Targets

4/19/2020

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 everything is behind him. Timely when released because o

5/29/2022

**_As relevant today as it was when it was made_** An aged horror icon (Boris Karloff) wants to retire because he’s 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 Texas at Austin. Bobby (O'Kelly) is pattern

3/26/2025

Hmmm… I’ve never quite got Bogdanovich. I’m still not convinced. _Targets_ is a good idea—old-school horror legend (Karloff, doing his best with what he’s given) crosses paths with a modern-day, real-world killer—but it never quite lands. Karloff’s great, obviously, and there’s something poignant about him playing a man who knows he’s past it. But the rest? Bit of a slog, honestly. The sniper stuff should be tense, but it’s weirdly flat. And the script is dreadful—people talking like they’ve 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 wouldn’t rush to watch it again.