The Intruder

A mysterious stranger named Howard Turt arrives in the small town of Holoway to put on a stage show. It couldn't have come at a better time as several members of the town we meet are living in sin. The mayor just accepted a bribe; his wife is cheating on him; his young son runs away from home; his older son is smoking dope and having sex; and the son's girlfriend likes disco dancing. The townies pack the local theater to see Turt's performance, which involves a coffin-shaped box that emits a bright blue light. After that, all of the attendees emit a blue aura and are unable to lie. Yes, the H. Turt has set them free.

Filmed in Brantford, Ontario in 1979, this bizarre Canadian film almost feels Earl Owensby-esque but minus all the cool exploitation stuff he would put in his movies. You'd think it was a Christian film, but it has full nudity and cursing. My favorite part has the town council having a meeting about the stranger and the police chief offers the following: "Just as a precaution in case this guy is up to no good, as Elliott feels he is, I'm going to post an observation on him of 24 hours. I think he's up to no good." I also love when one council member reads Turt's flyer: "It's taken all civilization to the end of the 20th century to make Howard Turt. Come see for yourself, don't rely on others. See the truth for yourself. Admission free, donations gratefully accepted at the end of the show." Should you really trust a mysterious deity with truth-spells who asks for donations? Dialogue like that and people being nonchalant about suddenly glowing blue make this film by director David Eustace and writer Norman Fox almost blissfully naive. Sadly, it is also pretty dang boring, although I give it credit for having the best opening minute I've seen in a movie in a long time. It doesn't look like it played anywhere theatrically and only got a limited VHS release.

Okay... This movie almost defies explanation because of its horribly slow pace. I have most of the movie on tape when it was on "Commander USA's Groovie Movies" on USA Network in the 80's. If the commander wasn't spicing it up the film would've been almost unwatchable. I mean it's bad in a good way. It's a great midnight movie. A weird guy, who's presumably from space, drives an ugly American car with a trailer into a Canadian town chock full o' tepid deceit. The trailer has a sign on it that has a lovely crude sign on it that says "Coming Soon." Once in the town he rents a hall so Howard Turt (nee Turd) can put on a show. The inbred locals attempt to rough up the car, the weirdo, and the casket in the trailer. The show goes on and Howard (a glowing light from within the casket) turns some of the locals a lovely shade of blue, forcing them to tell the truth. It's at this point I taped over the end of the movie with the film adaptation of War of the Worlds. At this point I would just like to say that I am not on drugs and this movie does exist as I have described it. It just seems to awful to be true. Beware! This movie is out there somewhere!

I, too, saw this film on "Commander USA's Groovie Movies" when I was a kid. I don't remember much about it, except that it had a terribly complicated plot and contained almost no suspense or horror to speak of. The one thing I remember about this film (one that I can't forget) is "Mikey" one of the main character's sons. "Mikey" was this creepy red-haired kid who, for some reason, spoke entirely on a post-synchronized soundtrack (with his heavily Canadian-accented voice dubbed in by what was obviously an adult mimicking a kid's voice). In one scene, he climbed on top of this glowing coffin and said, "I like you, you're nice and bright! Want me to climb in??!" He then climbed into the coffin and disappeared for the remainder of the film. Odd.