Sadly Over-hyped

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This is a vigilante film about New York, part of a trend that was started by Death Wish in 1974. Basically the plot concerns a warehouse worker in New York who served in Vietnam named John Eastland whose best friend and fellow Vietnam veteran is paralysed by a gang of thugs when he disturbs them breaking into a warehouse. Swearing revenge, Eastland wipes out the gang members that paralysed his friend, then decides to take on a gangster who is extorting money from the warehouse( he is killed horrifically by being dropped into a meat mincer) and a child abuse gang that involves a senator and then wiping out a group of violent muggers who are part of the same gang that paralysed Eastland's best friend. While a bit cheaply made and unsettling in places, The Exterminator shows what a dirty, dangerous place New York was 35 years ago. Unlike now, where Times Square is a lively and safe pedestrianised square, in 1980 it was full of pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers and one scene shows Eastland in a squalid hotel used by prostitutes asking a prostitute who has been tortured by the child abuse gang for more information. Also Eastland's neighbourhood is full of semi derelict and dangerous tenement blocks that are often rat infested, the rats coming in useful when Eastland ties two members of the Ghetto Ghouls gang up and lets the rats attack them.Unlike now, and something the film alludes to constantly, NYC is adirty and crime ridden city and run by a corrupt and aloof city government which believes The Exterminator, as Eastland now styles himself, is a plot by their political opponents to bring them down. In the final part of a film, the mayor and the CIA decide to try and wipe out The Exterminator, but he manages to escape being shot and swims away to freedom from an abandoned ship where he has arranged a rendezvous with the detective that is investigating him.I quite like The Exterminator, even if many critics savaged it for being too violent, and think it was very much of its time when New York was a frightening place to live and the police and city government were ineffective and corrupt.

After his friend & co-worker Michael Jefferson is brutally beaten after foiling a group of thugs from stealing cans of beer, former Vietnam Vet & warehouse worker John Eastland blows a mental fuse & hunts down the thugs responsible & shoots them dead in their own clubhouse. Arming himself with an assortment of weapons, Eastland decides to become a vigilante in order to confiscate any money from criminals & writes a letter to a news station under the name "The Exterminator". As his activities become more pronounced & violent, the police & an agent from the CIA (who is convinced that Eastland could be a foreign agent) join forces to hunt him down.In the late 1970s & early 1980s, genre cinema was becoming a major player in the controversy stakes by featuring ultra-violent tales of exploitation (mainly from the Italians with their uber-gory zombie & cannibal films) that made cult names of makeup & visual effects artists like Tom Savini. The Exterminator, a cult thriller from 1980, was banned in many countries & heavily cut in others due to its gore quotient, which was pushing boundaries at the time. It also made the name of actor Robert Ginty, who was turned into a minor B-grade action hero with this & its sequel Exterminator 2 & the sci-fi actioner PROGRAMMED TO KILL about a female cyborg assassin.The Exterminator was a minor player in the gore cinema of the time but was mainly a pedestrian cardboard thriller with some notorious scenes of gore that made its name & gave it a cult reputation. Watching this film a good thirty-five years after its release, I wasn't particularly impressed with the film's story & visuals – it only gained a cult name due to its gore which was somewhat disappointingly tame even at the time's standards. The best the film has to offer is a surprisingly nasty & realistic decapitation during the Vietnam War scene (The Exterminator was one of the very first films to depict the Vietnam War & the psychological effects it had on the people fighting in it), which was achieved with an animatronic head & the scene where Robert Ginty feeds a mafia head into an industrial meat grinder (which is more impactful by implication than actual depiction). There are also scenes where Ginty shoots a paedophile politician in the groin with mercury-laced exploding bullets & ties a pimp to a mattress & sets him on fire.Aside from the gore, The Exterminator is surprisingly pedestrian & slow going. Ginty fails to show any of the burning revenge that his character is supposed to have. What's more is that he only goes on his killing spree because he wants to prove himself by killing criminals in order to avenge his own failure to prevent his own capture during Vietnam & being mugged in the beer shed. The biggest problem is also in the ending, which builds itself up into becoming a climactic shootout but drops it suddenly & abruptly with Christopher George's cop & Ginty's hero being sniped at by a CIA sniper, Ginty surviving because of his flak vest.

A vigilante is walking the streets of New York, dispatching villains using various methods. Can cop Christopher George find the exterminator? Well, only if he can stop romancing that doctor for five minutes, which he doesn't. This gritty, violent slice of eighties goodness is well worth tracking down. I remember the posters from back when I was a kid. Where else can you see a mobster getting fed into an industrial mincer, a nonce getting covered in petrol and torched, and a truly jaw dropping decapitation?It helps greatly that Mr movie gold, Christopher George (from Grizzly, City of the Living Dead, Pieces and Enter the Ninja) and Robert Ginty (from Whitefire and Codename: Vengeance) are both excellent here, and both sadly no longer with us either. Sigh.

I love Synapse films. Along with Blue Underground, these guys are pretty much Criterion for fans of horror and exploitation, with movies like "Thriller: A Cruel Picture", "Frankenhooker" and "Maniac Cop" under their belt. So it makes perfect sense that they would release the vigilante movie favorite "The Exterminator" on a Blu-Ray/DVD combo pack. This is a mixed bag for me, as I don't have a Blu-Ray player, but I do have a DVD player, so I can watch the movie but not judge the two discs. I can however, judge the movie.John Eastland (Robert Ginty) is a Vietnam vet whose war buddy and long time best friend Michael Jefferson (Steve James.) When Michael is fatally wounded by thugs, Eastland decides that not only those responsible should pay: the pimps, pushers and filth of the streets must be exterminated. Thing is, this is bad for the mayor, whose got an election coming up, so it's up to Detective James Dalton (Christopher George) to stop the man known to the city of New York as "The Exterminator." While there are flaws in this movie (the relationship between Dalton and a nurse played by Samantha Eggar feels unnecessary), this is a prime example of early 80's exploitation. While gore-hounds will be let down (only a gnarly decapitation in a Vietnam flashback), the violence here is vicious and unrelenting-in fact, largely skimping on splatter actually helps enhance the brutality on display-and boy is it a vicious little movie. Eastland is not a man who plays around, setting people ablaze, dropping them in meat-grinders, shooting them with mercury laced bullets-he means business. Also, exploitation fans will more than likely enjoy this, as this is the type of movie that shows you New York before it was cleaned up. This is a world of drug pushers, murderers, and more-the scum of the Earth, and The Exterminator has had enough of them.It also helps that this is a well directed and mostly well acted movie. James Glickenhouse* films the whole thing in a matter of fact style-no flashy editing or tricks here, just the worst the city has to offer and ugly violence pushed into your face, which aids the already gritty tone of the movie. Meanwhile, Ginty (who most may remember from the MST3K movie "Warriors of the Lost World") has a kind of Charles Bronson like quality-not as good of an actor, but he doesn't really look like an action star. He just looks like a regular guy, and the actor thankfully manages to make Eastland human but not too sympathetic. If anything, he's a psychopath. George meanwhile, plays the guy who may be the most likable character. He doesn't want The Exterminator killing people, but he understands why he's doing it, and doesn't seem to care much for the corrupt political and police establishment around him.For fans of revenge movies and exploitation, "The Exterminator" is something that must be seen. Is it a perfect movie? No, but it get's the job done without any added bulls#!t.*Glickenhouse also wrote this movie, and directed the Christopher Walken action movie "McBain", Jackie Chan's ill-advised U.S. debut "The Protector" and the Peter Weller/Sam Elliot cop movie "Shakedown." He also produced "Basket Case 2", "Frankenhooker", "Maniac Cop" and the Joe Don Baker vehicle "Ring of Steel."