Holding up remarkably well, the faults in Peter Bogdanovich’s commercially ill-timed sniper pic*are easy to see. Not, as you might imagine, from a bare-bones budget or the need to incorporate footage producer Roger Corman had left over from an earlier Boris Karloff film, more from inadequate acting that pulls you out of the story (Bogdanovich himself a prime offender in a drunk scene); from a few missing story beats; and from cinematographer László Kovács -- fine outdoors, less comfortable on the film’s color-coded minimalist interiors. But these are blips in a cleverly worked out story scheme that sees Bogdanovich’s debut pic already using the sort of independent storylines that only interact late in the film he’d favor throughout his career. Here, Boris Karloff’s aging horror film star, aware of how real world violence has outdistanced his fantasy tales, reluctantly agrees to an In-Person appearance at a Drive-In movie premiere while a parallel development, Storyline Two (really the main story), tells a seemingly unrelated American Sniper story about a ‘Good Son’ who, after taking out Wife & Mom, heads to a highway for some quick target practice killing before finishing his spree of random murder hidden behind that Drive-In movie screen. Now, any terrifying action happening to projected film images seems meaningless in the real panic happening to people in parked cars, an audience of sitting ducks for a bland, affectless shooter. Very well handled, Bogdanovich much helped by (then) wife Polly Platt and an uncredited Samuel Fuller on script, with his own pacey editing and associative montage techniques camouflaging what isn't there. Two decisions were crucial: One: no motivation or psychological explanation given for the killer; Two: Boris Karloff, in his best role since early ‘30s Universal Horror, getting the space (and dignity) needed.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: *The film’s theatrical run doomed by 1968 political assassinations.
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