This small in budget, huge in talent picture had the terrible timing of being completed before, but released after Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy Sr. were assassinated. The toll those two events had in 1968 almost guaranteed "Targets" would never be seen by audiences that could watch Tim O'Kelly and keep his character in mind as a Charles Whitman figure rather than a politically motivated gunman. Bogdanovich's first directing turn also marked the swan song of Boris Karloff. The two of them together were a dynamite pairing and it's a shame we didn't get more from this movie loving duo.
Clips from Roger Corman's "The Terror" (with Karloff and a really young Jack Nicholson) are strategically inserted, as Boris plays an actor who's synonymous with big screen terror. And as his career is winding down, the changes frightening him in society are not costumes, on the lot sets and ghoulish cosmetics, but real human monsters who destroy any remaining sense of safety in the world with high powered rifles and other firearms. His Byron Orlok is an old man who knows his time is short and makes the most of each day he continues to live. Bogdanovich's Sammy is in awe of the legend, while most of the industry hustlers Byron has to deal with are only interested in the hype and money.
Enter Tim O'Kelly and his family. The parents are salt of the earth types and Tim's wife is his rock. Then why does this clean cut young man in his twenties during the era of the love generation look and feel so out of step with modern life? We'll never really know. Those mass murderers in the making only reveal certain key clues when it's too late to stop their plans.
Sam Fuller provided help, whipping the script into shape, as the director acknowledges in his commentary. It's better that those wanting to see this smaller, quiet film not know all of it's plot. Calling a story with much gunfire "quiet" is peculiar, but the sound editing of Verna Fields is the unsung hero of "Targets", where the bursts of lethal noise alternate with a serene soundtrack stripped down to not too much era music (Bogdanovich had a handful of obscure 60's tunes to sparingly use) and, thankfully, none of the din cluttering most 21st century movies, letting us hear the full tones of each person's voice sans cranked up score and effects.
"Targets" is a terrific and overlooked time capsule from an era before school shootings were an almost weekly event in the news and when there seemed to be a solution for ending violence in our future. It's an almost quaint trip back inside a cautious sense of optimism we'll not share again.
Clips from Roger Corman's "The Terror" (with Karloff and a really young Jack Nicholson) are strategically inserted, as Boris plays an actor who's synonymous with big screen terror. And as his career is winding down, the changes frightening him in society are not costumes, on the lot sets and ghoulish cosmetics, but real human monsters who destroy any remaining sense of safety in the world with high powered rifles and other firearms. His Byron Orlok is an old man who knows his time is short and makes the most of each day he continues to live. Bogdanovich's Sammy is in awe of the legend, while most of the industry hustlers Byron has to deal with are only interested in the hype and money.
Enter Tim O'Kelly and his family. The parents are salt of the earth types and Tim's wife is his rock. Then why does this clean cut young man in his twenties during the era of the love generation look and feel so out of step with modern life? We'll never really know. Those mass murderers in the making only reveal certain key clues when it's too late to stop their plans.
Sam Fuller provided help, whipping the script into shape, as the director acknowledges in his commentary. It's better that those wanting to see this smaller, quiet film not know all of it's plot. Calling a story with much gunfire "quiet" is peculiar, but the sound editing of Verna Fields is the unsung hero of "Targets", where the bursts of lethal noise alternate with a serene soundtrack stripped down to not too much era music (Bogdanovich had a handful of obscure 60's tunes to sparingly use) and, thankfully, none of the din cluttering most 21st century movies, letting us hear the full tones of each person's voice sans cranked up score and effects.
"Targets" is a terrific and overlooked time capsule from an era before school shootings were an almost weekly event in the news and when there seemed to be a solution for ending violence in our future. It's an almost quaint trip back inside a cautious sense of optimism we'll not share again.