Purdom plays a combat shocked veteran back home to visit his best friend's widow, and consider his dying wish that he kill her children because they are being raised by her new French lover. Combat scenes of chaos open the show, it seems those North Koreans are good at stabbing with bayonets and making prisoners drink dirty water.
Edmund Purdom is no great shakes as an actor, but director Irving Rapper and costar Ida Lupino (herself a director) each guide Purdom to a credible performance in STRANGE INTRUDER. The film also benefits from supporting work by Ann Harding in her last big screen role, and Jacques Bergerac who plays the cad that Lupino's unfaithful character somehow gets tangled up with.
The first clue that there's something seriously out of kilter in Irving Rapper's Strange Intruder is that Ida Lupino takes second billing to Edmund Purdom. Looking like an unsettling cross between Rock Hudson and Gregory Peck (with Ronald Coleman's plummy voice thrown in), this British bore soon wore out his Hollywood welcome and spent the bulk of his career in Italian cheapies.
"Strange Intruder" is a very stupid movie. Its writing is poor and the star, Edmund Purdom, did very, very, very little with what he was given.
