targets (spine 1179)

Targets
Directed by: Peter Bogdanovich
1968
Spine #1179

Peter Bogdanovich’s debut feature Targets was released over 55 years ago, and yet - in some ways - it wouldn’t feel out of place if it were screening in theaters this past weekend. You could easily pair it with The Parallax View as a double bill with “eerily prescient” as the dominant theme. Watching the movie today, one can’t help but marvel at how much has changed over the ensuing half-century… and yet, in other respects, it almost feels as if time is standing completely still, like society is simply marching in place - caught in an infinite loop of senseless violence. 

The film is heavily steeped in meta-textures, starting with the casting of the legendary Boris Karloff… who plays a thinly-veiled version of himself (so thinly-veiled, frankly, it might as well be translucent tissue) as Byron Orlok, a longtime icon of the horror genre who abruptly announces his retirement after a screening of his latest picture. Orlok takes a certain impish satisfaction in the obvious distress his decision causes in those around him - from the frazzled and uncomprehending studio execs, to his increasingly exasperated secretary Jenny (Nancy Hsueh), to screenwriter Sammy Michaels (Bogdanovich himself, in another meta flourish), who was eagerly slated to direct his next movie (a different, more “elevated” horror project - presumably one not altogether different from Targets itself). But one senses a genuine distress behind Orlok’s facade - an embitterment over his old age and feelings of disconnect from society… exemplified by his belief that the gothic horror brand he built his persona upon no longer holds any relevance, certainly not in a world where real-life horror and tragedy dominate the daily headlines.

Orlok’s plight is juxtaposed against the character of Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly), an unassuming and clean-cut young insurance agent who lives in the San Fernando suburbs with his wife and parents. Thompson has the vague look of a ventriloquist dummy - his toothy smile plastered from ear-to-ear, as if his facial muscles have become paralyzed in some sort of jolly rictus grin, not unlike the Joker. In spite of his cheerful and politely deferential manner, we can tell there’s something deeply off about him. If the trunkful of firearms and ammunition he’s secretly amassed weren’t enough of a red flag, there’s the trembling excitement that comes over him when he stares down the rifle sights at his father during some recreational can shooting… we wait for the cord to inevitably snap in an agonizing state of tension, our nerves the equivalent of rubber bands that have been stretched unbearably taut. And snap it finally does. Thompson abruptly murders his wife and mother one morning (a sequence that still manages to jolt, even though we’ve been waiting for it - kind of like the cinematic equivalent of a jack-in-the-box), then embarks on a random killing spree, initially setting up shop atop an oil storage tanker and picking off motorists on the nearby highway with his sniper’s rifle.

Targets was O’Kelly’s only major role of note. He had a few TV guest spots and was originally cast as “Danno” on Hawaii Five-O, but was replaced after filming the pilot… and eventually passed away when he was just 48. He has the camera-ready appearance and photogenic quality of an actor you’re certain you’ve seen before, but can’t put your finger on where… and that elusive tickle of familiarity is a major part of the movie’s mystique. As a character, Thompson remains just beyond our grasp. He feels like someone who lives in the corner of your eye as you pass him on the street. Bogdanovich isn’t interested in what makes him tick; he’s a cipher, a vessel for nihilistic chaos, a ticking time bomb incubated within the violent fabric of American culture. His killings are staged with a bone-chilling matter-of-factness, free of stylistic artifice. The layer of fantasy, the comfortable cinematic buffer that exists in the films of Byron Orlok, has been well and truly stripped away. 

As someone who’s never had particularly strong feelings one way or another on Bogdanovich as a filmmaker, I must concede that this is a remarkably self-assured debut… and one in which the director is mature enough not to exempt himself from potential self-incrimination. Part of Orlok’s fear of irrelevancy is tied to the sense that exploitation of real-life tragedy will become the new breed of horror… with Targets itself the de facto blueprint, given that Bogdanovich was openly appropriating the Charles Whitmore tower shooting as inspiration (the director would, ironically, also play a direct hand in arguably the most infamous movie of this nature - Bob Fosse’s Star 80). As an actor, Bogdanovich’s casting isn’t an act of vanity - he and Karloff have a limber and pleasing chemistry (with his hangdog expression, Bogdanovich bears an almost uncanny resemblance to the animated character Droopy - particularly when he was younger). Orlok and Thompson’s destinies ultimately converge at the Reseda drive-in theater, where Orlok has been talked into making one final promotional appearance. Boris Karloff’s legacy as an actor may be predominately an iconic one, but he’s almost heartbreakingly good in the film’s climactic sequence (the amount of nuance and emotion he’s able to wring from a simple line reading of “That man has a rifle” is astonishing). The final reckoning - an alchemical convergence of cinema and reality - finds a way to genuinely startle (and, in a strange way, almost lays the groundwork for Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood). Any sense of triumph proves fleeting, however. Targets presaged a taste for carnage that had already taken root in our cultural identity… one that unfortunately can’t be mitigated by a few choice key strokes on a screenwriter’s laptop.