Intruder (1989)

Lively late-period slasher flick involving the overnight-shift crew at a supermarket and the brutally inventive psycho who bumps them all off. Scott Spiegel (a Friend of Raimi) directed, and his camerawork is hilariously inventive. It's as if each shot sets out to find a cooler, odder angle than the last. (Still, nothing here is as whacked as the moment in his From Dusk Till Dawn 2 which finds the camera inside someone's slashed throat.) The hyperactive camera hijinx are matched by the gore scenes, which are throughly ludicrous and thus thoroughly entertaining. There's the occasional run-of-the-mill stabbing, but there's also setpieces centered around trash compactors and table saws, if that tells you anything. The acting is mediocre, but them we don't come to these things for the acting, do we? (In the In-Joke Folder: Both Raimis, Ted and Sam, have small roles, plus Bruce Campbell and Lawrence Bender show up at film's end.) Cheap, cheesy and crazy, which makes it a minor classic by slasher standards.

Grade: B-