Targets · reception & legacy

How Targets has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

Buried on release in 1968 — arriving right after the MLK and RFK assassinations, Paramount barely marketed a film about an all-American sniper — but critics loved it, and it's since been canonised as one of the great directorial debuts and the perfect farewell for Boris Karloff.

What's debated

The perennial talking point is which half wins: the elegiac Karloff-as-fading-horror-icon strand or the chillingly banal sniper strand — and whether the film's 'real horror has replaced movie horror' thesis is profound or a little too neat.

Its footprint

It's the go-to reference whenever movie-monster past meets modern-mass-shooting present — a film from 1968 that keeps getting called 'more relevant than ever' — and the drive-in finale, with old Hollywood horror literally facing down the new American kind, is one of cinephilia's most cited endings.

Where it stands

A 'you must see this' cult classic: the movie people point to as proof Bogdanovich arrived fully formed, and a fixture of Karloff-appreciation and best-debut lists.

Named by the director

Influences Peter Bogdanovich has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

• Alfred Hitchcock — Bogdanovich said he modelled the sniper sequences' suspense on Hitchcock, whom he had studied and interviewed as a critic.
• Samuel Fuller — Bogdanovich credited Fuller with an uncredited rewrite of the script and named his own on-screen character 'Sammy Michaels' in tribute.