Director: Peter Bogdanovich
Starring: Boris Karloff, Tim O'Kelly, Nancy Hsueh
Running Time: 90 minutes
Synopsis: In Los Angeles, veteran horror movie actor Byron Orlok (Boris Karloff, essentially playing himself) abruptly announces his retirement, shocking his director Sammy (Peter Bogdanovich, likewise) and loyal secretary Jenny (Nancy Hsueh). Byron reluctantly agrees to make one final public appearance at a drive-in theatre to promote his latest movie. In parallel, Bobby Thompson (Tim O'Kelly) is a clean-cut but troubled young man obsessed with guns. After spending the day with his wife and parents, Bobby embarks on a murderous shooting spree, including targeting drivers from atop a tower overlooking a freeway.
What Works Well: Peter Bogdanovich's directorial debut is a Roger Corman-financed low-budget and impressively efficient effort, cobbling together two mostly unrelated stories. The chillingly mechanical sniper plot is inspired by the Charles Whitman killings, and silently offers prescient commentary on a culture in love with guns and willing to tolerate carnage caused by the union of mental instability and instruments of death. The Byron Orlok segments celebrate Karloff's enduring screen contributions, and the changing cinematic - and societal - definitions of horror. Karloff's one-take recounting of the Appointment in Samarra parable is epic, and Bogdanovich's showy camera work rises well above the budget limitations.
What Does Not Work As Well: It takes a long time for the two narrative threads to merge, and some of the Orlok scenes meander into indulgent padding. The sniper's victims do not exist as human entities and may as well be inanimate targets.
Key Quote:
Byron Orlok: Is that what I was afraid of?
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For what it is, I think it's a dandy film, and disturbingly prescient.
ReplyDeleteMy argument for the gunman's targets is that that's exactly how he sees them--they're just things to shoot at and don't have any real value or identity. The point about the storylines merging, though, is completely fair.
Good point about the targets as perceived by the gunman, but the emotional impact is nevertheless lessened. Interestingly Two-Minute Warning from 1976 went too far in the other direction and was bogged down in the minutia of mundane lives. Tough to get the balance right.
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