Targets

Targets follows two separate lives that gradually converge. Byron Orlok is an aging star of horror films who has decided to step away from the screen, feeling that real violence has made his kind of movie seem tame. Elsewhere in Los Angeles, Bobby Thompson appears to be an ordinary young husband, but he has a fascination with firearms and a disturbed mind. After killing his wife, his mother and a delivery boy, he takes his weapons to a freeway overpass and begins shooting at drivers and passers-by. The two men finally meet at a drive-in cinema, where Orlok is appearing in public to present one of his films and Thompson continues his attack on the audience.

Peter Bogdanovich directed and produced the film, his first feature, and wrote the screenplay with Samuel Fuller. Boris Karloff plays Orlok, while Tim O'Kelly plays Thompson; other roles include Arthur Peterson as Ed Loughlin, Monte Landis as Marshall Smith and Nancy Hsueh as Jenny, and Bogdanovich himself appears as Sammy Michaels. The picture runs 90 minutes and was released in August 1968.

On IMDb, Targets holds a rating of 7.3 from around 14,000 votes, and on TMDB it stands at 7.1 from roughly 246 votes. A critics' rating of 7.8 from 36 reviews places it somewhat above the audience scores. The film came before The Last Picture Show and What's Up, Doc?, the second and third features in the director's filmography.