Bogdanovich’s debut film features Boris Karloff in a poignant autobiographical cameo as an aging horror film actor contemplating retirement amidst late career humiliations and against the protestations of a young filmmaker, played with boundless enthusiasm by Bogdanovich. Interwoven with their story is a parallel plot of a mysterious serial killer with a rifle and a grim determination to wreak havoc. A brilliantly eccentric tribute to a Hollywood era already fading away, Targets contrasts the silver screen past with the uncertain, distracted future of the television generation embodied by the troubled murderer.