Fortunately for Corman, Bogdonovich is smart … he makes a film in which an aged horror star makes his last personal appearance (at an LA drive-in showing his latest Victorian horror flick), only to be interrupted by a Lee Harvey Oswold-like sniper, who's got his own agenda (which is: shoot as many people as possible). Karloff acquits himself with much elegance in one of his final roles, and also displays a surprisingly dapper sense of humor; Bogdonovich manages to stitch together a seamless movie woven from two disparate plots and a whole lot of footage shot without permits or proper funding. That the resulting movie is beautifully shot is a strong statement about the director's ability; that it's a bit cobbly goes without saying. The film drags in spots, although it's easy to forgive the serious tone when you realize that given its limitations, Targets ought to have been an unwatchable B-movie mess. Instead, it holds up as a solid debut and in many sequences, almost as a good art film of the era. I see Targets as an elegy to Karloff in much the same way Edward Scissorhands was one to Vincent Price. The latter film was much more beautiful, but in the case of Targets, at least Karloff got something really cool at the twilight of his career, instead of the morphine-money horseshit that Bela Lugosi had to deal with.
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