Five frames from "Targets," Peter Bogdanovich, 1968, interpolating one frame from "The Terror," Roger Corman et alia, 1963

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• Petey says:

  July 21, 2012 at 2:52 pm

  Glenn wins the inter­net today.

• jiminholland says:

  July 21, 2012 at 4:39 pm

  For what it’s worth, this mass murder was com­mit­ted in Aurora, CO not Denver.
  Jesus, I live in Rotterdam, and even I knew that.

• Jonathan Woollen says:

  July 21, 2012 at 5:28 pm

  Well, Aurora’s just out­side Denver, shar­ing some of the main roads. So it’s not as big of a mis­take as it looks.

• bill says:

  July 21, 2012 at 6:48 pm

  @Jimholland – Hey thanks for the cor­rec­tion. I’ll be right over here if you need me.

• David Ehrenstein says:

  July 21, 2012 at 7:03 pm

  “Targets” is quite a ter­iffic film.

• Ian W. Hill says:

  July 21, 2012 at 8:35 pm

  “Is THAT what I was afraid of?”
  Thanks, Glenn.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  July 21, 2012 at 8:59 pm

  A great film. But that end, I fear, is a cop out.

• bill says:

  July 21, 2012 at 9:57 pm

  It can­’t be a cop out if that’s what the whole film is build­ing towards.

• haice says:

  July 21, 2012 at 10:29 pm

  I some­times won­der what Bogdanovich’s career would have been like if he’d dir­ec­ted THE LOOTERS as planned right after TARGETS. I love Don Seigel’s bang up ver­sion as CHARLEY VARRICK, but still…

• otherbill says:

  July 21, 2012 at 11:49 pm

  Orlock slap­ping Bobby in the final con­front­a­tion is a great touch. So much more dis­missive than a punch.

• Petey says:

  July 22, 2012 at 8:29 am

  “A great film. But that end, I fear, is a cop out.”
  You can­’t have it both ways. If your second sen­tence is cor­rect, your first sen­tence is incor­rect. But I agree with bill’s com­ment: “It can­’t be a cop out if that’s what the whole film is build­ing towards.” I also tend toward the read­ing of Ebert’s con­tem­por­an­eous review – it’s not a great film, but it’s an inter­est­ing film.
  And, of course, it’s the film most apro­pos to the cur­rent moment, which is why Glenn won the inter­net yesterday.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  July 22, 2012 at 1:20 pm

  Sure I can! Lots of films—maybe most—end with a bit of false uplift (and pre-film too—I’m still con­vinced the end of “Measure For Measure” is a par­ody of that inev­it­able tend­ency). So yeah, I love TARGETS for its slow-building ten­sion, for its pre­cise por­tray­al of the banal­ity of L.A. hor­ror, and for its savvy post­mod­ern use of The Terror (and ter­ror). But hav­ing the old guy slap down that punk kid is pure wish-fulfillment, a “Tinkerbelle lives” wish­ing away of the infin­ite hor­ror of a guy with a gun who can end any­body, no mat­ter how top-billed or mor­ally decent they are.
  Bill’s point, over at TKoFYH, is well-taken: Orlok is con­cerned about the ter­rors that don’t stay in the movie mak­ing purely fic­tion­al mon­sters obsol­ete, but in the con­text of this movie, both cob­webby vam­pires and sweet-faced boys with high-powered rifles are equally unreal. But if all gun­men were char­ac­ters in movies, we would­n’t be hav­ing this trouble in the first place. TARGETS is won­der­ful, but the finale is a witty film­maker­’s ver­sion of the NRA fantasy of a noble man with a con­cealed carry license put­ting a stop to this non­sense. It’s sat­is­fy­ing wish ful­fill­ment, but like the NRA fantasy, it get there via deni­al of the very phys­ic­al real­ity that’s mak­ing things so awful.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  July 22, 2012 at 8:10 pm

  To expand a little, and to make clear how much I love TARGETS (and GK’s post): I think the movie actu­ally encom­passes the very cri­tique I’m mak­ing here. Orlok’s fear isn’t just that his sort of scares are inef­fect­ive, it’s that they’re trivi­al. Cobwebs-and-moors-at-night movies present the source of fear as some­thing that is eas­ily defeated, and thus dis­missed, and so their claim to scare you is a par­tic­u­larly insi­di­ous lie: They are com­fort­ing under the guise of scar­ing, leav­ing you per­haps uniquely unsuited to con­front the truly scary.
  Orlok’s final con­front­a­tion with Bobby Thompson is pretty much an object les­son in how the rules of fic­tion make it pos­sible to have com­fort­ing con­front­a­tions with sources of fear. In our world, where crazy boys walk into movie theat­ers with semi­auto­mat­ics hanging off their dick, an old man with a cane is more likely to find his brains leak­ing across the car­pet than to sub­due the lad with a few quick swipes before toss­ing off a bon mot. But of course, TARGETS isn’t the real world, and we don’t want a movie where Karloff’s won­der­ful con­scious­ness is unfairly snapped off by viol­ence that is tra­gic only in its point­less stu­pid­ity. TARGETS is a movie about shoot­ers, and it’s anti­cip­at­ing and dis­miss­ing all the argu­ments in favor of the new hor­ror movie that was tak­ing over the mar­ket: The mani­ac killer vil­lain is no “real­er” than Christopher Lee in cheap fangs, so we may as well make, and see, movies that are beautiful.

• Petey says:

  July 23, 2012 at 10:45 am

  Hmmm…
  I haven’t seen Targets in quite a while, but it did leave an impres­sion. So, if memory serves, I saw the end­ing as a pretty organ­ic out­come of the movie, and thus not as a ‘cop out’.
  In oth­er words, the end­ing did­n’t seem falsely bolted on, in the man­ner of Suspicion (I’m will­ing to accept Hitchcock’s ver­sion of events), or in the man­ner of bowd­ler­ized ver­sions of Grimms’ Fairy Tales.
  Now, of course, that’s a whole ‘noth­er kettle of fish than the VERISIMILITUDE of the end­ing. Pretty much every time the lights go down in the cinema, we are pretty expli­citly enga­ging in a bar­gain to believe in Tinker Bell for the dur­a­tion. (Or at least believe in Kylie Minogue as The Green Fairy.)
  In short, I guess I’m arguing that judging an end­ing as ‘cop out’ or not must be held to the con­fines of the art work, and not real­ity. (And I guess I’m arguing, as someone who did­n’t think Targets was a great movie, the reas­ons you had issues with the end­ing have to do with the movie as a whole, which is why I still sorta think you can­’t have it both ways…)

• BB says:

  July 23, 2012 at 11:38 am

  Does any­one actu­ally believe that we will find any­thing oth­er than a pathet­ic, selfish, man-child behind the sense­less hor­ror in Colorado? I think debat­ing wheth­er it’s real­ist­ic for an old man to con­front and defeat a mass mur­der­er is to widely miss the point of this series of images.

• Richard Harland Smith says:

  July 23, 2012 at 12:50 pm

  Checking the time stamps, I see that Bill, in fact, won the Internet about three hours ahead of Glenn. Not that it’s a com­pet­i­tion or any­thing, win­ning the Internet. But prop­er atten­tion must be paid.

• Petey says:

  July 23, 2012 at 5:24 pm

  “Checking the time stamps, I see that Bill, in fact, won the Internet about three hours ahead of Glenn”
  Ah. But it seems to have been a col­lab­or­a­tion, which means that now we have to see whose idea Targets ori­gin­ally was.
  When someone even­tu­ally puts togeth­er a com­pen­di­um of who won the inter­net on every single day, this will provide a valu­able his­tor­ic­al reference.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  July 23, 2012 at 5:56 pm

  It was Bill’s idea.
  While I’m here I’ll say that advances in think­ing aside, one of the notions that anim­ates the cre­ation of fic­tion IS wish-fulfillment. So I don’t have a prob­lem with “Targets” and par­tic­u­larly with its take-away-the-guns-and-what-are-you-left-with observation.

• That Fuzzy Bastard says:

  July 23, 2012 at 6:43 pm

  Yeah, I hear that. But take away the guns and you don’t have TARGETS, which is why I think the end is a retreat to a safe space that dis­misses, without actu­ally refut­ing, the slow-burning hor­ror of all that came before.

• Petey says:

  July 23, 2012 at 8:20 pm

  “Does any­one actu­ally believe that we will find any­thing oth­er than a pathet­ic, selfish, man-child behind the sense­less hor­ror in Colorado?”
  A very poorly thought-out vir­al mar­ket­ing cam­paign on the part of Warner Brothers?
  A new­found reas­on to appre­ci­ate Barton Fink?
  The impetus to build a massive scientific/governmental effort to re-animate Boris Karloff?

• Petey says:

  July 26, 2012 at 9:15 am

  Bogdanovich now sez that “it makes him sick” that he made Targets.
  http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/dark-knight-rises-shooting-peter-bogdanovich-353774
  Well, it’s easy and quite sens­ible to think Bogdanovich was Body Snatched after Paper Moon, and that a Pod Person has been dir­ect­ing his actions ever since. Most of the evid­ence cer­tainly points in that dir­ec­tion. But I did sorta like The Thing Called Love, so who knows?

• Oliver_C says:

  July 26, 2012 at 4:50 pm

  Reading some of the com­ments to that art­icle, com­bined with the real­isa­tion that many of those com­ment­at­ors must own fire­arms them­selves, should be enough to make any lib­er­al rush out and ‘weapon up’.

• Petey says:

  July 26, 2012 at 6:01 pm

  “Reading some of the com­ments to that art­icle, com­bined with the real­isa­tion that many of those com­ment­at­ors must own fire­arms them­selves, should be enough to make any lib­er­al rush out and ‘weapon up’.”
  1) Dude, why are read­ing the com­ments on a Hollywood Reporter article?
  2) Dude, as the Pope of Lefties™, I hereby excom­mu­nic­ate you as a lefty for the sin of nes­ci­ence. The reas­on you don’t ‘weapon up’ is because your fire­arm is more likely to hurt your­self or a loved one than any ‘hos­tile’. And lit­er­ate lefties under­stand the actu­ar­ial tables. You buy a gun if you’re deal­ing with wild anim­als, are engaged in a crim­in­al pro­fes­sion, or have a com­ic­ally small penis.
  3) Bogdanovich’s attempt to blame viol­ent movies for the spree shoot­ing, (and his ‘shame’ for mak­ing Targets), makes me think that reas­on #37 why David Chase is a god is for his cast­ing of Bogdanovich as a smarmy, unlikable char­ac­ter in his long-arc TV soap. You get Targets, Bonnie and Clyde, and The Wild Bunch out of Vietnam. You get Tarantino and the Men In Tights Summer Fests out of a nation where around 40,000 gun­shot fatal­it­ies hap­pen every single year. It serves the same pur­pose in American movies that car acci­dents serve in Canadian or French movies.

• Oliver_C says:

  July 26, 2012 at 6:35 pm

  “I hereby excom­mu­nic­ate you as a lefty…”
  I’m a lib­er­al, which (in the UK at least) isn’t the same thing at all. The phrase ‘liberal-left’ irrit­ates me almost as much as ‘late cap­it­al­ism’ (as if!).
  Certainly your not-read-Hollywood-Reporter-comments com­ment makes much sense, however.

• Petey says:

  July 26, 2012 at 6:58 pm

  “I’m a lib­er­al, which (in the UK at least) isn’t the same thing at all.”
  To trans­late across the pond:
  If you vote Lib-Dem, then you’re one of those Obama/Joe Lieberman types.
  If you vote Labour, then you’re a con­sensus nation­al Democrat.
  (And god help you if you voted Clegg. That man is an omni­shambles. Now we’re into mor­tal sins.)