Intruder (1989 film)

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Intruder cover.jpg
DVD released by Wizard Entertainment
Directed by Scott Spiegel
Produced by Lawrence Bender
Screenplay by Scott Spiegel
Story by Scott Spiegel
Lawrence Bender
Based on Night Crew 
by Scott Spiegel
Starring Dan Hicks
David Byrnes
Elizabeth Cox
Renée Estevez
Music by Basil Poledouris
Cinematography Fernando Argüelles
Edited by King Wilder
Beyond Infinity
Phantom Productions
Distributed by Empire Pictures
Release dates
  • 1989 (1989) (United States)
Running time
83 minutes (R-rated version)
88 minutes (Unrated Director's Cut)
Country United States
Language English
Budget $130,000[citation needed]

Intruder is a 1989 horror film written and directed by Scott Spiegel, and co-written by Lawrence Bender.


A supermarket closes, and the workers start to restock the shelves for the next day. Craig, the former boyfriend of cashier Jennifer, appears, and the two have an argument. Worried for her friend, Linda presses her panic button. Co-owner Bill appears, and a fight ensues. Craig escapes onto the shop floor, and the night crew set out to track him down whilst Jennifer calls the police. On discovering Craig, there is another scuffle, and Craig is ejected from the building, and disappears into the night.

The night crew is gathered by the owners, who announce they are selling the store, and that the staff will soon be out of a job. The employees are assigned the task of marking down all the stock in preparation for the close. Craig makes telephone calls to the store, unnerving Jennifer. The police arrive, but do little to help, and just tell the group to be careful.

Linda finishes her shift, and is stabbed and killed by an unseen attacker while taking groceries out to her car. Bill spots someone trying to enter through the back door, and goes out to investigate. He finds Craig watching Jennifer through the bathroom window, and is clubbed over the head with a hammer. Back in the store, the unseen assailant begins to stalk the employees, and kills them one by one. As Danny grabs a drink, the assailant attacks him from behind, before pushing his eyes through a sharp nail pointing up from the table. Later, as Produce Joe is chopping carrots, the assailant suddenly slams a chef's knife through his head, splitting his head. The murderer then proceeds to kill Tim who is enjoying a beer by stabbing Tim through his stomach, which his blood splatters all over the beer cans. When Bub looks for Tim, the murderer grabs him and crushes his head under a box crusher, splattering his blood all over the engine. Later on, he proceeds to kill Randy by impaling him on a meat hook. With only two survivors left, the murderer attacks and kills Dave by splitting his head with a meat cutter. The murderer dismembers his victims, and leaves body parts around the store.

Realizing that everyone seems to have vanished, Jennifer goes to investigate and discovers several bodies and bodyparts in the storerooms. Terrified, she is attacked by the murderer but manages to escape back onto the shop floor. Hearing someone at the door, she attempts to attract their attention, but they have left by the time she gets there. Craig grabs her, but she incapacitates him with a meat hook she grabbed earlier. Bill staggers in and says Craig attacked him outside the store, and he proceeds to call the police.

Jennifer notices that Bill's hands are covered in blood and realizes he was killing everyone all along. Bill tells her that he could not let his partner sell the store, so he killed him and got carried away killing the others. Bill attacks Jennifer and chases her around the locked building. A delivery man appears outside, but he is killed by Bill before Jennifer can get his attention. Bill reenters the building and stalks Jennifer again. Craig grabs Jennifer and tells her that he saw Bill killing Linda, and he climbed into the building through the bathroom window to save her. Bill appears and bludgeons Craig with Danny's severed head while Jennifer flees.

Crawling out the bathroom window, Jennifer attempts to escape in her car, but she finds Linda's body in it. Bill grabs her legs and pulls Jennifer under the car, but she stabs him with a chef's knife she had pulled from Linda. Jennifer heads to a phone booth to call the police, but Bill reappears and starts to smash the booth to get at her. Bill tips the phone booth over and traps Jennifer, but Craig appears and hacks him with his own meat cleaver.

Jennifer and Craig are standing in the car park over Bill's body when the police arrive, and the police arrest them. As he dies, Bill shouts to the police that the pair had gone mad and killed everyone, in which the police believe him and arrest the two.



Intruder marked the feature directorial debut of Scott Spiegel. The film was partially based around Scott Spiegel's experiences working at the real Walnut Lake Market in Michigan. It was also something of a remake of an earlier Super-8 short film by Spiegel. The short was a slasher story called Night Crew, and featured a more Halloween-inspired killer.[citation needed]

Intruder was filmed at an empty grocery store which was rented to the crew of the film. The shelves were empty and bare and the crew had a company that specialized in damaged goods deliver over two tons of defective merchandise to stock the store.


The film was originally entitled The Night Crew, but distributors felt that the film would be more marketable if it was given a more generic slasher film title; thus it was released as Intruder.[citation needed]

The Paramount VHS video cover (along with various other video and DVD releases) and the film's trailers all reveal the identity of the killer, thus spoiling the film's dramatic tension.

Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, and Ted Raimi were all heavily promoted by Paramount as the stars of the film, and their names feature prominently on video and DVD artwork. None of them are actually the stars of the picture. Sam Raimi plays a supporting character. Ted Raimi has a small supporting role, barely more than a bit part. Bruce Campbell appears in the final scene in a brief cameo. The back cover of the DVD release makes it appear that Renée Estevez is the heroine, whereas in the film she is the first character to die.

The original VHS release from Paramount Home Video contained the R-rated version, which was missing five minutes of gore footage. Nearly all of KNB's effects footage was removed. The 2005 US DVD release by Wizard Entertainment presents the director's cut.[1] Synapse Films released an uncensored version of Intruder on combo DVD/Blu-ray on 13 December 2011.[2]


Adam Tyner of DVD Talk awarded four and a half out of five stars and wrote that Intruder "easily ranks up there as one of the best slashers I've ever seen".[3] DVD Verdict referred to it as "a very cool film" and said, "While it includes all the genre tropes, it presents them in a way that feels fresher and more creative than many of the countless other maniac-on-the-loose films that the decade produced".[4] Intruder was deemed one of the "greatest entries" in the slasher film boom of the 1980s by Horror[5] Bloody Disgusting rated the film three out of five stars and wrote, "It's certainly no horror classic, but for stalwart gorehounds, Intruder is sweet, sweet manna."[1]


  1. ^ a b "Intruder". Bloody Disgusting. 30 November 2011. Retrieved 16 January 2014. 
  2. ^ Miska, Brad (5 October 2011). "Synapse Brings 'Intruder' UNCUT to Blu-ray". Bloody Disgusting. Retrieved 16 January 2014. 
  3. ^ Tyner, Adam (27 November 2011). "Intruder (Director's Cut) (Blu-ray)". DVD Talk. Retrieved 20 May 2013. 
  4. ^ Becker, Tom (2 December 2011). "Intruder (Blu-ray)". DVD Verdict. Retrieved 20 May 2013. 
  5. ^ Killion (11 December 2011). "Film Review: Intruder (1989)". Retrieved 20 May 2013. 

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