Targets (1968) on Netflix
Horror star Byron Orlok announces his retirement, sure real violence frightens people more than his films. Across Los Angeles, quiet gun collector Bobby Thompson prepares a spree of his own.
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- Netflix2.5/5
- IMDb7.3/1013,961 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes89%
Trailer
Plot summary
Byron Orlok, an aging horror star, tells Marshall Smith and Sammy Michaels that he is finished with films and intends to return to England. Real crime in the newspapers frightens people more than his old monsters, he says. His secretary Jenny and his manager urge him to stay for a drive-in premiere of his latest picture, and he agrees to one last appearance. Bobby Thompson, a young insurance agent, lives with his wife Ilene and his parents in the San Fernando Valley and owns more than a dozen guns. He buys a high-powered hunting rifle and ammunition, shoots at cans with his father, and tells Ilene he has been having funny ideas she has no time to hear.
Cast
- Tanya Morganas Ilene Thompson
- Timothy Burnsas Waiter
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Targets (1968)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Peter Bogdanovich got to make Targets only because Boris Karloff owed producer Roger Corman two days' work. Corman told him he could make any film he liked provided he used Karloff and stayed under budget.
- Filming on or near the freeway was not permitted, so the freeway shooting spree was shot guerrilla-style in two days. To save money the whole sequence was filmed without sound, and editor Verna Fields added the effects afterwards.
- The character and actions of the killer Bobby Thompson were patterned after Charles Whitman, who committed the University of Texas tower shooting in 1966.
- In March 1973, about five years after its release, New Zealand refused to issue a certificate of approval for the film's trailer on the grounds that it was "contrary to public order and decency".
- Samuel Fuller gave generous help on the screenplay and refused to accept a fee or a screen credit. In tribute Bogdanovich named his own character Sammy Michaels after Fuller's middle name, Michael.
- Boris Karloff's role as the horror actor Byron Orlok was his last appearance in a major American film.
- Polly Platt, who developed the story and was the film's production designer, came up with the idea of setting the film's ending at a drive-in movie theater.
- Bogdanovich, who appears in the film as a young writer-director, credits Targets with getting him noticed by the studios, which led to his directing The Last Picture Show, What's Up, Doc? and Paper Moon in the early 1970s.
