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New York in the late 70s and early 80s was a prime locale for gritty dramas and tough thrillers; it was a sleazy place, teeming with vice and riddled with crime. Which made it the perfect place to set a vigilante movie too.
In James Glickenhaus's The Exterminator, Vietnam veteran John Eastland (Robert Ginty) goes on a killing spree when his best friend, Michael (Steve James) is left crippled by a vicious street gang. Armed to the teeth, he dispatches with the lowlife criminals and scum who have made his stomping ground such a dangerous place to live.
The movie opens with a flashback sequence set during the Vietnam war, in which some American soldiers (including John and Michael) are captured by the enemy. A superb, but extremely nasty torture sequence (which features a very realistic beheading created by top FX expert Stan Winston and his team) lets the audience know what they are in for: a brutal and grim no-holds-barred movie.
Eastland's methods of disposing of the thugs and crooks that plague his city are extremely nasty (although not especially graphic): he lowers a man into a giant mincing machine, sets people on fire and shoots them with mercury filled bullets. A couple of unfortunate gang members are left to have their faces chewed off by rats.
In between all of this nastiness, the film also follows a cop's attempts to bring The Exterminator to justice and his romance with a nurse (who happens to work in the hospital where Michael is being looked after). These scenes take up far too much of the running time and often seem redundant to the plot.
A little less of the cop/nurse stuff and a touch more of The Exterminator getting brutal on the bad guys, and this trashy but enjoyable slice of 80s action would have been almost perfect. As it stands, I'll give it 7 out of 10.
score 7/10
BA_Harrison 10 December 2006
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw1541240/ |
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23-2-2021 18:07:20