A product of its time period

cody1216

Although highly derivative of both Death Wish and Taxi Driver (and with a climax stolen directly from Badge 373), The Exterminator still successfully depicts a dirty, crime-ridden, God-forsaken New York City of the late '70s in ways that no other film has before or since.

Robert Ginty portrays John Eastland, a disillusioned and apparently disturbed Vietnam vet working the night shift at the Bronx Terminal Market with his old army buddy, Michael Jefferson. One morning, John tries to stop a group of gang members ("The Ghetto Ghouls", apparently based on the notorious South Bronx street gang The Savage Skulls) from stealing cases of beer from a storage container at the market, and nearly gets his throat cut for his trouble. Jefferson rescues Eastland once again (as he did in Vietnam), but of course their trouble is far from over. When the gang catches up with Jefferson and leaves him paralyzed and fighting for his life at Lincoln Hospital, Eastland begins his campaign of vengeance. During the course of this extremely violent movie, Eastland avenges not only his old friend, but other victims as well, using blowtorches, a meat grinder,an M-16 and a .44 Magnum loaded with mercury-filled dum-dum bullets as he systematically takes out mobsters, chickenhawks and other assorted street scum.

Critics of this movie have contended that Eastland's violence is too randomly directed after initially taking out the gang bangers who hurt his friend. My feeling is that Eastland had been suppressing a lot of rage since Vietnam, and had been seething over the deteriorating conditions of his city, and that the mugging of Jefferson was the last straw. After avenging his friend, Eastland decides to wage war against every criminal and degenerate that he sees. Of course, this being the cynical seventies, the NYPD detective assigned to the case (himself a Nam vet) would just as soon let The Exterminator continue to clean up the streets, but it is an election year, and public officials are embarrassed by the fact that The Exterminator is succeeding in eliminating crime where they have failed. The federal government actually believes that The Exterminator may be a foreign agent working to undermine the current administration, and sends a CIA operative into the city to investigate. By the end of the story, the CIA assassin only THINKS he has exterminated The Exterminator - and, as Eastland has promised in the past, "I'll be back".

When creating the character of John Eastland, James Glickenhaus was obviously influenced by Robert DeNiro's deranged Vietnam vet Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver and by Charles Bronson's Paul Kersey character, who was affected by violence to the point that he was himself driven to violence in Death Wish. But in spite of this (and in spite of criticisms that Ginty's character is stiff and wooden), The Exterminator emerges as an interesting character study of a traumatized man who unravels under the stress of life in inner-city New York after the senseless violence of that place strikes a little too close to home.

Those of us New Yorkers who are old enough to remember that city back in those bad old days of the late '70s - early '80s will agree that The Exterminator captures the grit and grime of places like the South Bronx and Times Square, as well as the lawlessness and general chaos of the place. Thank God the place has been cleaned up somewhat.

score /10

cody1216 26 June 2008

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1899751/