The endlessly repetitive fusillades suggest that Writer-Director Peter Bogdanovich, in his first film, was really intent on creating the most prolific murderer in Hollywood's long history of violence. Unfortunately, it is a record made to be broken.
Targets (1968)
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Reviews Counted: 24
Fresh: 21
Rotten:3
Average Rating: 7.5/10
Consensus: A startling directorial debut by Peter Bogdanovich mixes an homage to Boris Karloff horror films with a timely sniper story to create a thriller with modern baggage and old school shock and awe.
Runtime: 90 mins
Genre: Horror/Suspense
Synopsis: The message of Peter Bogdanovich's suspenseful directorial debut still rings true for post-1970s America, regardless of the decade. Tim O'Kelly plays Bobby Thompson, a seemingly mild-mannered... The message of Peter Bogdanovich's suspenseful directorial debut still rings true for post-1970s America, regardless of the decade. Tim O'Kelly plays Bobby Thompson, a seemingly mild-mannered husband and son. But Bobby has a penchant for collecting firearms and thinking murderous thoughts, which translate into action when he becomes a deadly sniper, picking off drivers on the L.A. freeway from high above an oil tank. Meanwhile, Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff), an aging horror film star, plans his retirement, feeling the atrocities wrought by daily human global existence have numbed the public to the movie monsters he plays. As fate and movies will have it, Thompson and Orlok's worlds collide at the Reseda Drive-In, where Orlok is making his final public appearance. Writer-director Bogdanovich, helming his debut feature, also appears as young Hollywood screenwriter and director Sammy Michaels. A powerful and chilling study of unexplained, unexpected violence, the film relays a message that continues to be contemporary to the American psycho-social landscape. [More]
Starring: Boris Karloff, Tim O'Kelly, Nancy Hsueh, Peter Bogdanovich
Starring: Boris Karloff, Tim O'Kelly, Nancy Hsueh, Peter Bogdanovich, Randy Quaid, Arthur Peterson, Mary Jackson, Tanya Morgan, Sandy Baron, Stafford Morgan, Timothy C. Burns, Gary Kent, Frank Marshall
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Screenwriter: Peter Bogdanovich, Polly Platt
Producer: Peter Bogdanovich
Composer: Brian Stonestreet, Charles Greene
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Reviews for Targets
Aware of the virtue of implied violence, Bogdanovich conveys moments of shock, terror, suspense and fear.
A fascinatingly complex commentary on American mythology, exploring the relationship between the inner world of the imagination and the outer world of violence and paranoia, both of which were relevant to contemporary American traumas.
It's difficult not to wonder how many Bobby Thompsons are out there right now, driving around with an arsenal in their trunks, ready to fire their first shots.
A beautiful, disturbing, masterful fiction-filmmaking debut for Bogdanovich
frightening in a way few horror movies are because it taps so directly into real fears
An unconventional horror picture that draws a comparison between the real-life horror of the 1966 Charles Whitman murder spree and the fictional horrors of movie legend Boris Karloff.
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