Similarly, in spite of the title and the menacing opening music, Cramer's good manners and charm continue to suggest him as a hero, even though he is trying to stir up racist feeling, especially when compared to the next significant male character, a loud braggart who appears to be raping his nymphomaniac wife. So, in these opening scenes we are presented with a lead character in the conventional manner, but, unconventionally, we are unable to get a grip on him. Then he comes out with a woman and child, and we assume he's a family man, but that turns out to be wrong too.
At first we think he's a solitary figure, it is him alone we see entering the town and looking at it. He is given the conventional Hollywood hero treatment: the opening credits set up his point of view, establishing his way of looking at the world.īut even over these credits, Corman confuses us. As in a Lang film, there is no 'hero' to root for - the lead here is a sinister right-winger linked to the KKK who arrives in an archetypal Southern town to stir up race hatred. This is Corman's most painstakingly worked-out film, which is why it is so powerful, suggesting, like Lang, a set of mathematical propositions that seem simple but, add up to a theorem that seems to negate mathematical principles of logic, order etc. This may sound like an unintelligent, superficial comparison sure, they're both lynch-mob films, but how can you compare the rigorous intellectual austerity of the German with the sensationalist populism of Corman? Maybe, and this is a film where Corman repeatedly grabs you by the collar and thumps you in the guts, never letting up on the violence or shock, while Lang would keep a more intense distance but they both achieve the same ends with different results. Also known by the more appropriate title 'I Hate Your Guts', this is probably Corman's best film, and takes its visual, stylistic and thematic cue from the work of Fritz Lang, especially 'Fury'.
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