#787: Targets

Targets

Peter Bogdanovich
Initial release: August 15, 1968 (USA)

In late summer of 1966, a man named Charles Whitman, who had been complaining for years of violent thoughts and severe headaches, murdered his wife and mother before scaling the clocktower at the University of Texas in Austin and spending the next hour and a half shooting people. All told, he killed 17 people (including his family members) and wounded another 31 before being gunned down by police. The incident had a profound effect on the university and the city, with the clocktower being closed for years. It also became part of a broader pattern of increased violence in America, with violent crime quadrupling from 1960 to 1991. While Targets, the directorial debut of underrated filmmaker and Roger Corman understudy Peter Bogdanovich, isn't a re-enactment of the tragedy, it is at least halfway about it, in the way of admitting that the old ghosts 'n goblins of past decades aren't nearly as scary as an alienated society slowly tearing itself apart.

Bobby Thompson is a clean-cut insurance agent living in suburban Los Angeles. He has a beautiful wife, a kind and doting mother, and a dependable father. He also hides a secret: he is a fast-unraveling psychopath, suffering from "funny thoughts" and headaches, who has been stockpiling weaponry in the trunk of his car.

Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff, playing a thinly disguised version of himself) is an elderly horror actor who has grown tired of starring in shitty B movies just to keep the lights on. Disillusioned by an increasingly violent world, as exemplified by a terrifying headline that feels all too normal now, he laments that "nobody is afraid of a painted monster anymore" and announces his intention to retire from acting.

These two story threads couldn't seem more different. Thompson's plotline is grim, straightforward; you get the feeling that something has been wrong with Bobby Thompson long before he ever kills anyone. Byron's scenes before the film's finale are tonal whiplash: while at heart it's a drama about the film biz, it's often funny, always earnest, the kind of movie you wouldn't expect Boris Karloff to make, after having spent the last few years making movies like Roger Corman's The Terror (ironically enough, presented here as Byron's newest film, directed by a nice guy named Sammy who just so happens to be played by Bogdanovich himself.)

But then the final act rolls around. After a killing spree from atop an oil tank that seems to anticipate the real-life rash of sniper attacks in 2002 and 2003 in the D.C. area, Ohio and West Virginia, he relocates to the very same drive-in theater where Byron was due to make an appearance, bringing the two seemingly disparate story threads together: as pure a commentary on pretend monsters versus real ones as you'll ever see. That we watch it all unfold in a movie that is itself fictional almost seems to be a message in itself.

And maybe Bogdanovich was on to something here. While violent crime overall has dropped significantly since its peak in 1991, mass shootings have gone way up; meanwhile, the conversation on violence in media has been going round and round, usually in extremely bad faith, for decades, especially once video games started being a thing. Looking back at some of the most controversial movies of bygone decades, it's hard to imagine anyone batting an eye at them; nowadays, stuff is normalized in our popular media that would make a 19th century polemicist burst into flames. But at the end of the day, stuff like, oh I don't know, Mortal Kombat or Cannibal Holocaust, while often distasteful, is still just make-believe, isn't it? There are very real monsters right now walking our streets, or in positions of power.

Targets is a very modern movie. I've talked a lot over the years about New Hollywood, that period between 1967 and sometime in the early 80s (exactly when is a subject of debate) when new technology, changing social mores, and most importantly the collapse of the studio system gave filmmakers a newfound freedom to make the kind of movies they wanted to make. Targets was Bogdanovich's first entry into this new era, and it shows his talent for bridging Old Hollywood with the New. The two story threads feel like completely different films, particularly as the vast bulk of Boris Karloff's scenes are in a hotel room. Thompson's scenes, for his part, are defined by the camera following him around as he seems to lurk oddly in the shadows, or just out of sight of his family. The only music in his scenes is the diagetic sound of the radio, the chattering DJ a minor character in Byron's scenes. There's an almost Quentin Tarantino-esque vibe to the driving scenes with the use of popular music (though Tarantino would probably use the same music, just thirty years later.) The way he cleans up a bit in the aftermath of shooting his wife and mother is reminiscent of the bathroom cleaning scene from Psycho, done quietly and matter of factly. As the film careens towards its final scenes it takes on an almost documentarian style, wound so tight you worry the whole movie might twist itself in half. And finally, there is no real resolution; the villain, beaten down by Byron himself, is hauled away, but there are no grand soliloquys, only Byron's astonishment (seemingly more with himself than with Thompson) and Thompson's utter detachment from reality. The final shot: the drive in theater during the day, with only Thompson's car, left behind. End of film. Curtains fall. Have a great weekend, everyone.

I didn't know what to expect going into Targets. I had mostly picked it because I liked the metanarrative of an aging Karloff basically playing himself, with a fictionalized version of the production of The Terror (my favorite Roger Corman movie.) But it stands out as an observation on a changing America, one that Karloff himself probably didn't recognize anymore. It started with the Kennedy assassination, and some people blame rock and roll, or the destruction of the nuclear family, or lead paint and gasoline. (It's probably that last one.) Whatever the cause, Americans had become disconnected from one another; maybe twenty years of feeling like the nukes could drop on your head at any minute drove people to more nihilistic worldviews. Perhaps this is why the civil rights movement was successful, paradoxically: people recognized the things that were driving them apart, and came together to fight those things. (Which just proves that finding community with one another is what will save us.) Nowadays, Brian Thompsons are a dime a dozen, and Byron Orlok isn't around anymore to stop them. We're going to have to save ourselves.

-june❤