Targets (1968)

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Producer: Roger Corman

Writers: Peter Bogdanovich, Samuell Fuller

Actors: Boris Karloff, Tim O’Kelly, Peter Bogdanovich

Cinematography: László Kovács

Music: Ronald Stein (The Terror)

Rated: R

Running time: 90 mins.

 Terror in the Valley--- Karloff comes to Reseda

       With Targets we have another entry from 1968.The sixties were a decade when America began to take a look at itself, and L.A. got a lot of attention that year. There are a couple more films from that period I intend to write about (e.g Point Blank, andThe Graduate), so stay tuned. This was Peter Bogdanovich’s first feature, and it was a good start.      

        The story is actually an artificial bonding of two different stories: one about an elderly, burnt-out horror actor, Byron Orlok, who wants to retire and return to his native England; the other about a maladjusted young man who cracks one day and begins shooting people at random on the freeway and at a drive-in theater. The bonding, although improbable, surprisingly works. Bogdanovich originally wrote the shooter story based on two then recent notorious incidents of random violence: the 1965 101 Freeway sniper and the Charles Witman (Texas tower) shooter case from 1966. He presented it to Roger Corman, who offered to produce it if Bogdanovich would write Boris Karloff, who owed Corman two days work, into the story. Thus:Targets came to be.

   

   

        This is how the story goes. It opens with footage of a scene from Corman’s The Terror with Boris Karloff and a young Jack Nicholson. When the scene ends and the lights are switched on, we see several people in a viewing room; one of them, Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff), announces that he wishes to retire and is not interested in doing a new film by young director, Sammy Michaels (Peter Bogdanovich). He also plans not to do a pre-scheduled publicity appearance at a Valley drive-in the next day. Michaels, along with Jenny (Nancy Hsueh), his girlfriend and Orlok’s secretary, try to persuade Byron to reconsider.

        Meanwhile right across the street (Sunset Boulevard) from where the movie people are meeting young Bobby Thompson is buying a rifle. Bobby is an apparently average, polite and outwardly happy guy, who with his wife, lives with his middle-class parents in the San Fernando Valley. Bobby’s family life resembles that of the Andersons on the 1950s T.V. show Father Knows Best. But underneath Bobby is a troubled young man with murderous thoughts.

      Sammy Michaels, after an evening visit to Byron’s apartment, finally persuades him at least  to make the publicity appearance at the drive-in in Reseda. Later that day, however, Bobby finally snaps and kills his wife, his mother, and a grocery delivery boy. After neatly tucking the bodies of his wife and mom in bed and moving the delivery boy out of the way, Bobby calmly cleans up, leaves a prominent note telling what he’s done and what he’s about to do, leaves the house, goes to an oil storage tank next to the 405 Freeway in Van Nuys and begins to shoot unsuspecting drivers.

      After killing the lone attendant at the storage facility, and as the police approach, Bobby, to elude them speeds down Sepulveda Boulevard and eventually turns into the Reseda Drive-In--- the same drive-in where Byron Orlok is expected to appear that evening.. He hides behind the screen, and soon after the start of the movie (again Corman’s The Terror) begins to pick off patrons seated in their cars. Some people start to panic and try to escape, but most are unaware that anything is amiss. Byron and Jenny soon arrive and when Byron realizes what’s going on he faces down the young killer, slaps him around, and forthwith deposits him in the hands of the police. That’s the bare bones of this low budget production.

        This movie is really a forgotten gem; if you can, try to see it. First of all it was one of Boris Karloff’s last appearances--- and one of his best; Karloff died a year later. Although he contributed only two days work to the movie, all the great lines are his: my favorite being, “What a lousy town this has become!” said to Jenny while glancing through the window of his limo at the myriad of car dealerships on Van Nuys Boulevard on his way to the drive-in. There is also a “morning after” comic encounter between him and Bogdanovich and some rich banter between him and Jenny, the secretary.

         For a quickly made movie the production quality is rather good.They shot the freeway scenes without any authorization or sound equipment--- the sound was added later. The scenes of people pulling into the drive-in and purchasing refreshments at the candy counter were all shot clandestinely a few days before the actual filming at the drive-in. Indoor scenes of the viewing room, Byron’s apartment, and Bobby’s home were done on the same set--- the furniture was changed and the walls were repainted.

          For me the principal plus this movie offers, beside Boris Karloff’s performance, is that it gives the viewer a good look at the San Fernando Valley as it was in 1967. The best Valley vistas since Raoul Walsh’s White Heat (1949). Bogdanovich takes you down some prominent Valley streets like Sherman Way, Sepulveda and Van Nuys Boulevards; and from Bobby’s vantage point on top of the oil storage tank there’s a nice view of the Sepulveda Basin with its dam clearly visible. The storage tank facility, by the way, is still there; and ironically just a block and half south of it on Sepulveda Boulevard there is now a Target department store! But most of all, it is great to see the Reseda Drive-In (long gone) in its heyday.

          Other rather interesting points to be found in this movie are the use of radio and television broadcasts as background in certain scenes. One in particular is when Bobby and his “ideal” family are watching television, you can clearly hear the voice of Joey Bishop (The Joey Bishop Show) speaking to the audience. The family are visible, but Bishop is not. Bogdanovich also uses, of course since it’s Bogdanovich, clips from an early Howard Hawks movie--- a movie I’ve never heard of--- Criminal Code (1931) that Boris Karloff was in.

         With Targets Bogdanovich does a good job of emphasizing the contrast between the movie horror put forth by the likes of Karloff and the real horrors of today’s society--- the apparently innocuous Bobby Thompsons who say grace at dinner and then go out and randomly slaughter innocent people. Who are the real monsters?