Film Review: THE EXTERMINATOR (1980, James Glickenhaus)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 104 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Robert Ginty (COMING HOME, HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE MARLBORO MAN), Samantha Eggar (WELCOME TO BLOOD CITY, THE BROOD), Christopher George (PIECES, ENTER THE NINJA), Steve James (VIGILANTE, THE DELTA FORCE, I'M GONNA GET YOU SUCKA), Irwin Keyes (DEATH WISH 4, David Lynch's ON THE AIR, FRIDAY THE 13TH, THE WARRIORS, the voice of 'Bruno the Bigfoot' in SAM AND MAX HIT THE ROAD), David Lipman (FRANKENHOOKER, WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S II), and Stan Getz as himself. Special makeup effects by Stan Winston.
Tag-line: "A one man army. A new kind of soldier in a new kind of war."
Best one-liner: "If you're lying, I'll be back."

So I saw Cannon Films' EXTERMINATOR 2 before I saw the first one, and I gotta say, while I enjoyed 2 quite a bit on a certain level, 1 is the far better film. THE EXTERMINATOR is sort of like a ROLLING THUNDER/TAXI DRIVER mashup as directed by an adolescent boy in 1980. EXTERMINATOR 2 is a DEATH WISH II/BREAKIN' mashup directed by an eight-year-old in 1984. That's probably the most diplomatic way to put it. Additionally, after seeing Robert Ginty's (R.I.P.) mumbly, unfocused performance as the Exterminator in Part 2, I was prepared to write him off as some bland no-talent, but after seeing him in Part 1, he's actually, at times, a pretty solid actor. I think this marks the first time EVER that the influence of Golan/Globus has dulled someone down (instead of making them more flamboyant).

Anyway, let me tell you about the fil– FOOOOOOOOOOSH!!

This movie starts right out with an explosion, and this a full five years before RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II. And it's not just an explosion– it's a human body spiraling through the air in agony as it blows away from an explosion. Damn! This movie is gonna be brutal! It's a 'Nam flashback, and, naturally, we segue to a torture scene– pre-FIRST BLOOD and post-ROLLING THUNDER. Robert Ginty and legendary martial arts actor Steve James have been captured by the Viet Cong, and of their comrades is gruesomely beheaded via a Stan Winston special effect.

Ginty holds fast.

They're about to do Ginty when James breaks loose and, together with Ginty, take out all the VC.

Amidst the carnage, some random dudes are running around on fire– this series has standards to maintain.

We then cut to NYC, 1980.

A bigger war zone than Vietnam? Possibly, according to this movie. James and Ginty now work for some kind of grocery warehouse, packing meats and produce into trucks.

There are some shady gangster-types who hang around, which gives it a kind of 'THIEVES' HIGHWAY/ evil fruit trucker biz' feel. A street gang called the "Ghetto Gouls" busts in and fights James and Ginty. Whenever gangs attack in this movie, you get a lot of 'victim POV,' where the gang member looks directly into and taunts the camera.

This is a good thing. James and Ginty mop the floor with the Ghetto Ghouls (they get their blood-pumping from 'Nam flashbacks), and we think that's the last we've seen of them. Well, we think that's the last we've seen of them if we've never seen a vigilante movie before. Anyway, the Ghouls come back and beat Steve James within an inch of his life (and with a gardening claw, no less), paralyzing him. Within one minute of finding out his friend has been paralyzed, Ginty is already torturing a random Ghoul with a flamethrower for information-

and within ten minutes, the original perps have been ejected from a house party (where they're playing 'Burn, Baby, Burn' by the Trammps) and have had their faces EATEN BY RATS. The Exterminator is born, and the movie's in high gear. It's not really done out of revenge, per sé- The Exterminator just seems to be on 'Nam-induced autopilot.


Then we got the totally schweet Christopher George in the role of 'cop investigating the Exterminator, but begrudgingly being won over by his take-charge attitude' role, which had been seen many times before (Robert Ryan in THE WILD BUNCH, Vincent Gardenia in DEATH WISH, etc.) and would be seen many times again (Yaphet Kotto in THE PARK IS MINE!, Ed Lauter in DEATH WISH III, etc., etc.).

They try and build this whole annoying subplot in, though, where George is dating a doctor played by Samantha Eggar (who is really quite talented- she played the wife and mother in Cronenberg's THE BROOD).

"What was 'Nam like?"
"–It was bad. Not as bad as New York City. But it was bad."

She's given absolutely nothing to do in this role, though, and when they're on dates (and they go on a million dates), you yearn for the scenes of the Exterminator carefully loading his weaponry or the bad guys mugging old ladies and high-fiving.

A common scenario.

The film's street cred comes from its possession of a certain attentiveness to quotidian detail:
the shabby denizens of Times Square (including a whacky, face-fondling trans woman who touches the Exterminator in passing),


a stuttering junkie hooker that can hardly form a coherent thought, the mob henchmen who scrutinize a bathroom stall before their boss uses it, the awesome interior design of the Exterminator's apartment,

and the drawn out exchange (in the midst of a TAXI DRIVER hooker-saving subplot) between the Exterminator and a ramshackle hotel lackey involving the cost of sheets for a paid sexual encounter ($5 for clean sheets, and a $5 deposit on the sheets)...

"YA WANT DA SHEETS?! YA WANT DA SHEETS?!"


Maybe Enzo G. Castellari worked on this thing as an uncredited asscrack coordinator. Stranger things have happened.


Anyway, probably my two favorite 'vigilante-in-action' scenes are these:

#1. The Exterminator captures a mobster in a restaurant's bathroom (he hides in the trash can with a hypodermic needle).

He chains him up and interrogates him about his home security above a gigantic meat grinder.


"If you're lying, I'll be back," Ginty says (pre-Arnie, I might add). Turns out the mobster was full of shit and only wanted his vicious guard dog to take out Mr. Ginty. The Exterminator survives said attack, which only means one thing:

Burgertime.

And I really admire the filmmakers' willingness to go there.


#2. The Exterminator learns of a dungeon where young boys and hookers are tortured with a soldering iron and other such implements by a New Jersey State Senator (played by David Lipman, FRANKENHOOKER's first electrocuted John). This New Jersey State Senator must never show up to work- it doesn't matter if it's midnight on a Saturday night or 12 noon on a weekday, you better believe he's gonna be at his Times Square dungeon, torturing some slave child. Makes you wonder what exactly goes on in the New Jersey State Senate. Not much legislating, I guess. Anyway, the Exterminator decides to prep for this encounter by hollowing out his bullets and pouring mercury into them.

Why he does this exactly is left up to the viewer to imagine. I mean, if he's already shooting people dead with the bullets, is it really important to him that they get mercury poisoning, post-mortem? The intent is different, but it's kind of in the same ballpark as sanitizing the skin with alcohol prior to a lethal injection. Seems a bit pointless. Anyway, the Exterminator busts in and shoots him dead, right in the kidney.


And then, um, I guess he gets mercury poisoned afterward. Take that!

There's also a faction of evil politicians and CIA men who want the Exterminator dead- with no trial or subsequent public embarassment of the government, whose inability to clean up the streets is being highlighted by this angry, mercury poisoning man. Christopher George is pissed off by their holier-than-thou, big shot attitude (which is similar to Robert Davi's FBI douche in DIE HARD) and tells them what's what:

"What do you think?"
"I THINK YOU HAVE TO TAKE A SHIT- IT'S COMIN' OUTTA YOUR MOUTH INSTEAD'A YOUR ASSHOLE!!!"

It's moments like this that I'm truly glad Christopher George pursued a career in acting. Anyway, I won't spoil how it all goes down, but you have to love that a character commits a heart-wrenching act of euthanasia and then delivers a "You're fly's open!" one-liner within, literally, thirty seconds of each other.

Your fly is open, Christopher George. Zing!

Well, EXTERMINATOR, you've impressed me. I'm not sure why the flamethrower was so essential to the marketing (he threatens one man with it but never once pulls the trigger) and the plot of the sequel (he exclusively uses the flamethrower in part 2). I guess a dude cleaning up the streets of New York with a flamethrower certainly has pull (or at least Golan and Globus thought so). Well, a dude cleaning up the streets of New York with mercury poisoning bullets and a giant meat-grinder has a lot of pull, too, in my opinion.

Obviously not quite in the same league as Paul Schrader's additions to the genre, or even something like Bill Lustig's VIGILANTE, but THE EXTERMINATOR is still a damned solid, furious, n' sleazy revenge flick. Pass the burgers.

-Sean Gill

Film Review: EXTERMINATOR 2 (1984, Mark Bunztman)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 89 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Mario van Peebles (HEARTBREAK RIDGE, RAPPIN'), Robert Ginty (THE EXTERMINATOR), Frankie Faison (all the Hannibal Lector movies, C.H.U.D., CAT PEOPLE), Arye Gross (HOUSE II: THE SECOND STORY, SOUL MAN), supposed bit parts by John Turturro and L. Scott Caldwell (Rose on TV's LOST)- he's 'man shouting in vacant lot, but I never found her, even though I was looking pretty hard. Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus. Music by David Spear (MORTUARY ACADEMY).
Tag-line: "John Eastland is back - He Knew You Were Lying - The Frightmare Continues!"
Best one-liner: "You want to clean out the streets? I AM the streets!"

The film starts right off with a bang, or rather a FOOOOOSH, with the Exterminator (Robert Ginty) pointing his flamethrower at the camera and letting it rip. We later see the exact same shot in the context of the film, but it doesn't really diminish it's 'FOOOOOSH in the face' impact.


We're talkin' DEATH WISH- but with a flamethrower.


Now I have never seen the Cannon logo do THAT.

And basically, this is Cannon's precursor to DEATH WISH 3. It was their trial run. And it's not perfect- they learned a lot. But I think it also has much to teach all of us. Now clearly, they wanted to create an ominous, crime-addled dystopian world on the brink of ruin. Old people are shot indiscriminately by cackling ex-dancers, police helicopters are blown up, and women are stabbed (and their attackers then brag "I like it when their faces go crazy like that, when they think the world has gone psycho and there's no way out!"). Dudes on roller skates abduct women just so they can get them hooked on smack. It's set up like a post-apocalyptic Middle Ages, with drawbridges, suits of armor, torches, subterranean hideouts, giant blades, etc. But there are unwitting elements of this world that at times seem more like a utopia. Allow me to explain: completely integrated gangs hang out together in complete post-racial harmony. Our main characters spend all of their time at a sleazier version of the bar from FLASHDANCE, which offers "Free Beer" every night. At least that's what the sign out front says. It's all boarded up and has trouble maintaining a clientele, but with free beer every night, it's unclear to me why the entire city of New York is not constantly frequenting this bar. Plus, the Exterminator's pseudo-stripper ("About six months ago, I came to New York, and Broadway seems about as far away as ever!") girlfriend is gyrating and crotch-thrusting to some sweet 80's beats every night. Everything is accompanied by tunes that alternate between rootin' tootin' MIDI basement porn music and the something that would maybe play on the start-up screen for a really shitty martial arts-based NES game. Here's a taste. I mean aside from being caught by Mario van Peebles and ritually crucified- I don't know about you, but this definitely feels like a place in which I could spend some serious time.

The film has an odd feel to it. Golan and Globus were still finding their voice. They had already made DEATH WISH II, BREAKIN', and a couple of Ninja movies, but hadn't done the bulk of their Bronson work, any of their Chuck Norris, no Michael Dudikoff, nor the real dance classics, like BREAKIN' 2, RAPPIN', SALSA, etc. And I don't know how involved they were in the production. I mean, clearly they were around when van Peebles was having his hair and costume done, and clearly they're responsible for the dancer girlfriend

the random break-dance interlude, and the odd roller skating performance art


set to music from BREAKIN', but first-time director Mark Bunztman is probably responsible for a lot of the wacko awkwardnness. Everyone mumbles in this movie, except for van Peebles (as "X"), who thinks he's playing a Shakespearian villain.

Albeit a Shakespearian villain with spiked shoulder pads, one-strap overalls, equal amounts of glitter and sweat, nipple-covering suspenders (on occasion), and a hairstyle that keeps alternating between a foppish Jheri curl and a Grace Jones-style flat-top 'fro.

His main henchman wears a tail coat, juggles fire, and rides around in roller skates for no particular reason. Yeah, this is pretty terrific. But the mumbling is insane, and at times the film seems completely improvised. The pacing is ludicrous as well. "X" and his crew take about 15 minutes to ritually kill an armored truck driver. But it's not a 15 minute torture scene, which could at least be forgiven as an attempt to insert some gratuitous gore– here, they're just carrying him around.... very, very, very slowly. You'll see probably one of the most awkward 'date' scenes in film history, between the Exterminator and his gal. The poor man's Fred Williamson (Frankie Faison)

does some drunk garbage truck driving, feeds some stray dogs and talks and laughs under his breath a lot to Ginty.

Ginty really doesn't know how to deliver a one liner. He gives no emphasis as he off-handedly mutters things like "Looks like some garbage needs to be removed." On the other hand, "X" carefully vocalizes entire speeches about being and owning 'the streets.' Half the time, though, you have no idea what exactly is happening as you strain to hear the half-assedly ad-libbed dialogue.

But don't allow me to lose my focus. This movie was designed for one reason, and one reason only: so that we could watch dudes in asbestos suits running around on fire, waving their arms helplessly in slow motion.


Get used to the POV shot of 'criminal-about-to-be-torched," cause you're gonna be seeing it a lot.


They shoulda shot this in 3D!

Promotional materials called the Exterminator a 'Sherman tank on two legs who breathes fire like Godzilla.' Damn! And these flamed dudes are not just any criminals- they're criminals who put drugs on the streets! This idea would come to a bigger budget fruition in Cannon's DEATH WISH 4- THE CRACKDOWN, but it's still pretty damn solid here. "X" proclaims, "With this powder, I CONTROL THE STREETS!" after he snags a bunch of coke from some carnation-wearing mobsters. Later, when the Exterminator cleverly switches out his drugs, "X" carefully enunciates: "THIS IS FLOUR.... WHERE'S MY DRUG?!?"

Anyway, the Exterminator captures a gang member, and tortures him by leaving him in the back of a garbage truck. Several days later, we get a little of the old Cannon 'comic relief' when they show the hoodlum, still in the back of the truck, munching on some trash. This all leads to a finale where the Exterminator tricks out the garbage truck with hidden machine guns and a snow plow to make it an unstoppable combat vehicle. Of course, there's the high stakes showdown between "X" and the Exterminator, which has to add the whole "we're not so different, you and me" cliché to the mix.

"X" taunts: "How do you like being the animal, Exterminator?! What are you hiding from, masked man? What's the matter, are you nervous? Are we too much ALIKE?" Yeah, this is a subtle movie. That's why I like it. Four mumbly, flaming stars.

Note Peebles' Patrick Magee-style posturing!

-Sean Gill

Film Review: DEATH WISH 4- THE CRACKDOWN (1987, J. Lee Thompson)

Stars: 4.5 of 5.
Running Time: 99 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Charles Bronson, John P. Ryan (IT'S ALIVE, CLASS OF 1999), Danny Trejo, Soon-Tek Oh (MISSING IN ACTION 2), George Dickerson (BLUE VELVET, PSYCHO II), Mark Pellegrino (Jacob on TV's LOST, MULHOLLAND DR.).
Tag-lines: "The biggest Death Wish ever!"
Best one-liner: "I was just using the... toilet?" (said by Bronson)

Ah, 1987. When the scourge of crack lashed ceaselessly across the welted and track-marked back of America; so much so, that everybody and their brother and Pee-Wee and Clint Eastwood were doing anti-crack PSAs. Well, it was time for Charles Bronson to step in and say- "Anyone connected with drugs deserves to die!"

"When can I start?"

But the thing is, DEATH WISH 4: THE CRACKDOWN forgets that it's a PSA about 25 minutes in, and turns into a balls-to-the-wall Golan-Globus shoot 'em up, which is completely fine by me. With J. Lee Thompson directing instead of Winner, one could worry about the film's moxie. The first scene lets you know those fears are unfounded: a woman's alone in a parking garage with some jazzy sax and slappy bass. You know something awful's about to happen, and yet the film is completely gleeful about the set-up. Some ominous men, an engine that won't turn over, some high-fives, and an attempted gang rape later, Bronson shows up, says his name is "Death," shoots the hoods, has a nightmarish vision á la Luke in Yoda's cave, and then wakes up from a nightmare!



The high-five during gang-rape is essential.


"Who are you???" –"Death."


At least he wasn't dreaming about a white buffalo. I should do a scholarly paper on the dream-life of Bronson.

There's a lot goin' on: we got a dude blown away by Bronson, zapped, and cooked atop a bumper car rink; a wild-eyebrowed John P. Ryan;

Laura Dern's cop Dad from BLUE VELVET (George Dickerson); Mark Pellegrino (the hitman in MULHOLLAND DR. and Jacob on TV's LOST) as a mascara-wearin' Punk;

Danny Trejo meeting the wrong end of Bronson's exploding wine bottle;

Bronson's hidden room of assault weapons and C-4 behind his 'fridge; really awkward Bronson subterfuge;

Bronson cater-waitering a party (to infiltrate and destroy);

insane self-promotion (one of the baddies has an office lined with Cannon posters like BREAKIN' and TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE 2);


a daytime shootout later referred to as having happened at night, because they were too lazy to alter the script; the best stilted Bronson one-liner since DW3's "It's MY CAR!" (with "I was MAKIN' A SANDWICH!");

and a climactic shootout at a roller disco.

This sort of thing happens all the time.




Yep, this is a Cannon film. And it is terrific. Recommended to anyone who hates drugs, people who sell drugs, people who use drugs, or people who know people who sell or use drugs.

-Sean Gill