Targets

Roger Corman offered to produce (without credit) whatever film first time director Peter Bogdanovich wanted to make under two conditions: He had to cast Boris Karloff, who owed Corman two days work; and to keep the cost down, he had to pad the running time with footage from an earlier Karloff film. The result was TARGETS (1968), which proved to be too topical for many theaters to touch when it initially appeared. That's a shame, because it provided Karloff with an A-level role as the sun set on his life and career. Bogdanovich tells parallel stories which converge at the finale: One involves a young man who turns to bloodshed when he feels that he has nothing ahead of him; the other revolves around an aged film star who believes that everyt...

As relevant today as it was when it was made

An aged horror icon (Boris Karloff) wants to retire because hes weary of the biz and thinks modern life has become more horrifying than his old-fashioned movies. But a director/writer (Peter Bogdanovich) encourages him to read an atypical script or, at least, attend a promotional appearance at a drive-in, which is showing his latest movie, The Terror. Unfortunately, a young ordinary man (Tim O'Kelly) has snapped and is on a killing spree with the drive-in being his final shooting range.

Targets (1968) is a minor cult masterpiece, a self-conscious postmodernist piece inspired by the Texas Tower Sniper from August 1, 1966, who killed 14 people and wounded 31 others at the University of ...

Hmmm Ive never quite got Bogdanovich. Im still not convinced. Targets is a good ideaold-school horror legend (Karloff, doing his best with what hes given) crosses paths with a modern-day, real-world killerbut it never quite lands.

Karloffs great, obviously, and theres something poignant about him playing a man who knows hes past it. But the rest? Bit of a slog, honestly. The sniper stuff should be tense, but its weirdly flat. And the script is dreadfulpeople talking like theyve just learned how conversations work.

It feels like Bogdanovich had something to say about violence and movies but got distracted by showing off how clever he is. It's not a total write-off, but I wouldnt rush to watch it again.