Hollywood horror legend, Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff), has just completed his last picture and plans on retiring despite everyone wanting him to do another film. Writer Sammy Michaels (Peter Bogdanovich), who is dating Orlok’s secretary, Jenny (Nancy Hsueh), can’t even get him to read his latest script. Orlok, feeling like a horror movie has-been, wants to retire and return to England. Orlok feels that his style of horror movie is outdated and, with real murder and mayhem in the world, younger generations are no longer interested in made-up horror. Everyone tries to talk him out of it, but he is adamant.
In the meantime, Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly) is a troubled young man living in a white suburban neighborhood. Bobby and his wife, Ilene (Tanya Morgan), live with Bobby’s father, Robert Sr. (James Brown) and mother, Charlotte (Mary Jackson). Bobby and his father often go target practicing in an abandoned lot. Bobby has been getting urges to kill and has started buying quite a few guns and ammunition.
One day Bobby snaps. He kills his wife and mother. He then takes his weapons and drives to a nearby refinery. From the top of one of the silos he has an unobstructed view of the highway. From his perch he begins shooting people in cars passing by. When he hears sirens, he quickly gathers up what he can and runs to his car. A patrol car tries to catch up to him, but Bobby manages to elude him and hides out at a local drive-in that is set up to host a meet and greet with Byron Orlok. Bobby waits until dark, and as the theater is showing one of Byron’s films, Bobby begins shooting anyone that comes within his sights.
“Targets” was released in 1968 and was directed by Peter Bogdanovich. It is an American crime thriller produced by Roger Corman.
This was Bogdanovich’s first time directing a theatrical film. Roger told Peter that he could direct the film any way he wanted but had two stipulations. He had to use stock footage from Roger’s film “The Terror” 1963 and he had to hire Boris Karloff for the film. Karloff was only contracted to two days’ worth of shooting but liked the film and role so much that he volunteered to work additional days without pay.
There are two storylines here. There also seems to be some padding to the film. The character, Bobby, was a really bad sniper who managed to lose more of his weapons and ammo than he shot. The film was not too bad. A little strange to have the mix of horror icon with sniper movie but in the end, it was decent in the way they managed to blend the two stories together. It was a little strange, but for the most part they pulled it off.
When you consider the fact that Karloff was suffering from emphysema and rheumatoid arthritis, he did an exceptional job on this film. He’s actually the highlight.
The film was very loosely based on Charles Whitman. 25-year-old, former marine, Whitman was a mass shooter who in 1966 shot and killed 15 people, and injured 31 others, from the top of the clock tower observation deck at the University of Texas in Austin.