Targets (1968) is a thriller film written, produced and directed by Peter Bogdanovich.

Plot summary [link]

The story concerns a quiet insurance agent / Vietnam veteran, played by Tim O'Kelly, who murders his young wife, his mother and a grocery delivery boy at home and then initiates an afternoon shooting rampage from atop a Los Angeles area oil refinery. Several motorists and passengers are wounded or killed on the nearby freeway. When the police respond and start to close in on him he flees and resumes his shootings at a Reseda drive-in theater where an aging horror film icon is making a final promotional appearance before retirement.

The character and actions of the killer are patterned after Charles Whitman, the University of Texas sniper. The character of actor Byron Orlok, named after Max Schreck's vampire Count Orlok in 1922's Nosferatu, is patterned after Boris Karloff himself, who in fact plays the part in his last appearance in a major American film (although Bogdanovich states that, unlike Orlok, Karloff was not embittered with the movie business and did not wish to retire).

In the film's finale, which takes place at a drive-in theater, Karloff — the old-fashioned, traditional screen monster who always obeyed the rules — confronts the new, realistic, nihilistic late-1960s monster in the shape of a clean-cut, unassuming multiple murderer. He slaps the murderer into submission and the police arrive and affect an arrest. The murderer wonders aloud about the exact number of victims after his wounding or killing of several theater patrons,

Cast [link]

• Tim O'Kelly as Bobby Thompson
• Boris Karloff as Byron Orlok
• Arthur Peterson as Ed Loughlin
• Monte Landis as Marshall Smith
• Nancy Hsueh as Jenny
• Peter Bogdanovich as Sammy Michaels

Production [link]

Bogdanovich got the chance to make Targets because Boris Karloff owed studio head Roger Corman two days' work. Corman told Bogdanovich he could make any film he liked provided he used Karloff and stayed under budget. In addition, Bogdanovich had to use clips from Corman's Napoleonic-era thriller The Terror in the movie. The clips from The Terror feature Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff. Bogdanovich has said that Samuel Fuller provided generous help on the screenplay and refused to accept either a fee or a screen credit, so Bogdanovich named his own character Sammy Michaels (Fuller's middle name was Michael) in tribute. Fuller advised Bogdanovich to save as much money in the film's budget as possible for the film to have an action-packed conclusion.

Reception [link]

Although the film was written and production photography completed in late 1967, it was released after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy in early 1968 and thus had some topical relevance to then-current events. Nevertheless it was not very successful at the box office.

However, Bogdanovich, who appears in the film as a young writer-director (i.e. like Karloff, playing a character very similar to himself in real life), credits it with getting him noticed by the studios, which in turn led to his directing three very successful studio films in the early 1970s.

The movie is currently included as one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

Cultural references [link]

The Elvis Costello song "Big Tears," released on his 1978 album This Year's Model, is said by Costello himself to refer to this film.

See also [link]

• 1965 Highway 101 sniper attack

External links [link]

• Targets at the Internet Movie Database
• Targets at AllRovi
• Review at culturecourt.com

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