"The Exterminator", James Glickenhaus' second feature film after the way obscure "The Astrologer" ('75), is for sure a product from its time, a modestly budgeted exploitation / vigilante flick, showed in the glory days of the lost Grindhouses of Times Square and 42nd Street, where the low-budget New York filmmakers could display their harsh works.Reusing elements from cult movies that worked also as social commentaries such as John G. Avildsen's "Joe" ('70) starring Peter Boyle; Michael Winner's "Death Wish" ('74) starring Charles Bronson and Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" ('76) and the extreme psychological horror films in vogue during the late 70's (the so-called 'video nasties') such as Joseph Ellison's "Don't Go in the House" ('79) starring Dan Grimaldi, "The Exterminator" is a grim tale about a Vietnam vet, John Eastland (played by Robert Ginty from "Coming Home", released 2 years before and also related to the Vietnam war), who works in a warehouse with his best friend, Michael Jefferson (Steve James from "American Ninja" fame), a tough soldier, but now a family man responsible for saving his life during the war. When a group of street thugs, "The Ghetto Ghouls" sadistically, paralyze Jefferson, Eastland becomes a vigilante, embarking on a mission to cleanse New York of all the criminals and perverts, but a quick witted veteran cop, Det. James Dalton (Christopher George, a notable character actor from classic westerns such as "El Dorado" and "Chisum", both starred by John Wayne) is given the mission to stop the activities of the unknown vigilante who calls himself "The Exterminator"...This movie became notorious back in the day for his gruesome scenes such as an explicit on-screen decapitation and the shot via poisoned bullets straight to the liver of a pervert, which resulted being cut in some countries and banned in others.Unfortunately, besides those infamous scenes the movie has very little to offer, it moves at a snail pace, the editing is kind of messy and the script is severely underdeveloped, consisting of ghastly vignettes in which Ginty is taking on the thugs who crippled his friend, then the Mob Boss, two repugnant pedophiles and more thugs that assaulted an old lady in Central Park (echoing Bronson in "Death Wish").In terms of performances, Ginty fares well in some scenes and looks terribly awkward in others, but he looks and feels like an average joe (besides his tall stature) and gives some credibility and realism to his vigilante, showing vulnerability and even some kind of humanism, instead of a machine type taking on criminals.Christopher George and the unnecessary love affair with the nurse played by Samantha Eggar (from David Cronenberg's "The Brood") which adds nothing to the main plot, both give satisfactory, yet routine performances.Steve James, in an early appearance on-screen, started to prove here that he deserved much more than the sidekick part which he went doing for his entire acting career until his way premature death at age 41 in '93.Even with its flaws, after all it's a low-budgeted Grindhouse flick, "The Exterminator" rules nowadays as a piece of nostalgia from the late 70's more realistic and depressing popular culture, showing the dark side of New York City (full of low lifes, street criminals, drug dealers, drug addicts, underage prostitution, disgusting pedophiles and slimy perverts), better (and cleverly) explored in the aforementioned "Joe" and "Taxi Driver", but not as gritty and explicit as Glickenhaus showed us here."The Exterminator" is a cult classic among the exploitation cinema and deserves to be respected for what it is, but like the other flicks from this genre it's not indicated for the general audience...

Some movies earn their reputation on 'Shock-Value' alone. After reading other reviews it seems there is a fairly broad range of tastes and cultural sophistication among the reviewers that range from sadistically deranged to seemingly emotionally balanced.I vaguely remember this movie when it was released. I was 12 and I don't recall anyone talking about it. So I suppose it was box-office flop. Outside of its shocking violence the movie is about as uninspiring, cheesy, clumsy and repugnant as one could find. Honestly, the production values are as cut-rate as one would find in an average porn film. The Exterminator shamelessly rips off the Vigilante tale, undoubtedly, from Death Wish, a better movie. But it doesn't even have the quality acting, believable script or production values of Death Wish. It is simply a moronic tale of an urban nobody who avenges the death of his friend. Then inexplicably, without any noticeable character development, emotional range or dramatic arc, the lead actor, Robert Ginty, goes on a maniacal rampage to become a homicidal maniac who exceeds the carnage of the thugs he chooses to target. There are several torture scenes that are not only implausible in nature and nuance, but seem to just grade against the monotone plot. There are a series of slow plot developments that occur only through coincidence that are punctuated by brutal torture and offings. A couple of the acts committed by the protagonist are so hideous that they are actually more heinous than any deed committed by the thugs or creeps depicted in the film. I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, because the movie is not sophisticated enough to distinguish due justice or a senseless rampage. The only hope for this movie's theme is if we engage in the idea that violence begets violence and its bloody consequences. But the film doesn't even achieve that level of social consciousness. And therefore is nothing more than gratuitous and cinematic crud. It just plays out like a messy series of sketches that illustrate some Right-wing fantasy of ridding criminals. I guess this film was hoping to bank on the American public's cry for justice during a time when America was plagued with urban blight during the Carter administration and its ineffective and lenient judicial system.Typically, the movie is also a timepiece of its own era (Late 70's and early 80's) with laughably bad hairstyles. The acting is pretty bad in parts. Christopher George, as the lead detective, is too incompetent and lethargic as a worthy nemesis to the vigilante villain. Robert Ginty is strangely bland and he's an odd choice for an anti-hero. He just seems very unfit and unconvincing in this kind of role. The thugs, perpetrators, pedophiles and mobsters in the milieu are about as menacing as an elementary school faculty. Characters are so hopelessly unbelievable in acting and presence that I'm certain they were paid very low salaries. This production also has a considerable amount of one-time actors where this was their only big-screen gig. After watching this abominable piece of celluloid it comes to no surprise. The problems with this movie are so abundant that to bother mentioning all of them would take too much space. The opening and closing ballad is also execrable.

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.