Targets

Targets (1968) is Peter Bogdanovich's feature debut, and you can watch it online on iFILM. Boris Karloff plays Byron Orlok, an aging horror-film actor who has decided to retire — the monsters he spent his career playing, he says, look quaint against what real people actually do to each other. He's right, and the film proves it in real time.

A second storyline follows a quiet, apparently normal young man who takes a rifle and begins shooting at strangers on a Los Angeles freeway, then at a drive-in cinema. Bogdanovich made the film for $130,000, partly using existing Karloff footage, and shot the script in about two weeks after the 1966 University of Texas tower shooting. The two threads converge in a finale that offers no explanation and no comfort. For a film that runs ninety minutes, it stays with you. Stream Targets (1968) online on iFILM.