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Targets (1968)
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Movie Review by Jarrod 
April 3rd, 2008
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'Targets' is an underrated little gem from Peter Bogdanovich, whose best films are Paper Moon and The Last Picture Show. The movie was produced by Roger Corman, and is based on the senseless killing spree of Charles Whitman, referenced in Full Metal Jacket. Whitman was an all-American boy from a middle-class family, who took a sniper rifle up into a bell tower at the University of Texas at Austin and opened fire on randomly selected civilians, killing about a dozen and wounding nearly 30 more before being shot down by police. His horrific crime was later thought to have been the product of mental illness, aggravated by a brain tumor, or simply societal maladjustment. Howard Unruh was seen as the precedent for Whitman, a seemingly normal guy who inexplicably descends into madness. Another well-known homicidal rampage was that of Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Carol Ann Fugate, fictionalized in Terrence Malick's Badlands (with Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek) and an obvious inspiration for Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. 'Targets' has been credited as a horror film, or more precisely, an anti-horror film; Bogdanovich has a reputation for arrogance, and apparently holds a disdain for the horror genre, but as a former critic and self-proclaimed film enthusiast and knowledgeable historian of the medium, he recognizes the origins and perhaps even appreciates the relevance of the horror film, particularly the kind of horror film released in the 1930s by Universal.
One of the noticeable things about 'Targets' is that it features the last great performance by Boris Karloff, who plays an aging horror star very much like himself, disillusioned with his career and perhaps horror cinema in general. He is still somewhat popular and famous, but has grown bitter and stubborn, and wants to retire. Karloff did not have much of a career outside of horror, but this movie does show he had an early role in Howard Hawks's 1931 feature The Criminal Code, before he got the role of the Monster in Frankenstein. Karloff was born in England; his real name was William Henry Pratt; I know more than a few people, who have always thought he was Russian or something, given the moniker he used on stage and screen.
Tom O'Kelly is the Whitman character, Bobby Thompson, a good-looking lad with a pretty wife and two loving parents. He calls his father, sir, a reflection of the values of 1950s America, totally overturned in the 1960s counterculture movements. He undergoes a chilling transformation, deciding to murder his wife and mother, and then shooting drivers on the highway, and finally moving to a drive-in theater, where a new Byron Orlok (Karloff) movie is set to premiere. He finds a way behind the large screen and aims at the viewers sitting in their cars. He is calm and patient throughout; while shooting the drivers, he opens up a brown bag and pulls out a sandwich and a bottle of soda, a little lunch he packed for what he regards as a leisure activity and nothing more. He is certainly a psychopath, with a trunk full of guns and an appalling disregard for human life, including his own. He and Orlok are destined to cross paths, and they do in the end, in a surprising and unexpected way. Orlok seems to sum up the whole message of the movie itself; looking at newspapers and seeing real horror stories, real monsters and murderers, what exactly is the significance of fictional ones? The real world is scary and terrifying enough. This was made before Bogdanovich had really matured as a screenwriter, and it shows, with quite a bit of dialogue that is unintentionally funny and absurd, but there are some lines delivered mostly by Karloff that are indeed supposed to be humorous and are. Karloff is and O'Kelly are solid. As a director, Bogdanovich certainly demonstrated his talent. The sniping sequences are riveting, violent but extremely tame by modern standards.
There is a pervasive sense of uneasiness, as Bobby runs out of ammo, thus giving the unsuspecting intended victim a chance to do something to take himself or herself out of harm's way, while Bobby reloads, and then a gnawing discomfort as the person in question fails to act and dies anyway. A few are spared by dumb luck, as Bobby is first interrupted by police, and then drops his numerous boxes of ammunition and must spend precious time grabbing for them. That Bogdanovich offers no explicit explanation for Bobby's actions is telling; he is just interested din observing them and not exploring their psychological causes. 1968, the year this film was released, was an awfully tragic one that shook America to its core. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated; the Tet Offensive escalated the conflict in Vietnam and proved that it was far from over, despite official reports of impending victory.
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