The “diamond in the rough” directorial debut Quentin Tarantino called one of the all-time greats
Having made one of the greatest directorial debuts of all time, Quentin Tarantino calling another movie one of the greatest directorial debuts of all time means more than it would coming from Uwe Boll.
Not every filmmaker flies out of the gates with an instant classic, because you’d have to have a pretty good argument to place Steven Spielberg’s The Sugarland Express, James Cameron’s Piranha II: The Spawning, or David Fincher’s Alien 3 on the same pedestal as their finest work, but they got there.
Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs laid down a marker for both the 1990s independent scene and his entire career, and while it’s maybe not mentionable in the same breath as Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane, Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men, or John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon, it’s not too far off, either.
Based on his in-depth knowledge and lifelong obsession with B-level cinema, exploitation, and the kind of cheap and cheerful genre flicks he was raised on, it shouldn’t be surprising that the two-time Academy Award winner opted for a Roger Corman-produced crime thriller to enter into the pantheon of all-timers.
Peter Bogdanovich was an important voice during the ‘New Hollywood’ era, helming The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, and others, but like so many before him, and quite a few after, he got his start under Corman’s learning tree when he made his feature-length debut on 1968’s Targets.
Understandably controversial, given that the University of Texas tower shooting that claimed 15 lives had only happened two years previously, the story follows a Vietnam veteran who murders his wife and mother before embarking on a shooting spree, setting up shop at a drive-in where Boris Karloff’s veteran horror star is making an appearance.
“It was one of the most powerful films of 1968, and one of the greatest directorial debuts of all time,” Tarantino stated. “And, I believe, the best film ever produced by Roger Corman.” He produced a lot of them, and one of the reasons why he adored it so much was how it weaponised Corman’s signatures.
The producer, who never wasted a day when he didn’t need to, still had Karloff under contract for a couple of days’ work. Instead of shoehorning him into a quickie horror flick, as he’d done at least once before, to make the most out of his dealings with the Frankenstein icon, he took a chance on a story and script devised by Bogdanovich and his then-wife, Polly Platt.
It was made rapidly, efficiently, and for not very much money at all, and even though it flopped at the box office before becoming a word-of-mouth cult favourite, Tarantino was suitably impressed at how “Targets achieves its diamond in the rough status and still manages to play its game by Corman’s capitalistic rules,” hitting that sweet spot right between art and commerce.
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