Back with another installment in a series of films that aren't le underrated gems, but real underrated gems. This time around:
TARGETS
Tim O'Kelly plays a homicidal Vietnam veteran who has an unhealthy fascination with guns and death. Boris Karloff, in the last great role of his career, plays an aging horror film star who is no longer interested in making movies - he believes the horrors of the real world have far eclipsed anything on the screen. Over the course of a day, he'll be proven right, as O'Kelly's deranged vet finally snaps, sniping innocent bystanders all across Los Angeles.
Targets may be slightly dated by modern standards, but that's only because the senseless gun violence on display in the film has become so commonplace in the 50 years since the film's release. But in 1968, it was surely shocking, as was the violence of the day. A five-year span had seen the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, numerous civil rights activists, and the murderous rampage of Charles Whitman at the University of Texas. In its time, Targets was prescient and oh-so relevant.
The way this film came together is pretty fascinating. It only happened because Karloff still owed producer Roger Corman two days of work from a previous shoot. Bogdanovich was working for Corman at the time, and Corman gave Bogdanovich complete control, provided he used Karloff. The result was an incredibly assured debut feature. To pad the running time, Bogdanovich also used some footage from Corman's film The Terror which in addition to featuring Karloff, also starred a young Jack Nicholson. But the use of this footage is seamless, and works so well that you don't even notice that it's reused footage.
Bogdanovich would make his own le underrated gem not long after this film; The Last Picture Show brought the young director great acclaim and a few awards. It was (mostly) downhill from there. While Targets may not be his most acclaimed film, it is one of a kind within his filmography. It's brisk and mean, and he never made another movie like it.
Submitted February 27, 2019 at 05:26AM by Dan_Gleeballz https://ift.tt/2T0wZsm