''Targets'' is a 1968 American
crime
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definit ...
thriller film
Thriller film, also known as suspense film or suspense thriller, is a broad film genre that evokes excitement and suspense in the audience. The suspense element found in most films' plots is particularly exploited by the filmmaker in this genre ...
directed by
Peter Bogdanovich
Peter Bogdanovich (July 30, 1939 – January 6, 2022) was an American director, writer, actor, producer, critic, and film historian.
One of the "New Hollywood" directors, Bogdanovich started as a film journalist until he was hired to work on R ...
, produced by
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman (born April 5, 1926) is an American film director, producer, and actor. He has been called "The Pope of Pop Cinema" and is known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film. Many of Corman's films are based on works t ...
, and written by
Polly Platt
Polly is a given name, most often feminine, which originated as a variant of Molly (a diminutive of Mary). Polly may also be a short form of names such as Polina, Polona, Paula or Paulina.
People named or nicknamed Polly
Female
*Caresse Cros ...
and Bogdanovich, with cinematography by
László Kovács.
[Stephen Jacobs, ''Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster'', Tomahawk Press 2011 p 487-492]
The film depicts two parallel narratives which converge during the climax: one follows Bobby Thompson (
Tim O'Kelly
Tim O'Kelly (variously O'Kelley; born Timothy Patrick Wright, March 12, 1941 – January 4, 1990) was an American actor best known for playing the homicidal sniper in Peter Bogdanovich's film ''Targets'' (1968).
Career
O'Kelly first gained atte ...
), a seemingly ordinary and wholesome young man who embarks on an unprovoked killing spree; the other depicts Byron Orlok (
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), better known by his stage name Boris Karloff (), was an English actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film ''Frankenstein'' (1931) (his 82nd film) established h ...
in his last straight dramatic role), an iconic
horror film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...
actor who is disillusioned by real-life violence and is contemplating retirement.
''Targets'' received generally positive reviews. It was included in the 2003 book ''
1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die''.
Plot
Byron Orlok, an aged, embittered horror movie actor, abruptly announces his decision to retire and return to his native
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
to live out his final days. Orlok considers himself outdated because he believes that people are no longer frightened by old-fashioned horror, citing real-life news stories as more horrifying than anything in his films. However, after much persuasion, particularly from young director Sammy Michaels, Orlok agrees to make a final in-person promotional appearance at a
Reseda drive-in theater
A drive-in theater or drive-in cinema is a form of movie theater, cinema structure consisting of a large outdoor movie screen, a projection booth, a concession stand, and a large parking area for automobiles. Within this enclosed area, customers ...
before leaving Hollywood for good.
Bobby Thompson is a young, quiet, clean-cut insurance agent and
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
veteran who lives in the suburban
San Fernando Valley
The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, California. Located to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it contains a large portion of the City of Los Angeles, as well as unincorporated ar ...
area with his wife and his parents. Thompson is also deeply disturbed and an obsessive gun collector, but his family takes little notice. One morning, after his father leaves for work, Thompson murders his wife, his mother, and a delivery boy at his home. That afternoon, Thompson continues the killing spree, shooting people in passing cars from atop an oil storage tank that sits alongside a heavily-travelled freeway. When an employee at the storage tank comes up to investigate the gunshots, Thompson shoots him as well. Leaving some of his guns and ammo at the crime scene, Thompson flees to the very same drive-in theater where Orlok is set to appear that evening.
After sunset, Thompson kills the theater's projectionist and perches himself on the framing inside the screen tower. While the Orlok film is shown, Thompson aims and shoots at the patrons in and around the parking lot via a hole in the projection screen. After Thompson wounds Orlok's secretary, Jenny, Orlok confronts Thompson, who is disoriented by Orlok's simultaneous appearance before him and on the large movie screen behind him, allowing the actor to disarm Thompson using his walking cane. Looking at the now-defeated Thompson, a visibly shaken Orlok remarks, "Is ''that'' what I was afraid of?" Moments later, police officers arrive to arrest Thompson for the murders he has committed; as they lead him away, Thompson states with apparent satisfaction that he "hardly ever missed."
Cast
Production
The character and actions of Bobby Thompson are patterned after
Charles Whitman
Charles Joseph Whitman (June 24, 1941 – August 1, 1966) was an American mass murderer who became known as the "Texas Tower Sniper". On August 1, 1966, Whitman used knives to kill his mother and his wife in their respective homes, then went to ...
, who perpetrated the
University of Texas tower shooting
On August 1, 1966, after stabbing his mother and his wife to death the previous night, Charles Whitman, a Marine veteran, took rifles and other weapons to the observation deck atop the Main Building tower at the University of Texas at Austin, ...
in 1966. The character of Byron Orlok, named after
Max Schreck
Friedrich Gustav Maximilian Schreck Eickhoff, Stefan. 2007 (6 September 1879 – 20 February 1936), Walk, Ines. 2006. known professionally as Max Schreck, was a German actor, best known for his lead role as the vampire Count Orlok in the film ' ...
's vampire
Count Orlok
Count Orlok (german: Graf Orlok), commonly but erroneously known as Nosferatu, is the main antagonist and title character portrayed by German actor Max Schreck (1879–1936) in the silent film ''Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens'' (1922). He ...
in 1922's ''
Nosferatu
''Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror'' (German: ''Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens'') is a 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film directed by F. W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife ...
'', was based on Karloff himself, with a fictional component of being embittered with the movie business and wanting to retire. The role was Karloff's last appearance in a major American film.
Karloff gives a celebrated 100-second
single-take performance of
W. Somerset Maugham
William Somerset Maugham ( ; 25 January 1874 – 16 December 1965) was an English writer, known for his plays, novels and short stories. Born in Paris, where he spent his first ten years, Maugham was schooled in England and went to a German un ...
's retelling of the
Babylonian fable ''
Appointment in Samarra
''Appointment in Samarra'', published in 1934, is the first novel by American writer John O'Hara (1905–1970). It concerns the self-destruction of the fictional character Julian English, a wealthy car dealer who was once a member of the socia ...
''.
In the film's finale at a drive-in theater, Orlok—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.
Bogdanovich got the chance to make ''Targets'' because
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt (23 November 1887 – 2 February 1969), better known by his stage name Boris Karloff (), was an English actor. His portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the horror film ''Frankenstein'' (1931) (his 82nd film) established h ...
owed studio head
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman (born April 5, 1926) is an American film director, producer, and actor. He has been called "The Pope of Pop Cinema" and is known as a trailblazer in the world of independent film. Many of Corman's films are based on works t ...
two days' work. Corman told Bogdanovich he could make any film he liked provided he used Karloff and stayed under budget. In addition, Bogdanovich used clips from Corman's Napoleonic-era thriller ''
The Terror
The Reign of Terror (french: link=no, la Terreur) was a period of the French Revolution when, following the creation of the First Republic, a series of massacres and numerous public executions took place in response to revolutionary fervour, ...
'' in the movie. The clips from ''The Terror'' feature
Jack Nicholson
John Joseph Nicholson (born April 22, 1937) is an American retired actor and filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time. In many of his films, he played rebels against the social structure. He received numerous ...
,
Dick Miller
Richard Miller (December 25, 1928 – January 30, 2019) was an American character actor who appeared in more than 180 films, including many produced by Roger Corman. He later appeared in the films of directors who began their careers with Corm ...
and Boris Karloff. A brief clip of
Howard Hawks
Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. Critic Leonard Maltin called him "the greatest American director who is not a household name."
A v ...
' 1931 film ''
The Criminal Code
''The Criminal Code'' is a 1931 American pre-Code romantic crime drama film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Walter Huston and Phillips Holmes. The screenplay, based on a 1929 play of the same name by Martin Flavin, was written by Fred Ni ...
'' featuring Karloff was also used.
Polly Platt
Polly is a given name, most often feminine, which originated as a variant of Molly (a diminutive of Mary). Polly may also be a short form of names such as Polina, Polona, Paula or Paulina.
People named or nicknamed Polly
Female
*Caresse Cros ...
was the film's production designer, in addition to developing the story, and it was her idea to set the ending at a drive-in movie theater.
Bogdanovich has said that
Samuel Fuller
Samuel Michael Fuller (August 12, 1912 – October 30, 1997) was an American film director, screenwriter, novelist, journalist, and World War II veteran known for directing low-budget B movie, genre movies with controversial themes, often ...
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.
Release
American International Pictures
American International Pictures (AIP) is an American motion picture production label of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In its original operating period, AIP was an independent film production and distribution company known for producing and releasing fi ...
offered to release, but Bogdanovich wanted to try to see if the film could get a deal with a major studio. It was seen by
Robert Evans
Robert Evans (born Robert J. Shapera; June 29, 1930October 26, 2019) was an American film producer, studio executive, and actor, best known for his work on '' Rosemary's Baby'' (1968), ''Love Story'' (1970), ''The Godfather'' (1972), and ''Chi ...
of
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film and television production company, production and Distribution (marketing), distribution company and the main namesake division of Paramount Global (formerly ViacomCBS). It is the fifth-oldes ...
, who bought it for $150,000, giving Corman an instant profit on the movie before it was even released.
Although the film was written and production photography completed in late 1967, it was not released until after the
assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and that
of Robert F. Kennedy in the summer of 1968, thus having 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, credits it with getting him noticed by the studios, which in turn led to his directing three very successful studio films (''
The Last Picture Show
''The Last Picture Show'' is a 1971 American coming-of-age drama film directed and co-written by Peter Bogdanovich, adapted from the semi-autobiographical 1966 novel ''The Last Picture Show'' by Larry McMurtry. The film's ensemble cast includes T ...
'', ''
What's Up, Doc?'', and ''
Paper Moon'') in the early 1970s.
Around five years after release, in March 1973, New Zealand refused to issue a 'certificate of approval' for the film's trailer on the basis that it was "contrary to public order and decency."
Critical reception
On the
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, ''Targets'' has an approval rating of 90% based on 29 reviews, with an average rating of 7.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "A startling directorial debut by Peter Bogdanovich mixes an homage to Boris Karloff horror films with a timely sniper story to create a thriller with modern baggage and old school shock and awe."
Howard Thompson of ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' called the film an "original and brilliant melodrama", and concluded that "''Targets'' scores an unnerving bullseye."
Dave Kehr
David Kehr (born 1953) is an American museum curator and film critic. For many years a critic at the ''Chicago Reader'' and the ''Chicago Tribune,'' he later wrote a weekly column for ''The New York Times'' on DVD releases. He later became a c ...
of ''
The Chicago Reader
The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded by ...
'' called the film "an interesting response to the demands of low-budget genre filmmaking." ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' wrote of the film: "Aware of the virtue of implied violence, Bogdanovich conveys moments of shock, terror, suspense and fear." In a retrospective review of the film,
Geoff Andrew
Geoff Andrew (born 1954) is a British writer and lecturer on film, and Programmer-at-large at BFI South Bank. After gaining a First in Classics at King's College, Cambridge, he was for some years programmer at London's Electric Cinema in Notting ...
of ''
Time Out'' called it "a fascinatingly complex commentary on American mythology, exploring the relationship between the inner world of the imagination and the outer world of violence and paranoia, both of which were relevant to contemporary American traumas."
Writing for the ''
Chicago Sun-Times
The ''Chicago Sun-Times'' is a daily newspaper published in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Since 2022, it is the flagship paper of Chicago Public Media, and has the second largest circulation among Chicago newspapers, after the ''Chicago T ...
'', critic
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
gave the film two-and-a-half stars out of four, and wrote that "''Targets'' isn't a very good film, but it is an interesting one." He called Karloff's performance "fascinating" but noted that the film may have been "more direct and effective" without his scenes. A review of the film published by ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' stated that "''Targets'' eventually falls victim to artistic overkill."
Stanley Kauffmann
Stanley Kauffmann (April 24, 1916 – October 9, 2013) was an American writer, editor, and critic of film and theater.
Career
Kauffmann started with ''The New Republic'' in 1958 and contributed film criticism to that magazine for the next fifty ...
of ''
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...
'' wrote, "Targets showed considerable skill, but was trapped in Movieland, in more than subject matter".
John Simon wrote- "Targets handled a valid subject but in a trashy way."
In 2020,
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino (; born March 27, 1963) is an American film director, writer, producer, and actor. His films are characterized by stylized violence, extended dialogue, profanity, Black comedy, dark humor, Nonlinear narrative, non-lin ...
called ''Targets'' "the most political movie Corman ever made since ''
The Intruder''. And forty years later it's still one of the strongest cries for
gun control
Gun control, or firearms regulation, is the set of laws or policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession, modification, or use of firearms by civilians.
Most countries have a restrictive firearm guiding policy, with on ...
in American cinema. The film isn't a thriller with a social commentary buried inside of it (the normal Corman model), it's a social commentary with a thriller buried inside of it... It was one of the most powerful films of 1968 and one of the greatest directorial debuts of all time. And I believe the best film ever produced by Roger Corman."
See also
*
List of American films of 1968
This is a list of American films released in 1968.
'' Oliver!'' won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Top-grossing films
# '' 2001: A Space Odyssey''
# '' Funny Girl''
# ''Planet of the Apes''
# '' Rosemary's Baby''
# ''The Odd Couple''
# ' ...
*
1965 Highway 101 sniper attack
Early on the Sunday morning of April 25, 1965, 16-year-old Michael Andrew Clark opened fire on cars traveling along U.S. Highway 101 just south of Orcutt, California from a nearby hilltop. Three people were killed and ten were wounded before Cl ...
References
External links
*
*
{{Peter Bogdanovich
1968 films
1960s crime thriller films
American crime thriller films
1960s English-language films
Films about actors
Films about mass murder
Films about snipers
Films about veterans
Films directed by Peter Bogdanovich
Films produced by Roger Corman
Films set in a movie theatre
Films set in Los Angeles
Films with screenplays by Peter Bogdanovich
Matricide in fiction
Paramount Pictures films
Uxoricide in fiction
1960s American films