Butcher Block is a weekly series celebrating horror’s most extreme films and the minds behind them. Dedicated to graphic gore and splatter, each week will explore the dark, the disturbed, and the depraved in horror, and the blood and guts involved. For the films that use special effects of gore as an art form, and the fans that revel in the carnage, this series is for you.
Intruder is what happens when you take the tongue in cheek humor of director/writer Scott Spiegel, fresh off writing Evil Dead II, and the unrestrained special makeup effects of young gurus in the making Robert Kurtzman, Greg Nicotero, and Howard Berger. A gory bloodbath of a slasher set in grocery store during the overnight shift with cheesy puns and humor befitting of The Three Stooges. In other words, it’s a whole hell of a lot of fun. It took a long while for the film to catch on, though, due to it getting caught up in the collapse of Empire Pictures and the MPAA on the warpath of restricting the slasher craze. When Intruder finally was released, it was highly edited to the point where the glorious kills were cut out, making it seem as if the victims simply disappeared. Luckily, those scenes were restored and Intruder finally caught on among fans like it deserved from the start.
The plot is somewhat generic and straightforward, and most of the marketing material gives away the killer. Yet the supermarket setting makes for some surprising and fun kills. Who knew there were so many ways to die in a grocery store? Though Intruder follows a basic slasher formula, it doesn’t bother much with conventional character archetypes so there are some characters that seems like they’d survive a lot farther into the run time than they do. Spiegel’s screenplay also addresses what would play out if the cops showed up right after the final girl won her final battle with the killer in a more reality based setting.
The true star here, though, is the special effects. Kurtzman, Nicotero, and Berger has just launched their own studio, K.N.B. EFX Group, and were looking getting their name out there and transition into a more supervisorial role. When most film productions wanted effects studios with more experience under their belt, it made things difficult for the trio in establishing their newly launched company, perhaps further complicated by being only in their early 20s. So, giving them the reigns for special effects here gave them the needed experience to further establish their studio and gave the production a trio of extremely talented special effects and make-up artists for a steal; Kurtzman, Nicotero, and Berger were each paid $700 each for labor and materials to do Intruder. To be fair, the budget was miniscule and the principal photography lasted only a couple weeks, but considering what the trio delivered it is jaw-dropping. Even more impressive is that they pulled out this caliber of work during nights, as they were working on effects for DeepStar Six during the day.
In their hands, and in Spiegel’s script, Walnut Lake Market became the most hazardous of working conditions. The killer used the grocery store to his fullest advantage, delivering kills by way of skewers through the eye, meat cleavers, meat hooks to skulls, trash compactors, and even the carbonation of a large stock of beer to unleash maximum blood spray.
All are violent and messy, but the crowning glory (even in the eyes of the make-up effects team) is the gnarly death by bandsaw. The camera gets extremely close and personal with the excruciating, slow slicing of the victim’s head. It looks so real that even one of the members of the make-up team fled in tears after watching.
Between Spiegel’s sense of humor, his gleeful joy on display at his first feature directing gig, and the stunning work by Kurtzman, Nictotero, and Berger, Intruder is far more fun than it had any right to be. Cameos by Spiegel’s friends and neighbors Sam Raimi, Ted Raimi, and Bruce Campbell played a role in drawing in fans of the Evil Dead series, but it’s the special effects team that stole the show.
