U.S.A. | 1980 Directed by James Glickenhaus Starring Christopher George Robert Ginty Samantha Eggar Color | 102 Minutes | Not Rated Blu-ray / DVD Combo (RA/B/C-HD / R0-NTSC | 2-disc set) Synapse Films Hold your mouse pointer over an image for a pop-up caption

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		Review by Rod Barnett Film:7 BD/DVD:9

NOTE: Screenshots were taken from the DVD

I'm not sure why I never saw The Exterminator when I was a teenager.

It wasn't because the film was difficult to find in the 1980s. Hell — the VHS box leered out from the 'action' shelves of every Mom & Pop video store I ever patronized in the early days of home VCRs. It was the ubiquitous image of a man in a tinted motorcycle helmet brandishing a flamethrower that once seen was never forgotten. That dark visor hinted at the merciless anger behind the idea of someone that would run around New York City killing people with such a weapon. And I didn't avoid the film because I had been told it wasn't any good either. Indeed, the opposite was true with more than a few school friends relating tales of the intense urban violence and the grim nastiness featured on that video tape. I think that having seen more than a few dark urban crime films I might have been burned out or simply put off by the idea of seeing yet another one. I think I felt as if the harshness of what was depicted in such a film might be too much for me to treat as just an entertaining movie and night creep into my subconscious. Having finally caught up with The Exterminator I can say that my intuition may have been correct.

In his contemporaneous review of this film Roger Ebert called it "a sick example of the almost unbelievable descent into gruesome savagery in American movies" and gave it the slight of his lowest score: no stars. Methinks Mr. Ebert was off his meds or had a bad breakfast that day because, although there are many things to complain about with The Exterminator, seeing it as a kind of horrific marker on the supposed descent into savagery is to stand on a very wobbly soapbox. The film's biggest crimes are some unprofessional technical sloppiness, a clumsy narrative and a central performance that comes off as fairly confused but as far as Death Wish rip-offs are concerned it's well above the average. Like that Charles Bronson film, The Exterminator deals with a one-man crusade to clean up the dark urban streets and one detective's attempt to find and stop him — but this movie is grittier, nastier and more willing to wallow in the filth of 1970s NYC. This is probably the reason Ebert was repulsed and also why the movie has such a big cult following. Maybe some people need to be reminded of their views on other films of a violent nature and of the fact that 'it's only a movie'.

The film begins in Vietnam (or at least what is supposed to pass for the place) as we witness American soldier John Eastland (Robert Ginty, Warrior of the Lost World) and his squad captured by the Viet Cong. The expected torture and violence occurs before a last-minute helicopter rescue saves him and his best friend Michael (Steve Jefferson) from the bloody blade of a machete. Cut to a few years later, when both men work in a meat packing plant in New York City. Michael has a family but John is single and clearly still dealing with the war trauma while trying to get on with his life. After rousting some lowlife thieves attempting to steal beer from the docks of the neighboring warehouse, the two buddies are targeted for revenge. The thieves turn out to be part of a vicious street gang, who jump Michael and maul him with a metal garden claw. With his best friend in the hospital Eastland realizes that there's a new war with a new enemy to be fought so he unpacks his souvenir weapons and tracks the gang to their squatter hangout. But this taste of justice seems to only awaken his desire to act so he then starts going after other criminal scum walking the streets. He writes a letter to the local papers naming himself "The Exterminator" as he looks around for others in need of a vigilante to do what the cops cannot.

The policeman in change of tracking down the Exterminator is Detective James Dalton (Christopher George). One of the best things about the film is that we understand that he is just doing his job as a working stiff who might even sympathize with his quarry in a lot of ways. Luckily George gives an excellent world-weary performance that gets us on his side even as the film makes it much easier to root for Eastland to keep killing the scumbags he encounters. Almost every bastard he offs is dispatched in a surprising way, with my personal favorite being the mob boss who gets ground up into 180 pounds of raw meat. Of course, writer/director James Glickenhaus picks his targets from the sleaziest of all possible choices to make identifying with Eastland's self-imposed mission a given. It's such a stacked deck that by the time the Exterminator burns a child slavery/prostitution joint's owner to death any other option has been dismissed by most viewers. What? You're going to defend the legal rights of pedophile state senators? This movie treads the familiar territory of other right-wing crime fantasies of the 1970s like Dirty Harry (and its sequels and copies) for much the same reason. I may not want right-wing lunatics running around my home imposing their version of America on me, but watching them onscreen can be entertaining. Whenever the answer to every problem is violence these movies become an amusing way to see the manipulation of simple minds for what it is — bread and circuses. Enjoy the spectacle folks, but don't forget that in the real world you just might have quick- guessed wrongly about who is guilty or innocent.

As I alluded to earlier, the film is riddled with technical screw-ups and sloppiness but the thrust of the film is powerful enough to keep the exploitation fan in his seat. One of the film's best elements is the on-location shooting in New York, showing us a stark picture of the place that birthed more than a few vigilante wishes. Seeing the seedy areas that slicker movies made in the same period would avoid is fascinating. As solid as Christopher George is as the cop, Ginty is sometimes frustratingly blank as our 'hero' and that makes his eventual fate more a question to be answered rather than an engine that drives the story forward. Some of this can be laid at the foot of the script, as we never see Eastland make the decision to name himself and announce his intentions to the world via newspaper. This comes out of the blue as a radio report, so that at first it's not clear Eastland is the person taking credit for killing criminals. On the other hand this blankness might have been a conscious acting choice by Ginty to show the way his character is just going whichever way the wind blows him and reacting to the injustice he stumbles into. Still, his repeated delivery of the trademark line "If you're lying, I'll be back" is perfect and becomes one of the most chilling statements a determined man can say. I'm glad to see Samantha Egger anytime but her doctor character either needed more screen time or less — I would vote more as her scenes with George are well done and have the feel of two people actually awkwardly getting to know each other. But the convenience of her being the doctor of Eastland's wounded buddy was a little too much.

Fans of this film should thank the fine folks at Synapse Films not just because they have brought The Exterminator back to DVD in a better looking version, but because the cult movie company has gone even further and issued it on Blu-ray. That's right! This grimy, nasty bit of sleazy vengeance trash can now be seen in an amazingly sharp hi-def transfer that shows every cut, stab, flame and high-impact bullet strike in the best resolution possible. The only time I saw any obvious speckling or spots on the film was during the opening credit sequence- the rest of the time the image was clear and sharp with nothing distracting at all. The best info for longtime fans is that the version of the film presented here is the slightly longer, more violent director's cut. I'm not sure exactly where all the extra footage pops up but I can tell that several gore effects would have been targeted by censors. As usual with Synapse the film image is presented in anamorphic widescreen and this disc sports two versions of the soundtrack — a DTS-HD version of the original stereo track and a 2.0 Mono version — as well.

Besides the theatrical trailer and some vintage TV spots, the only extra is a feature length commentary track with writer/director James Glickenhaus. This is good, moderated conversation about the film that ranges from production details to some great anecdotes about filming in NYC at night. I was most intrigued by the idea of First Blood being the natural sequel to this film as that really does seem to be the most obvious next step for Eastland as a character. Fans will find a lot to enjoy in the discussion and newcomers will just be stunned by the movie itself. Go check it out! 10/03/11

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