Such a frustrating disappointment

One of my all time favorites.

Excellent but underrated film

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

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.

How wonderfully tacky and exploitive, The Exterminator rides in on the coat tails of films like Death Wish and has a bloody good time doing so. Plot sees Vietnam veteran John Eastland (Robert Ginty) embark on a crusade of vigilantism when his best buddy is left paralysed by scumbags.Pic is relentlessly bleak, as Eastland goes about his business, offing serious low-life's in a number of gruesome ways, director and writer James Glickenhaus revels in saying that all around us is a rotten apple. Of course vigilantism is wrong, but Glickenhaus makes it virtually impossible to not be on The Exterminator's side, such is the vile stench that circles the seamy underbelly of the city.Trying to stop The Exterminator is world weary Detective James Dalton (Christopher George), well when he is not having sex with Samantha Eggar in the local hospital that is! He's a great character is Dalton, stoic and scuzzy, a throwback to the halcyon days of film noir gumshoes. And of course, he will be tinted with a conflict of interest.The pace sometimes plods, but this is off set by the action that is guaranteed to arrive in the next passage of play, and the kills, graphic for the time, are not without grotesque ingenuity. Eggar is pretty much a token offering and really serves no purpose other than to give Jimmy some sugar, while some of the editing and photography leaves quite a bit to be desired.Cheap independent problems be damned though! The Exterminator is in your face, it shows it all and doesn't cut corners or soft soap its theme. It be a splendid slice of Grindhouse Grue for those with a kink for such glorious excess. 8/10

The Exterminator is a borderline video nasty from the 80s heyday of the genre.Cheap looking in parts though overall shot with a higher budget than usual for this type of fare-I have to admit I was kinda rooting for Ginty's trigger happy anti-hero.Unfortunately he is given little in terms of character development but shows a good way with a one liner and handles the few sensitive moments well(surely he deserved better than ending his career on Baywatch Nights!).But it's the graphic violence that is the film's selling point-sometimes nasty other times a bit laughable.Villains are straight from central casting though manage to be unpleasant nonetheless.Movie takes an unexpected dark turn with a sequence involving a vice den-which will leave you feeling like you need a shower.I enjoyed it-with reservations.The makers of the Jason Bourne trilogy were certainly paying attention to the ending-I'l say no more than that!

A cold, cruel and cynical tale of revenge and vigilantism from writer/director James Glickenhaus. John Eastland (Robert Ginty) becomes judge and executioner after his army friend is gravely wounded by thugs. The uncut DVD version from Anchor Bay also stars Christopher George, Dennis Boutsikaris and Samantha Eggar. Yes, that's sax man Stan Getz making an appearance at a concert in Battery Park.I saw The Exterminator in the theater when it was first released in 1980 and, at age 22, it was the only movie that ever made me feel physically ill. Ginty's encounter with the chicken pimp and the state senator is as grim as any execution scene put on film even though it is not the most graphic. Director Glickenhaus skillfully creates a raw and realistic rage with documentary-style camera work and lighting as Ginty methodically and brutally dispenses his brand of justice.The graphic pre-credit Vietnam sequence was filmed at Indian Dunes Park; the same location as the tragic scene from Twilight Zone where Vic Morrow and two children were killed.