THE DEADLY INTRUDER (1985) is not a very good horror movie, but it’s a pretty good Slasher Search find. It’s an obscure only-on-VHS one from not-prolific filmmakers, but watchable due to okay production values, competent acting, a catchy synth score by director John McCauley (whose only other directing credit is a 1976 snake movie called RATTLERS), and a pretty fun (but very easy to see coming) twist. It’s fairly low rent, but it does have a Hollywood veteran (Stuart Whitman, EATEN ALIVE, THE WHITE BUFFALO) as the police chief and a TV star (Danny Bonaduce, H.O.T.S.) as one of the main characters, so I’m sure it fulfilled its modest intent of putting those names on the ads, circulating drive-ins for a while, and making a few bucks from people with nothing else to do.
It uses the most generic premise of post-HALLOWEEN slashers: a maniac has escaped from a mental hospital and is on a killing spree that intersects with the lives of random residents of a small town. They don’t bother with any type of holiday, anniversary or backstory besides some cops saying he killed his wife and kid. He escapes at night, and the next morning he walks up to a random house and murders a woman (a disturbing and sleazy scene where her breasts pop out of her bathrobe as he dunks her head in the kitchen sink) and steals some clothes. (read the rest of this shit…)
