I Hate Your Guts Reviews

Crude, vivid, anti-segregationist agitprop from Roger Corman--much more impressive in retrospect than several slick Hollywood melodramas on the same theme. William Shatner, memorably creepy in the kind of vehicle he should have had more often, plays Adam Cramer, a professional right-wing agitator who whips up racist fervor across the American South (the character is closely based on real-life segregationist John Kasper). Arriving in a formerly sleepy southern town, he instigates a hate campaign that persuades poor whites to harass black students at the newly integrated high school; only the local newspaper publisher (Frank McDaniel) stands in his way. Cramer takes time out to seduce a neglected housewife (Jeanne Cooper) while her husband is out of town. Meanwhile, racial tensions heat up, and a black minister is killed when a bomb is tossed into his church. Cramer escalates the hostilities by coercing the publisher's daughter (Beverly Lunsford) into making a false charge of rape against one of the black students, leading to a climactic lynch party. The film was shot in three weeks on location in Charleston, Missouri, using local people as extras. Screenwriter Charles Beaumont also plays a small role in this frighteningly honest film.