Targets

Targets
1967 - Paramount
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich



SYNOPSIS

After a screening of his latest film, aging horror star Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff) decides to retire. After much debate he decides to agree to make one final personal appearance at a drive-in to help promote the film. Meanwhile, a deeply disturbed young man (Tim O'Kelly) kills his wife and mother before heading out to open fire on cars on the highway. After shooting several drivers and passengers, he escapes before the police close in. He ducks into the drive-in with plenty of ammo left.



MY THOUGHTS

Dual plots collide in a suspenseful way.

The sniper part of Targets is inspired by the story of Charles Whitman, who shot up the campus of the University of Texas from a tower in 1966.

The other half of the film happened due to producer Roger Corman having Boris Karloff under contract for a few more days. Corman didn't care exactly what director Peter Bogdanovich made... but he required the director to use Karloff and plenty of stock footage of his film The Terror (also starring Karloff.) Instead of making a retread of that Gothic horror... Bogdanovich whipped up something very modern and made appropriate use of the footage.

Despite being thrown together, the Hollywood plot works on many levels.
Bogdanovich plays the young director in the film. He tries to get Orlok to make just one more picture... where he gets to play a real person and not some "Victorian era monster." This is exactly what happens in Targets.
Also, Orlok bemoans that many of his classics are now referred to as "high camp" instead of horror. I wonder if Karloff also shared this sentiment since many of his are viewed the same way. This was one of Karloff's final films and he delivers a great performance despite his failing health.

Tim O'Kelly plays the shooter. The role is more Richie Cunningham than Travis Bickle and that makes the character far more sinister. He seems to come from a stable home, though he and his wife live with his parents. We don't know what his motivation is for murder... although headaches are alluded to (Charles Whitman had headaches and an autopsy revealed a brain tumor that may have contributed to his shooting spree.)

As anyone would suspect, the two plot lines do come together and clash at the end. It happened in a way I didn't expect and the film is much better for it.

Bogdanovich is the quintessential film geek. At the time he made this, while launching his film career, he was also a writer and interviewed many legendary directors like Orson Welles, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, and John Ford. He pays tribute to Hawks by showing a clip of his film The Criminal Code, an early and somewhat obscure film starring Karloff. The rest of Targets is littered with other references to films and the lingo of the business. The film also uses audio from Anatomy of a Murder.
We get a rare non-cynical take on the film industry, probably due to Bogdanovich's youth and enthusiasm for the subject.

The film is very well shot, often using long takes to set a scene. It gives it a realistic, almost documentary-feel. Targets has the same grittiness that would define the action films of the 1970's.

Bogdanovich seems to be trying to make a point about the horror of real-life violence vs. film violence. His message is somewhat muddled and you don't really know exactly what he's trying to say.

Despite the muddy message, Targets is suspenseful and entertaining... and (I'm very sorry for this:) you should set in in your sights today!