Targets

Peter Bogdanovich's first feature film is a thinly disguised account of ex-Marine Charles Whitman who, after murdering his mother and his wife, armed himself with a number of rifles and handguns and, on a sunny 1966 Texas morning, began a shooting spree that killed 14 people and wounded 32 people. Bogdanovich's version tells two stories concurrently, the first one about Byron Orlok, an aging and bitter horror film star on the brink of retirement who feels that his type of horror has become passe, and the second one about Bobby Thompson, a father-hating gun lover who goes on a rampage in order to get even with his father by first shooting at people from the top of a water tower and then from behind a drive-in theater screen.