Targets (1968)

(On Cable TV, November 2020) Aside from the content of the film itself, there’s a wistful quality in Targets that comes from seeing the beginning of a career and the end of another—this being Peter Bogdanovich’s first film, and Boris Karloff’s last starring role. The production history of the film has its quirks—it came from Roger Corman being owed two days of work by Karloff, and instructing then-young writer-director Bogdanovich to make a low-budget movie around this constraint. Taking advantage of the social turmoil of the time, Bogdanovich ended up building a clever twin-strand plot featuring an aging horror film actor and a young Vietnam veteran going on a murderous rampage. The intention is obviously to confront old horror and new monsters, and the ending does finally bring everything together. Targets can feel surprisingly modern at times—the idea of a random person just shooting people off the highway still unnerves, and the gritty handheld style of the film does echo far newer films. The result is worth a look, although it can feel like a drag at times—by shooting around Karloff’s schedule, Bogdanovich was inspired by creative constraints but wasn’t quite able to tie everything up in a completely seamless way. Still, Targets makes an interesting argument at the dawn of New Hollywood, and benefits from having an old-school star in the lead role.