Strange, Small & Forgotten Films: Targets (1968)

May 12, 2010 in Film | Permalink

Bogdanovich saved cash on the cast by playing across Karloff as filmmaker Sammy Michaels.

“I am big, it’s the pictures that got small,” protests Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd., but faded horror icon Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff) has a bitter riposte for her in Targets. “It’s not that the films have gotten bad,” he says with lacerating self-awareness, “it’s that I’ve gone bad.” The self-described “museum piece” was once the genre’s greatest star, but by the 1960s Orlok knows that Hollywood is no country for old men. His quaint spookiness can’t compete with the era’s very real and chilling newspaper headlines, which are drenched with more blood than any vampire could ever drink.

Orlok is retiring from showbiz as soon as he reluctantly fulfills one last  personal appearance at a Los Angeles drive-in. But his swan song may sound more like a death rattle if the party is interrupted by Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly), a fresh-faced insurance salesman from a middle-class Angeleno family who is in the midst of a killing spree. Toting a shoulder-bag full of high-caliber arms, Bobby descends on the drive-in the night of Orlok’s farewell, hoping to up his body count.

Peter Bogdanovich was so desperate to break into directing that he made this movie for Roger Corman, despite the numerous obstacles that accompanied the assignment: He only had Karloff’s services for two days, the film was shot on a a micro budget and the fledgling auteur was under strict orders to save money by incorporating some footage from Corman’s own schlocky 1963 flick, The Terror. Despite these challenges, the writer-director turned out a sharp-eyed view of the decade, one of the few times in his career he’s managed to speak to his time rather than relying on the nostalgia of period pieces. Karloff was never bitter like Orlok, but the role is especially poignant because it’s based on his own ebbing career and was his final good role. Like Orlok, Karloff had outlived his fame and seen his career assassinated by time itself. (Available from Netflix and other outlets.)

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