Targets (1968)

Film: Targets (1968)
Stars: Tim O'Kelly, Boris Karloff, Arthur Peterson, Monte Landis, Nancy Hsueh, Peter Bogdonavich
Director: Peter Bogdonavich
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

When you read this I'll be coming back from a sojourn to visit my parents (we've all been socially distancing to do this trip, don't worry), and on that trip, I'll be listening to new episodes of my all-time favorite podcast, You Must Remember This.  This season, Karina Longworth is taking an in-depth look at the career of Polly Platt, an Oscar-nominated art director who was most famous for decades as a creative contributor (and frequent producer) of some of the most ingenious projects to come out of Hollywood, ranging from The Last Picture Show to Broadcast News to The Other Side of the Wind.  Platt's first significant film was the 1968 Roger Corman movie Targets, which was also the directorial debut of her then-husband Peter Bogdonavich.  The next episode I have in the series apparently goes quite in-depth into this movie, and since I'd always wanted to see it (and a recording of it was sitting on my DVR thanks to the eternal gift-giver TCM), this felt like the perfect time to take the opportunity.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie tells two seemingly unconnected tales that end up coming together in a petrifying final sequence.  The first story is one that Bogdonavich would intersperse into a lot of his movies and certainly into his decades of colorful anecdotes about Hollywood: the story of a Classic Hollywood actor.  In this case it's Byron Orlok (Karloff), an aging horror film actor who wants out of the business after finishing his last movie The Terror (which was, in fact, a real-life horror movie that starred Karloff and a pre-fame Jack Nicholson, so your eyes are not deceiving you when you see Jack Nicholson randomly show up in Targets, and according to legend around this movie, Nicholson sought after the other lead in this movie but wasn't given it).  Orlok has a curmudgeonly respect for his assistant Jenny (Hsueh) and a young screenwriter-director named Sammy (Bogdonavich), who has written an actually strong film that might give Orlok a new chapter in his career (meta, right?).

The other aspect of the story is around Bobby Thompson (O'Kelly), an all-American guy (handsome, young, veteran) who seems to have the world-on-the-sleeve, but whose only passion appears to be firearms.  Throughout the movie we see Bobby pretend to kill people, frequently stockpiling more and more weapons while his wife and his parents take little notice.  He eventually goes on a shooting spree, first killing his wife & mother, then shooting people randomly from a tower overlooking a freeway, and then finally shooting people at a drive-in...a drive-in showing The Terror where Byron Orlok is set to make his final appearance before retreating into retirement.

The movie up until the shooting scene at the drive-in is interesting if not always compelling.  The drive-in sequence in many ways anticipates another classic New Hollywood movie, one that I really want to name-check but it's such a surprise what happens at the end of the picture that I don't feel I should...suffice it to say, this movie was influential.  But before that scene, the O'Kelly scenes are oddly bereft of emotion.  This is a choice that I think works in hindsight, but I can't imagine how Bogdonavich had the foresight to think of making such a prototypical, 21st Century villain.  At the time, the character was based in large part on Charles Whitman, who killed 17 people in 1966, many of them at random from a tower at the University of Texas (Whitman also killed his wife and mother before his shooting rampage), and if you look at photos of Whitman and O'Kelly, they do share a similarity.  What makes Targets prescient, though, is that Whitman/Bobby Thompson fit the mold of what we think of as a 21st Century villain-straight, white, male loner obsessed with collecting weaponry & risking other people's safety.

This is what makes the final sequence at the drive-in so electric.  We know at this point that Bobby Thompson is a monster, solely intent on increasing his body count before capture or death.  We watch in horror as an audience of cars slowly realize that the danger is not the villain on the big-screen (Karloff's Orlok in The Terror), but instead a more real, actual danger.  People open their cars or speed away, trying to escape, but in the process turn on the lights, making them easier targets.  It's petrifying-one of the scariest things I've ever seen a movie.  All-the-while, there is Byron Orlok, as we come-to-understand his retirement is more about shutting out the world as he is afraid of death, not realizing that he's being confronted with it in very tangible, absolute terms.  When Orlok ultimately is the person who stops Thompson, he states "is that what I was afraid of?" as if realizing that death can come in many forms.  The film itself isn't strong enough to warrant 5-stars (the earlier sequences are too prosaic), but this is a fascinating film and a strong debut from Bogdonavich, who was about to make a trio of celebrated movies (The Last Picture Show, What's Up Doc?, and Paper Moon), and features a mesmerizing piece-of-work from Karloff, giving his final onscreen performance.