Targets

A young man’s shooting spree coincides with an aging film star’s (Boris Karloff) retirement.

Though star Boris Karloff would go on to make several low-budget Mexican horror films, he liked to refer to Targets as his final film, and for good reason; it’s a near perfect bookend to his lengthy career.

The script by director and co-star Peter Bogdanovich has Karloff basically playing himself, an aging genre icon contemplating retirement in the face of a movie-going crowd he no longer recognizes. Bogdanovich’s use of stock footage from Karloff’s old films is a nice touch (albeit one mandated by producer Roger Corman) made better by his decision to reference the films by title, allowing him to point out one of Karloff’s lesser-known career highlights, his collaboration with Howard Hawks in The Criminal Code.

For his part, Karloff shines, giving a nuanced, heartfelt performance that really resonates. Finally free to express his frustration over the years of being typecast, we see a side of Karloff that his professional nature wouldn’t otherwise allow.

Running parallel to the Karloff storyline, Bogdanovich crafts a secondary tale of a disturbed young man whose homicidal impulses compel him to go on a shooting spree. This decidedly modern thread is a perfect counterpoint to the Karloff one, and allows Bogdanovich to figuratively, and literally, compare and contrast the changing faces of cinematic horror, and build to a truly memorable climax that makes a strong statement about the definition of the term “monster.”

If Targets has a flaw, it’s that it could stand to be a little tighter. As a first-time director, Bogdanovich is impressive, but a bit more editing here and there would have elevated Targets to absolute perfection.