Targets (1968)

From debuting director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc?, Paper Moon, Mask), I saw the title for this film in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I rightly assumed it was something do with an assassin, but I had no idea about the plot, and I was very excited by the cast, especially the lead actor and the director himself. The story is based on that of ex-marine Charles Whitman from Texas in 1966, he murdered his own mother and wife, and armed himself with many rifles and handguns, and went on a shooting spree killing fourteen innocent people and wounding thirty two others, so this film is a fictionalised reinvention of that idea. Basically ageing horror movie star Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff) has become bored with acting and feels that monsters he is playing are going out of fashion, so despite getting a new script that was written specifically for him he wants to retire, but friend Sammy Michaels (Peter Bogdanovich) is insisting he keep going. Bobby Thompson (Tim O'Kelly) is a quiet insurance agent and Vietnam War veteran who one day snaps, murdering his wife, his wife and a delivery boy from the grocery store, and armed with several rifles and handguns, that he has been collecting from a gun store, he goes to the top of a Los Angeles oil refinery area and starts randomly shooting cars passing by the passengers inside and getting out on the nearby freeway, many killed and others wounded from his actions. Orlok may be tiring of the limelight and wanting to move on from his career, but he allows himself to attend and make a final promotional appearance during the performance of his classic film The Terror playing at a drive-in theatre in Reseda, he and his colleagues do not realise that the amateur assassin is setting up his weaponry to kill people when they are least expecting. The film starts playing and people are settling with no concerns, and then soon enough people have bullet holes cracking their windshields, people inside the cars are being shot and either killed or wounded, and slowly more people realise that a gunman is aiming at them from above, and this was not long after the star of the show arrived. The end of the film sees Thompson getting ready to leave the scene, when he realises the police are gathering outside, and Orlok is brave enough to limp over to the young murderer and slap his to allow the police to catch him, he feels better for doing something good, and all Thompson wants to know before being taken away is how many victims are dead. Also starring Nancy Hsueh as Jenny, James Brown as Robert Thompson Sr., Sandy Baron as Kip Larkin, Arthur Peterson as Ed Loughlin, Mary Jackson as Charlotte Thompson, Tanya Morgan as Ilene Thompson and Monte Landis as Marshall Smith. This was one of the last films that Karloff appeared in, as he was in ill health, the following year he tragically died, so was only hired to film for a short period, but he proves himself a great choice as the old actor who wants to get away from it all, and O'Kelly is absolutely the right person to play the young uncoordinated assassin whose actions are never explained, which makes him all the more creepy. There is not much of a plot or story as such, but it is fascinating to watch, because the two stories combining and eventually coming together makes good sense, it is full of interesting moments when Karloff is on screen, and the unhinged random shooting sequences are most watchable, it is in small parts disturbing as well, a fantastic crime thriller. Very good!

One of the things I truly like and admire about Boris Karloff was that he pretty much kept on playing in the same sort of movies and played the same sort of roles, throughout his entire career. Seems to me he looked for movies and parts that suited him and more let movies adapt to him, rather than the other way around.It's also a well kept secret Karloff actually was a pretty good actor! In this movie he definitely gets to show some of his skills and I really enjoyed him in, what later turned out to be, one of his final roles.But really, it's not a Karloff movie and I also most certainly don't see him as the lead role in this. It's actually best to know as little as possible about this movie, since that way you shall definitely enjoy it most, just as I pretty much did. It's a movie that constantly throws you off. The one moment you think the movie is going to be about one thing but it then later turns out it's being about something totally different and unrelated!You could see this movie as one that has two simultaneous story lines in it. Both of them are seemingly unrelated to each other but they of course come together toward its end. Not in the most convincing way and it seems a bit random all but I don't know, the randomness of it seemed to sort of suit the movie.It's because it also has some other very random things going on in it. I'm referring to the sniper, who truly randomly picks his victims and goes on a terrible killing spree. There is something very uncomfortable and horrendous about it and I'm not even kidding when I say that this is one of the most violent movies I have ever seen, purely due to the randomness and pointlessness of all the killings! And I really mean and say this all in a positive way.It besides all gets shot and buildup in a very effective and also realistic way. Director Peter Bogdanovich certainly did a great job handling its tension and it will put you on the edge of your seat and let you hold your breath for a few seconds.It's really surprising how great and original this movie is! I say surprising, since this isn't exactly being a movie that is well known anywhere. It makes this a criminal underrated movie, that most definitely deserves to be seen by more!8/10 http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

"The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society — and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic. The crucial question is whether a quasi-autistic or low-grade schizophrenic disturbance helps us to explain the violence spreading today." - Erich Fromm In 1965, teenager Michael Clark positioned himself upon a hilltop overlooking Highway 101, south of Orcutt, California. Using a Mauser rifle equipped with telescopic sight he fired upon passing cars, killing three individuals and wounding six. Clark committed suicide when police rushed his hill. A year later Malcom X was assassinated.In 1966, Former US Marine Charles Whitman embarked on a shooting rampage at a university campus in Texas. He killed 16 people and injured 32. Whitman killed his victims from a university tower observation deck. Earlier that day he murdered his wife and mother at home. Two years later, Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy were assassinated.Today, Roger Corman is well known for producing and directing a string of low budget B-movies and exploitation films. "Targets" is one of his most interesting. Seeking to exploit the string of assassinations and shooting rampages that were rocketing across 1960s America, Corman gathered together thirty thousand dollars, latched upon the vague idea of a film based on the life and killings of Charles Whitman, and hired a young Peter Bogdanovich to direct the film. "Targets" was Bogdanovich's debut. He was hired because Corman could pay him virtually nothing. Bogdanovich would go on to make a number of critically praised films, but few are as interesting as this nauseating little horror movie.Bogdanovich would write the film's screenplay with the help of director Sam Fuller, both artists elevating the film beyond your usual Roger Corman fare. Bizarrely, Corman stipulated that "Targets" include footage from "The Terror", a horror movie he had made years earlier. As ageing horror movie legend Boris Karloff, renowned for his roles in early silent and sound horror movies ("The Mummy", "The Body Snatcher", many iconic, early "Franenstein" movies and many Universal Studios horror flicks), owed Corman two days worth of acting, Corman also stipulated that Karloff be written into the film. Bogdanovich obliged.The end result is a film with two narrative strands. On one hand we follow Karloff's character, who plays an ageing horror actor struggling to find modern roles (an obvious allusion to Karloff and his own career), whilst on the other hand we follow a character called Bobby Thompson, a retired Vietnam veteran who seems like an upstanding, all American boy, until he embarks on a murder spree. Both narrative strands don't intersect until the film's climax.Much of the film watches from afar as Bobby does mundane daily activities - talking to his parents, girlfriend, co-workers, shopping, watching TV, sleeping etc – the film conveying a kind of depressingly hollow post-war America, in which cement, strip malls, drive-ins and junk food are the equivalent of culture, and in which everyone is atomised, automatised and drearily locked into their own private cubicles. The film's horror is apparent even before Bobby begins his killings, Bogdanovich latching on to a kind of banal, sunbaked, urban hell (the complete opposite to the romantic, moody, noirish urbana of "Taxi Drivr"); highways ceaselessly spinning cars like conveyor belts, gaudy post war architecture, antiseptic suburban homes, the giant, bland cisterns of oil refineries, the tacky warble of TV and radio. The film's aesthetic sickens. And then the killings begins.Bobby's murders are shot with a similar tone of ambivalence or detachment, Bogdanovich forcing us to watch as Bobby matter-of-factly shoots his parents and lover and then perches himself above a highway. Here he emotionlessly snipes the drivers and passengers of passing cars. No overt attempt is made to psychoanalyse or investigate Bobby's motivations. The film's tone is simply one of nauseating indifference. Unlike most horror/slasher/exploitation films, "Targets" never feels like its been designed to tantalise. Of course salacious plots and exploitative hooks were always Corman's chief aims, but Fuller and Bogdanovich short circuit their producer. How successful they are is arguable.The film ends with Bobby and Karloff meeting, fittingly, in a cinema. It is here where old-horror collides with new, the ancient, classic, black-and-white horror movie star of yesteryear facing up to and superseded by a new, nihilistic generation. Karloff's character hearkens back to Bela Lugosi, Universal and Hammer Horror classics. Bobby's Hitchcock's "Psycho", Powell's "Peeping Tom" and the gore, slasher, zombie and exploitation-horror waves that would follow. The film's climax plays like a raging metaphor for the collapse of the Motion Picture Production Code, the death of Old Hollywood, the stupidity of lax gun control laws, the disintegration of the nuclear family, the real results of post war economic expansion, the impossibility of the American ideal, and the festering rot behind both modern society and audiences, who demand blood as compensation for their own lives. It may be a cheap, trashy film, but Bogdanovich's tone homes in on a kind of wide-spread, societal dysfunction.7.9/10 – Worth one viewing.

After an entire career of doing horror, Byron Orlok(Karloff) wants nothing other than to retire. He agrees to one last public appearance, at the showing of his work at a drive-in. Nearby a seemingly normal man is about to snap. And the worse news is that he's good with a sniper rifle. It is obvious enough how these two plot-lines will meet, though they will lead to a bit of a letdown of a climax. Really, this kind of just... stops. The aforementioned is an odd mix, anyway, and for the explanation we need look no further than how this came to be. Roger Corman approached Peter saying he had to use footage from The Terror and film Boris for two days, and then he could do the rest over a few days. He had to figure out how to make the combination work, and this is what he came up with. That in mind, he did a great job, and really, the majority of this is well-done. It's pretty well-paced, never leaving you bored. Tension is built well(the lack of score, other than radio, works really well), it's shot and edited nicely enough(using guerrilla techniques! And applying tips from Hitchcock and Hawks, making it superior to average low budget pieces), and it is genuinely funny when it tries to be. Acting is fine(well, with a couple of stand-out performances, the British gentleman is fantastic, and the gunman is memorable). It is exciting, effective, shocking and honestly does surprise you. The 86 minute running time passes quickly, and the details and realism work in its favor. There is a lot of bloody violence in this. The DVD comes with an interesting commentary track and a good 13 and a half minute introduction, both by Bogdanovich. I recommend this to fans of thrillers. 8/10