Badmovies.org Forum

Name some star or director's final movie and what you think of it.

Boris Karloff: "Targets". Karloff was a legend, and his final movie did him honor. It was a movie really only him or one of the few people like him could have made. Targets was a movie about movies where an aging horror actor from the classic days (karloff, of course) attends the opening of a drive in showing one of his old movies (The terror).

A generic psycho with a rifle starts murdering people in the drive in audience and in the end is confronted and stopped by karloff, who stalks right up to him as his younger self is stalking across the drive in screen.

Targets was a conscious acknowledgement that the old, classic horror movies featuring legends like karloff, lee, cushing, price, etc were falling from vogue and being replaced with the loud, lurid, bloody psycho killer movies.

But having the old horror legend basically b***h slap the young psycho down at the end was a subtle nod to the fact that even tho the days of the classic horror movies were ending, they were still far better than the grindhouse psycho killer movies replacing them. :wink:

And yes, tho Karloff had a few bit roles in a few minor movies after targets, in which his role was minimized due to severe health problems (He had half of one lung working) targets is genrally accepted as his last well known and widely released movie.

I've seen a few of the movies Karloff made in his final days, but for some reason or another I'd never heard of this one before.

I'm going t have to track that down and watch it now.

Karloff made 5 for a Mexican film company- ISLAND OF THE SNAKE PEOPLE, the FEAR CHAMBER, the INCREDIBLE INVASION, HOUSE OF EVIL, and CAULDRON OF BLOOD.
He also filmed the CRIMSON CULT after TARGETS as well, with Christopher Lee and Barbara Steele.

Lugosi's last film was the BLACK SLEEP (1956), a hokey bit of sc-fi horror which gave Bela nothing to do but shuffle around looking confused. But it did feature Basil Rathbone, Lon Chaney Jr., Tor Johnson and John Carradine!
Calling PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE Bela's last film is arguable, being he's only in it because Wood had some home movie clips of Bela spliced in.

Lon Chaney Jr.'s final film was Al Adamson's DRACULA VS. FRANKENSTEIN (1971), as was J.Carroll Naish's!

Lon Sr.'s was the UNHOLY 3 (1930), a remake of his 1925 film of the same name, and his only sound film. He does the ventriquist dummy's voice, the old lady's voice, and a parrots (!) voice, along with his own natural voice.

Raul Julia - Street Fighter. He deserved so much better.