Review of The Exterminator (1980) by Francisco G — 06 Apr 2013

John Eastland (Robert Ginty), is a Vietnam vet and when his best friend, Michael Jefferson (Steve James), is mugged and left permanently crippled by a furious band formed by some heinous villains, he decides to do something about it. Jefferson saved Eastland's life in Vietnam and now it's time for Eastland to get revenge for his friend. Using his old Army gear he sets out on a crusade to clean up the streets of New York using the name "The Exterminator." Eastland stalks the slums of and takes the law into his own hands, searching out vengeance on crooks, hoodlums, sadistic muggers and pimps making the neighbourhood safer by bumping them off...

Yet another slightly dodgy B-actioneer from the 80´s I saw a few years after it was made. Had forgotten most of it, but I did remember the violent parts. What I reacted on was maybe not how poor it was shot and the poor acting, I expected that, but how weird the narrative was. Cut up, random and hardly coherent. At times you were wondering if you were still watching the same movie or not. The love story between the cop and the female doctor made no real sense in the movie. Felt like some strange filler that added nothing to the storyline. "The Exterminator" is a classic campy 80´s video nasty with extreme B-violence and a low-budgeted balance. I have always wondered about the movieposter that doesn´t actually portray how Ginty´s character looks like in the movie. I reckon the production company just said "Let´s make a poster that sells. Make it cool. It doesn´t matter that Eastland doesn´t really look like that in the movie..." That´s the 80´s for you. I´d expected him to look like that when it came out. Some trivia is that at the time of its release, the movie was haunted by controversy, as the censors thought it was too violent, and many minutes had to be cut away and the Vietnam sequence cost $400,000 dollars to film, which was about 20% of the picture's entire budget.