaborate murders feel even more grotesque.
The film takes place entirely over one increasingly fucked-up night at a supermarket. After the store closes, cashier Jennifer (Elizabeth Cox) is confronted by her violent ex-boyfriend Craig (David Byrnes), who turns up and starts causing trouble. Her co-worker Linda (Renée Estevez) hits the security alarm, bringing co-owner Bill (Dan Hicks) into the ensuing brawl, and the night crew eventually manages to throw Craig out. With the store already under financial pressure, the owners then announce that they’re selling up, leaving the staff facing unemployment and a mountain of stock to mark down before the place closes for good.
Things get considerably worse when Linda is murdered after her shift, and Bill spots someone lurking around the back of the store. Jennifer’s already on edge thanks to Craig’s increasingly creepy phone calls, while the police essentially tell everyone to be careful before fucking off again. Then the night crew start disappearing, and Jennifer discovers that they’re not merely missing but have been butchered and dismembered throughout the store. What initially looks like a straightforward slasher mystery gradually becomes a full-blown siege as Jennifer tries to work out who the killer is while avoiding becoming the next bit of supermarket produce.
The film eventually throws a nice little curveball into the proceedings. Craig turns out not to be the killer after all, having actually been trying to protect Jennifer, while Bill reveals himself as the culprit. He explains that he couldn’t accept his business partner selling the store, killed him, and then simply got carried away with the whole murder thing. From there it’s basically Jennifer versus Bill inside a locked supermarket, with Craig eventually returning to give his murderous rival a rather spectacular meat-cleaver-assisted kicking. The police arrive just in time to completely misunderstand what happened, arrest Jennifer and Craig, and leave us with one final little “oh, you have got to be fucking kidding me” moment.
Intruder might genuinely be one of the most brutal and gory slashers I’ve watched from the period. This isn’t a film where somebody gets stabbed, the camera cuts away and we hear a scream; Spiegel and his effects team seem determined to show you exactly what happens when human anatomy encounters supermarket equipment. Heads are crushed, bodies are mutilated, and people are chopped into bits with a level of enthusiasm that suggests the effects department were given a simple brief: see how much shit you can get away with. The gore is frequently ridiculous, but it’s also incredibly inventive, and some of the kills are so gloriously nasty that they completely overshadow the fairly conventional slasher mechanics surrounding them.
It helps enormously that the effects work has such an impressive pedigree. Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger were responsible for the special effects, and these are the same people who would go on to form KNB EFX Group and become giants of the genre. Intruder therefore feels like a fascinating snapshot of cult horror history in the making: a dirt-cheap supermarket slasher that happened to gather together several people who would later become hugely influential in genre filmmaking. The original R-rated VHS release actually removed around five minutes of gore, with much of KNB’s effects footage being cut, so if you’re watching it, you really want one of the uncensored versions.
The cast is another reason the film has become such a cult favourite. Elizabeth Cox makes for a perfectly serviceable final girl as Jennifer, while Dan Hicks gives Bill enough sweaty, suspicious energy that you can spend the film wondering whether he’s just an unpleasant shop owner or something considerably worse. David Byrnes is similarly entertaining as Craig, managing to make the character look like the obvious killer while ultimately giving him a more sympathetic role. The supporting cast is where things get particularly interesting, because Intruder is basically a fucking who’s-who of the low-budget horror scene.
Sam Raimi appears as Randy, Ted Raimi turns up as Produce Joe, and Bruce Campbell has a brief appearance as one of the police officers. Greg Nicotero appears as a townie, Lawrence Bender plays another cop and Scott Spiegel himself turns up as the Bread Man. That’s an absurd amount of genre pedigree for a $130,000 supermarket slasher, and it gives the film a strange place in horror history. Raimi, Nicotero, Bender and Spiegel would all go on to considerably bigger things, making Intruder feel like a snapshot of a particular little horror community before several of its members graduated to the big leagues.
It’s also amusing how badly some of the marketing misrepresented the film. Paramount heavily promoted Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi and Ted Raimi as though they were the stars, despite Campbell barely appearing, Ted Raimi having a tiny supporting role, and Sam Raimi playing a comparatively substantial supporting character. Even Renée Estevez was presented as the heroine on some DVD artwork, despite Linda being the first character to get murdered. And some releases spoiled the killer’s identity right there on the fucking VHS cover, which is a fairly impressive way to undermine your own slasher mystery.
The mystery itself isn’t especially sophisticated. Once you’ve figured out what’s happening, there’s not much left to solve, and the characters aren’t exactly overflowing with psychological depth. But I don’t think that’s particularly important here. Intruder gets its mileage from the environment, the increasingly gruesome kills and the sheer enthusiasm with which Spiegel throws himself into the material. It’s a film where the setting genuinely becomes part of the horror, rather than merely providing a quirky backdrop for another generic maniac.
There’s also something wonderfully grubby about the whole thing. The fluorescent lighting, empty aisles, stockrooms and piles of merchandise give the film a strangely oppressive atmosphere, while the practical effects make everything feel tactile in a way that a lot of modern gore simply doesn’t. There’s no mistaking the physicality of what you’re watching. When somebody gets their head crushed, you can practically feel the effects department high-fiving each other behind the camera.
Intruder does have its rough edges. The dialogue is frequently dreadful, some of the performances are decidedly amateurish, and the pacing occasionally feels like it’s waiting around for the next employee to wander into whatever grisly contraption the effects team have prepared. The killer reveal isn’t exactly going to keep you awake at night either, and the final few minutes descend into the sort of glorious nonsense where the police can apparently look at an entire supermarket covered in corpses and reach the wrong fucking conclusion.
But I think that’s exactly why the film has endured as a cult curiosity. There’s a real sense that everyone involved was having fun with the opportunity to make an extremely violent little slasher, and the supermarket setting gives it an identity that most of its contemporaries simply don’t have. Add in the KNB effects, the ridiculous cast of future genre heavyweights and some genuinely stomach-churning kills, and you’ve got a film that’s considerably more memorable than its fairly routine plot has any right to be. There are plenty of better-made slashers, but few that can boast Sam Raimi, Bruce Campbell, Greg Nicotero, and someone having their head turned into mince by a fucking deli slicer.
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