Moving targets

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Movie
German title Moving targets
Original title Targets
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1968
length 86 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Peter Bogdanovich
script Polly Platt ,
Peter Bogdanovich
without mentioning: Samuel Fuller
production Peter Bogdanovich
music Ronald Stein
camera László Kovács
cut Peter Bogdanovich
occupation

Moving Targets is the first fully directed feature film by Peter Bogdanovich . Boris Karloff had one of his last appearances in this film.

action

In the screening room of a Hollywood producer, old actor Byron Orlok, along with director Sammy Michaels and the producer's entourage, watches their last work, a classic Victorian horror film called The Terror . Orlok, who is dissatisfied with the result, announces his retirement as an actor, although the next film with him is already being planned. All attempts to persuade him are in vain: Orlok sees himself as an anachronism and wants to retire in his home country in Europe.

Bobby Thompson, a young, outwardly inconspicuous man, is meanwhile buying a rifle in a gun shop. He stows it in his trunk along with a large number of other firearms and drives home. Bobby lives with his parents with his wife. Most of the time is spent together in the middle-class apartment in front of the television. Bobby does target practice with his father and briefly targets him without giving in to his impulse to shoot him. Bobby told his wife that he had "worrisome thoughts". But she hardly pays him any attention. She is in a rush and has to go to the hospital on the night shift.

Orlok gets drunk in his hotel apartment and watches an old film on television in which he starred. Michaels visits him, but this time too he cannot convince him to make another film with him. They both fall asleep drunk in Orlok's room.

In a letter the next morning, Bobby announced the murder of his family and of other, randomly selected victims. He shoots his wife, his mother and a neighbor, who is coming home, puts them in their beds, covers them up and makes his way to a fuel tank at a refinery on a busy road. With a sack full of rifles and pistols, he climbs onto the roof, positions himself and shoots drivers at random from there. When the police arrive at the scene, Bobby escapes unseen into a drive-in theater.

Orlok has since been persuaded to appear for the premiere of The Terror in this drive-in theater during recess. When it got dark, Bobby had already positioned himself behind the screen. Orlok has meanwhile arrived and is waiting for his appearance in his limousine. Because of the volume of the film, Bobby can shoot some viewers unnoticed, but eventually panic breaks out among some of the audience and people try to escape in their cars. He eventually aims through the projector window and also kills the projectionist in the projection room. When Bobby tries to escape, he collides with Orlok. Confused by the sight of the horror star, whom he also sees on the screen, Bobby lets himself be overwhelmed by the old man.

background

Peter Bogdanovich had staged various theater plays in the mid-1960s and worked as a film critic. He decided to go to Los Angeles to become a filmmaker. He found work with Roger Corman , a well-known B-film producer and director, and became his assistant. Bogdanovich won Corman's trust, so that he made his first directorial work possible.

Boris Karloff owed Corman two more days of shooting, so Bogdanovich had to shoot 20 minutes of a film with Karloff during that time. The Terror , a horror film Corman made in 1963 with Karloff and the still completely unknown Jack Nicholson , was to serve as filler material for another 20 minutes of the film. The remaining 40 minutes should be turned off by Bogdanovich in two weeks. Under these premises, Bogdanovich tried to work on the script together with his wife Polly Platt, who was also to work as the set designer for the film. The model was based on the real story of Charles Whitman , an inconspicuous, bourgeois man who shot several people in Texas. Bogdanovich, however, was dissatisfied with the book and sought advice from his friend Samuel Fuller , who rewrote the book for him in just under three hours. Fuller did not include his name in the opening credits and viewed his work as a service of friendship.

After completion of the film Bogdanovich wanted to Paramount boss Robert Evans convince you to buy the film. Evans loved it, but his partner didn't like the film. Therefore the deal did not materialize. It was not until the screening at a university lecture, to which Bogdanovich invited two renowned film critics, who promptly gave the film a very positive assessment, that the film was finally bought by Paramount. The murders of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy almost prevented publication again, because the producers initially believed that such a topic could not be expected of the audience in an entertainment film after these incidents. The film was released with reservations.

Good reviews and praise from many film buffs for Moving Targets paved the way for Bogdanovich to great success with films like The Last Performance .

Reviews

  • Lexicon of international film : “ […] a tribute to the Frankenstein actor Boris Karloff and a virtuoso reconstruction of the classic Hollywood style. However, the attempt to comment on the present with the help of cinema myths fails. "

swell

For the background section :

  • "Targets - An Introduction by Peter Bogdanovich", interview with Peter Bogdanovich on DVD EAN 4-010884-525847, directed and produced by Laurent Bouzereau for Paramount Pictures 2003

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Moving targets. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 11, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used