Targets 1968 ***

Peter Bogdonovich made his name with this terse, low-budget film for B-movie king Roger Corman. Boris Karloff plays Byron Orlock, an old-school horror actor who is basically a fictionalized version of Karloff. He’s caught in the cross-hairs of a sniper rifle wielded by Bobby Thompson (Tim O’Kelly), but the mild mannered shooter as a wealth of targets in his sights, killing his family and heading off on a sniper-spree that leads the two men to a confrontation at a drive-in screening one of Orlock’s movies. Ingeniously playing off Karloff’s considerable reputation, both as a horror icon and an off-screen nice guy, Bogdanovich’s film is celebrated for pitting old-Hollywood against new social unrest, and the taut nature of this 1968 thriller still resonates today.