Sort of a forgotten thriller about a serial killer's final day in the world of sanity, and an ancient Holloywood icon's final day as an actor. In one film, Bogdanovich tackles both the fading Hollwood star lost in a modern world and the absurd violence of modern society, hoping to have each hypothesis prove the other via concurrent storytelling. In doing so, like most serious movies of this era, the film effectively communicates a tableau of an American culture with one foot still in her glorious past, and the other stepping out into the unseemly unknown future. Its pretty effective. I've always admired Bogdonovich and his attention to Americana detail which is where he and this film shine brightest. The scenes in the drive-in are almost fashioned as if he knew drive-ins would not be around much longer. Cool stuff. Karloff is quite simply great, playing well, basically himself, the old horror film star who is wise enough to see his craft is no longer relevant in brutal modern society. He illustrates this when he picks up a newspaper who's headline blares a story about a supermarket gunman killing three people. How can a man dressed in Frankenstein makeup compete with that, he questions his assistant? Queue the other storyline, a young privileged serial killer and his final losing battle with reason before he begins wasting people. The profile of the killer is at odds with what we now know of these nuts, but you can get past that. The portrayal of the gunman is chilling enough to be sure. He goes on his rampage, Karloff retires from show biz then un-retires for one last appearance, and somehow the 2 different story lines meet up of course in the final reel. The movie is good. There are obviously so many bad movies out there today, that you should watch Targets for that reason alone, but its good. Disturbing, but Bogdanovich nailed the decline of our society and for him to do so while it was happening before him, shows a modicum at least of genius.
