Quote of the day:

Horror is the removal of masks.
—Robert Bloch

In 1967 Roger Corman offered Peter Bogdanovich the chance to direct his first movie, but there were some strings attached. Boris Karloff owed Corman two days’ of work, and Corman thought that should translate into 20 minutes of screen time in a low budget movie. Then add in another 20 minutes of a shlock horror flick that Corman already had in the can, The Terror, and that was 40 minutes, so all Bogdanovich had to do was come up with a screenplay to use those elements, plus add another 40 minutes, and he’d have an 80 minute film. Easy, peezy.

Bogdanovich accepted the offer, so he and his wife Polly Platt came up with a story, actually two stories: one about an aging horror movie star who wanted to retire and another about a spree killer in the mold of the recent Charles Whitman incident in Texas; the two stories finally merge in a climax at a drive-in movie theater at the end.

The result, Targets (1968), turned out better than anybody had any right to expect.

In the event Bogdanovich was able to secure five days of work from the 80-year-old Karloff, who arrived for the shoot fully prepared, having studied the script ahead of time. By this time Karloff was barely able to walk; he had braces in both legs and needed a cane to get around. He had only half a lung left, thanks to a lifetime of heavy smoking, and was suffering from emphysema.

All of his scenes were captured in one or two takes.

Bogdanovich remembered Karloff’s narration of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, so he knew he was a wonderful story-teller, and thus he included a scene where Karloff’s character could tell a story. It’s an ancient Mesopotamian story that Somerset Maugham had worked into one of his plays and John O’Hara later used as an epigraph for one of his novels.

In the scene Karloff’s character has reluctantly agreed to a personal appearance and a clueless PR guy is going over possible questions from fans that he could answer. When none of them are to his liking, someone suggests he tell a story instead. In setting up the scene, Bogdanovich asked Karloff how he should film it, and they finally agreed on a long shot where the camera gradually moves in to a close-up at the climax of the story.

Bogdanovich offered Karloff cue cards. 

“You mean idiot cards?” cried Karloff, seemingly offended. “I know the lyrics.” He always referred to his lines as lyrics, never lines.

In the first attempt at a take, they had to abort it halfway through because there was a table in front of Karloff and that needed to be silently moved out of the way for the camera to move in for the closeup, and in moving the table, it made too much noise.

So it was the second attempt, but the only full take that you’ll see in the following clip. When Karloff finished, the entire crew broke into spontaneous applause.