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Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Targets (1968)

Starring Boris Karloff, Tim O'Kelly, Arthur Peterson, Monty Landis, Nancy Hsueh
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

While an aging horror film star plans his retirement, an unbalanced young man prepares to perpetrate a real life horror story with an arsenal of guns he's acquired.

Per IMDB, this was the powerful debut feature for director Bogdanovich, and it offers a choice role to Karloff late in his career, essentially playing himself in a deft juxtaposition of his classic monster of the past with a senseless monster of the present day in the sniper killer played by O'Kelly.  Fans of Karloff, as I am, will relish his kindly demeanor, some amusing scenes he plays with Bogdanovich, portraying a screenwriter, and Hsueh, as his lovely secretary, and his determined showdown with O'Kelly at the movie's climax.  This was not to be Karloff's last film, but it's a fitting coda to his remarkable career.

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