Targets

Targets is a 1968 American crime thriller film directed by Peter Bogdanovich in his theatrical directorial debut, and starring Tim O'Kelly, Boris Karloff, Nancy Hsueh, Bogdanovich, James Brown, Arthur Peterson and Sandy Baron. The film depicts two parallel narratives which converge during the climax: one follows Bobby Thompson, a seemingly ordinary and wholesome young man who embarks on an unprovoked killing spree; the other depicts Byron Orlok, an iconic horror film actor who, disillusioned by real-life violence, is contemplating retirement.

Produced by Roger Corman and written by Polly Platt and Bogdanovich, the film was loosely based on the case of Charles Whitman, a mass shooter who committed the Tower shooting at the University of Texas in 1966. The film was shot in late 1967 in the Los Angeles area.

Released by Paramount Pictures shortly after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, it was considered a box-office bomb. Despite initial commercial failure, the film was well received by critics, and was included in the 2003 book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

Byron Orlok, an aged, embittered horror movie actor, abruptly announces his decision to retire from Hollywood and return to his native England to live out his final days. Orlok considers himself outdated because he believes that people are no longer frightened by old-fashioned horror, citing real-life news stories as more horrifying than anything in his films. However, after much persuasion, particularly from young director Sammy Michaels, Orlok agrees to make a final in-person promotional appearance at a Reseda drive-in theater before leaving Hollywood for good.

Bobby Thompson is a young, quiet, clean-cut insurance agent who lives in the suburban San Fernando Valley area with his wife and his parents. Thompson is also deeply disturbed and an obsessive gun collector, but his family takes little notice. One morning, after his father leaves for work, Thompson murders his wife, his mother, and a grocery delivery boy at his home. That afternoon, Thompson continues the killing spree, shooting people in passing cars from atop an oil storage tank that sits alongside a busy freeway. When an employee investigates the gunshots, Thompson shoots him as well. Leaving some of his guns and ammunition at the crime scene, Thompson flees to the same drive-in theater where Orlok is set to appear that evening.

After sunset, Thompson perches himself on the framing inside the screen tower. While the Orlok film is shown (Roger Corman's 1963 "The Terror", starring Karloff), Thompson kills the theater's projectionist and shoots at the patrons throughout the parking lot via a hole in the screen. After Thompson wounds Orlok's secretary, Jenny, Orlok confronts Thompson, who is disoriented by Orlok's simultaneous appearance before him and on the large movie screen behind him, allowing the actor to disarm Thompson using his walking cane. Looking at the defeated Thompson, a visibly shaken Orlok remarks, "Is that what I was afraid of?" Moments later, police officers arrive to arrest Thompson for the murders he has committed; as they lead him away, Thompson states with apparent satisfaction that he "hardly ever missed".

The character and actions of Bobby Thompson are patterned after Charles Whitman, who committed the University of Texas tower shooting in 1966. The character of Byron Orlok, named after Max Schreck's vampire Count Orlok in 1922's Nosferatu,^{[citation needed]} was based on Karloff, with a fictional component of being embittered with the movie business and wanting to retire. The role was Karloff's last appearance in a major American film. Karloff gives a celebrated 100-second single-take performance of W. Somerset Maugham's retelling of the Babylonian fable Appointment in Samarra. In the film's finale at a drive-in theater, Orlok—the old-fashioned, traditional screen monster who always obeyed the rules—confronts the new, realistic, nihilistic late-1960s "monster" in the shape of a clean-cut, unassuming multiple murderer.

Bogdanovich got the chance to make Targets because Boris Karloff owed studio head Roger Corman two days' work. Corman told Bogdanovich he could make any film he liked provided he used Karloff and stayed under budget. Bogdanovich used clips from Corman's Napoleonic-era thriller The Terror in the movie. The clips from The Terror feature Jack Nicholson, Dick Miller and Boris Karloff. A brief clip of Howard Hawks' 1931 film The Criminal Code featuring Karloff was also used. Polly Platt was the film's production designer, in addition to developing the story, and it was her idea to set the ending at a drive-in movie theater.