Targets

Old Hollywood collides with New Hollywood, and screen horror with real-life horror, in the startling debut feature from Peter Bogdanovich. Produced by Roger Corman, this chillingly prescient vision of American-made carnage casts Boris Karloff as a version of himself: an aging horror-movie icon whose fate intersects with that of a seemingly ordinary young man (Tim O’Kelly) on a psychotic shooting spree around Los Angeles. Charged with provocative ideas about the relationship between mass media and mass violence, Targets is a model of maximally effective filmmaking on a minimal budget and a potent first statement from one of the defining voices of the American New Wave.

Film Info

  • United States
  • 1968
  • 90 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.85:1
  • English
  • Spine #1179

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital master, supervised by director Peter Bogdanovich, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Audio commentary from 2003 featuring Bogdanovich
  • New interview with filmmaker Richard Linklater
  • Introduction to the film from 2003 by Bogdanovich
  • Audio excerpts from a 1983 interview with production designer Polly Platt at the American Film Institute
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Adam Nayman and excerpts from an interview with Bogdanovich from Eric Sherman and Martin Rubin’s 1969 book The Director’s Event: Interviews with Five American Film-Makers

    New cover by Drusilla Adeline/Sister Hyde

Purchase Options

BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES

  • New 4K digital master, supervised by director Peter Bogdanovich, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
  • Audio commentary from 2003 featuring Bogdanovich
  • New interview with filmmaker Richard Linklater
  • Introduction to the film from 2003 by Bogdanovich
  • Audio excerpts from a 1983 interview with production designer Polly Platt at the American Film Institute
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by critic Adam Nayman and excerpts from an interview with Bogdanovich from Eric Sherman and Martin Rubin’s 1969 book The Director’s Event: Interviews with Five American Film-Makers

    New cover by Drusilla Adeline/Sister Hyde
Targets
Cast
Boris Karloff
Byron Orlok
Tim O’Kelly
Bobby Thompson
Nancy Hsueh
Jenny
Peter Bogdanovich
Sammy Michaels
James Brown
Robert Thompson Sr.
Arthur Peterson
Ed Loughlin
Mary Jackson
Charlotte Thompson
Tanya Morgan
Ilene Thompson
Sandy Baron
Kip Larkin
Monty Landis
Marshall Smith
Paul Condylis
Drive-in manager
Stafford Morgan
Salesman (first gun shop)
Mark Dennis
Salesman (second gun shop)
Frank Marshall
Ticket boy
Credits
Director
Peter Bogdanovich
Produced by
Peter Bogdanovich
Screenplay by
Peter Bogdanovich
Story by
Polly Platt
Story by
Peter Bogdanovich
Director of photography
László Kovács
Production designer
Polly Platt
Associate producer
Daniel Selznick
Production manager
Paul Lewis
Assistant director
Gilles de Turenne
Sound editor
Verna Fields
Assistant cameraman
Peter Sorel
Sound
Sam Kopetzky
Assistant to the director
Frank Marshall

Current

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Inspired by golden-age monster movies and the story of a real-life mass murderer, Peter Bogdanovich’s debut feature evokes the psychic dread of America in the 1960s, a decade defined by long-distance and increasingly high-profile gun violence.

By Adam Nayman

American Cinema’s Sixties Crack-Up
American Cinema’s Sixties Crack-Up

During a period of seismic change in U.S. history, the Hollywood studio system began to fracture beyond repair, resulting in a new freedom in how movies explored themes of violence, psychosis, and social breakdown.

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