I thought that once the shootings started, it was well paced and filmed. What I did not like was that there wasn’t any reason given for his desire to kill. I just can’t picture something like that without any motive. Also, it bothered me that the two stories weren’t related at all, although it was obviously going to happen eventually, but it took too long.
I think Bogdanovich was given a very random assignment from Roger Corman (to use Karloff for two days) and he just ran with it, creating a very unique film that is very exciting. I always liked the fact that we were given no reason as to why this guy was a killer, it’s just in his blood. I still remember that scene when he and his father are shooting cans, and he draws a bead on his dad. Pretty wicked stuff.
Targets is a much more important film than its often given credit for. It looks, not just a violence, but how we perceive it (in this case, through the horror movie.) Karloff’s iconic stature is essential as shorthand for what used to scare us, but no longer could in a Viet Nam era. Still, he’s the hero. We embrace Frankenstein over a sick lunatic with a gun. After this, horror films would shift dramatically in both tone and violence toward realism. It can also be read as the difference between what scares a child and what scares an adult. Its a very rich film.
TJ
This film sounds so hot. It is now bumped up into my top 10 queue of films i need to see. sounds like a more existential fore-bearer of the 1970s film Two Minute Warning, which revolves around a sniper who threatens the lives of everyone in a football stadium during a championship game. It’s one of those 70s “disaster” flicks (not quite a disaster, but you get the gist) with a superstar cast.
here’s the trailer:
Targets is definitely something to see this weekend. Thanks!!!
You young’n’s ain’t seen it yet, get on this one, y’hear me?
>>I think Bogdanovich was given a very random assignment from Roger Corman (to use Karloff for two days) and he just ran with it, creating a very unique film that is very exciting.<<
This was a not untypical kind of assignment (if one can call it that) from Corman & another reason why you’ll hear references to The Corman Film School from time to time). Bogdonavich was given some leftover time on a Karloff contract (I’d heard three days, I think, but it doesn’t matter) and x number of minutes of footage from THE TERROR and told to go build a film around it. Other budding directors in Corman’s group at the same time got similar challenges.
Admitted the two stories aren’t precisely related, they converge as randomly as the sniper’s choice of victims. This may never have bothered me simply because it was such a joy to see Karloff given something that he could truly sink his teeth into & something that wasn’t simply trotting him out for another horror flick.
Funny I see this thread, I was just reading about “Targets” the other day. I’ve been wanting to check this out for a while! Thanks for this post
Yeah the film reminded me of God Told Me To a lot (which I had seen before Targets), but the problem I have with films based on maniac snipers is that they all seem to be treated very peripherally – there’s very little actual characterization and more of an emphasis on the shooter’s apparent omnipresence. I don’t know, I’ve never been a huge Bogdanovich fan, his films for me are very drab and shot in a rather flat kind of way.
The lack of characterization of the sniper is very deliberate. The old fantasy monsters are colorful and fascinating. Look at how attractive the vampire has become in popular culture. In real life, monsters can be banal boring people who you would hardly notice, which makes them all the more frightening. That’s the contrast Bogdanovich was trying to paint.
I’ll have to check out Two Minute Warning, sounds like Black Sunday (the exploding blimp at SuperBowl thriller, not Mario Bava) with a somewhat more realisitic conceit. Black Sunday would be another crazy Vietnam vet, if memory serves…
One of the reasons the sniper character’s reasons for killing are not explored may be his close basis on Whitman, who left notes that he didn’t know why he had to kill. I believe he was found to be suffering from a tumor at his autopsy. the lack of reason (pointed at by Brad S above) would seem to be part of the film’s point about the terrors of such modern horrors.
>>In real life, monsters can be banal boring people who you would hardly notice, which makes them all the more frightening.<<
Good point. How often have you read, in the aftermath of some kind of shooting/killing spree, a neighbor who tells a reporter, “He was alsways so quiet.” or “He was a very good neighbor.”
Bogdonavich does posit a family life for his killer that might be a tad too gun-happy but he doesn’t push it to an explanation. After all, can anyone determine why some people go off the deep end like that?
And, Brad S: good point about the juxtaposition of colorful, old movie monsters with the white-bread killer.
I liked the concept behind this film and the execution, for the most part. I remember feeling like the film could have been shorter; perhaps, it would have been better as a Twilight Zone episode.
I agree with Brad S. and would add: the old movie monster was part of a story, with a real plot, and themes (Karloff gets at this in his big speech). But the sniper’s action don’t add up to that kind of story: his violence is random and meaningless. By having Karloff face down the killer, though, Bogdanovich is asserting the power of form/meaning/narrative over the chaos of the modern world.
>>By having Karloff face down the killer, though, Bogdanovich is asserting the power of form/meaning/narrative over the chaos of the modern world.<<
Wow. I like that.
^ So do I. It certainly explains (in a positive light for Bogdanovich) some things that seemed to be overlooked in the film.
ricky richtoffen
The second most famous Texan rifleman of the 1960s, Charles Whitman may be retrospectively a 60s boogeyman equal to Charles Manson, and perhaps, in the randomness of his crimes, one who still haunts us. Whitman’s story would receive a later and more straightforward telling the the tv movie The Deadly Tower (aka Sniper,) Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets may be the more valuable document of his impact on the 1960s.
Boris Karloff’s performance as aging horrorshow start Byron Orloff is one of the earliest examples I can think of of Tarantino-style meta casting. The juxtaposition of innocent old-time spookshow horror with real world monsters like Whitman seems a hokey conceit, but plays out just fine. Bogdanovich’s seeming view of the 60s as a time gone mad AND seeming refutation and fear of the time is unique; I can only really think to compare it to the anti-hippy biker flick Electra Glide in Blue, although that doesn’t pine for “simpler” times quite so openly.
Targets also seems to show fear of Vietnam from an angle that would be much more common later, making it’s Whitman character a Vietnam veteran. We’d get to see more crazy & dangerous vets through the 70s & 80s, making me wonder what the fear was. Was it a fear that the war made monsters of Americans, or just a fear of actually confronting the reality of the war itself?
I’ve seen three others Bogdanovich films, and I guess I can kind of see how his relevance petered out; Last Picture Show is the only one showing any particular virtuosity; I realize it’s dullness is part of it’s tone, but targets has a certain confident vitality, made more impressive considering the seemingly restrictive requirements producer Roger Corman put on Bogdanovich for the films production (that he had two days with karloff and was expected to use footage from Corman’s The Terror, starring Karloff.
It’s in parts on youtube, and worth your time if you haven’t seen it.
Targets Part 1/9
Any thoughts from those who’ve seen it?