An oddball low-budget masterpiece from back when Peter Bogdanovich was a badass. It’s a grim fictional take on the real-life 1966 Charles Whitman shooting spree, as well as a touching tribute to Boris Karloff. The effect isn’t quite horror, but it’s too psychotic to be a straight drama. This is a film about two monsters. One’s fake and one’s real. There’s the fading old horror star (Karloff, almost 80 years old) who’s scared people for decades, but is actually a sweet guy behind the scenes. Then, there’s the killer (friendly, non-threatening young Tim O’Kelly) who seems harmless until he calmly shoots his family and then picks off people on the freeway with a rifle one sunny day. The two men live in separate worlds until they poignantly cross paths at a drive-in movie premiere.
In addition to being fast-moving, entertaining and smart, this also offers terrific street-level views of Hollywood in 1968, as shot by Laszlo Kovacs who was graduating from biker movies and exploitation flicks for David F. Friedman to become a top cinematographer of the “American New Wave”. This has that semi-documentary feel that’s common to many well-made low-budget films. It’s a world that isn’t shined up or slicked over. It looks like real life. The absence of a music score, aside from a few tunes that play from radios in the background, adds to the starkness.
This is Bogdanovich’s first film as a director. He also co-wrote, produced, edited and took an acting role. His character, Sammy Michaels, is named in homage to Sam Fuller, who collaborated on the screenplay—Fuller declined credit or payment—and offered sage production advice.