Mickey Z

Cool Observer

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Monday, April 23, 2007

Shooting rampages: the real real thing?

In 1968, Peter Bogdanovich made an auspicious celluloid debut with a film called Targets—starring Boris Karloff as Byron Orlok, a veteran horror film actor who’s retired because real life has become so terrifying that audiences are no longer frightened by horror movies. In the film’s riveting climax, a sniper, Bobby, chooses as his targets the patrons of a drive-in theater showing the real-life Karloff in The Terror.

“Bogdanovich attempts to show us just how lethal weapons are,” writes film critic Danny Peary. “He forces us to look through the gun sights with Bobby and help him line up his victim. It is frustrating—we want Bobby to miss but each time we see his aim is true. It is bad enough when unidentified people fall dead, but often Bogdanovich will have Bobby take aim at someone and pull the trigger only to find himself out of bullets. While he reloads we have time to get to know and suffer with the intended prey.”

After killing the projectionist, Bobby climbs down from his perch only to be confronted by Orlok (Karloff). Although Orlok is unarmed, Bobby is perplexed by the image of the real Karloff who seems to be also walking towards him on the immense screen. Bobby shoots at the screen—the “wrong” Orlok—and is then disarmed the “real” Orlok before being arrested.

“The scenes in which Orlok complains that real life is so horrifying that horror films have lost their ability to scare anyone remind us that we are watching a movie,” writes Peary. “While Bogdanovich places the sniper in a screen where The Terror, a not-very-scary Roger Corman horror film starring the real Boris Karloff, is being projected, to prove that Orlok is correct in thinking ‘real’ life more frightening than horror films, he is also reminding us that no matter how terrifying we find Bobby’s actions in Targets, it is only a movie we are watching and doesn’t compare to the real real thing.”

Unfortunately, discerning “the real real thing” from imagined evils is not just the stuff of ambitious directorial debuts.