The Executioner, Part II (1984)

In a weekend of oppressive heat, poor sleep as the result of aforementioned heat and having to chase up a missing prescription with the pharmacy, (again in said heat), of the numerous films I watched while slumped on my sofa, exhausted from all that heat, this, curiously, is the one that made the greatest impression upon me.  Not because The Executioner Part II (1984) could, in any way, be described as a good film, but because ii is one of the most audacious attempts at misleading a potential audience I've seen from an exploitation film.  I happened upon the film on a streaming channel I'd flicked to and was too lazy to switch from, although I nearly did,. thinking that as I hadn't seen Part I, then it might be a confusing watch.  Except, of course, that there never was an Executioner Part I.  Certainly, there have been films called The Executioner, but none are related to this Part II.  What the producers were trying to do was to cash in on the success of the similarly titled vigilante film The Exterminator (1980) and even more so its sequel The Exterminator 2 (1984), which The Executioner Part II beat to release, (it was actually filmed in 1982, but sat on the shelf for a couple of years).  In effect, it is the ultimate in fake sequels, deliberately designed in plot terms, title and advertising, to confuse fans of The Exterminator into watching Executioner Part II instead of Exterminator 2.

The resulting film is, in essence, a low budget, low rent rip off of The Exterminator, which is quite an achievement considering just how low budget and low rent that film was.  The Executioner Part II is a deliriously bad film (so much so that at times I suspected that I was suffering a heat induced hallucination), not so much in that it is ineptly made - the direction from schlock veteran James Bryan is actually halfway competent for this sort of film- but just that its script is ludicrous and its plotting bizarre and circuitous and its budget is too low to match even its modest ambitions.  The acting performances are what really let the film down and give it such an amateurish vibe.  The closest thing to 'stars' that it can muster are Christopher Mitchum, (proving again that you can only trade on your famous father's name for so long before you find yourself rapidly plummeting from supporting roles in John Wayne pictures to poverty row), who is as wooden here as he was in any of the big budget studio films he appeared in, and Aldo Ray.  The latter, by his own admission, was by this point in his career, taking any paying job going in order to cover his medical bills for the treatment of the cancer that was eventually to kill him, and pretty much phones in his brief role as the police commissioner.  It is painfully obvious by the way in which she mangles her lines, that English isn't the leading lady's first language, (she was actually German) - incredibly, the actress (Renee Harmon, who was in a number of eighties schlock movies) is also credited as the scriptwriter.  which probably explains the sheer clunkiness, not to mention weirdness, of most of the dialogue.

Opening with a superfluous ultra low budget Vietnam flashback, (obligatory in urban vigilante movies of this kind), in which Mike saves the life of his buddy Roger (Mitchum).  Flash forward to the present and Roger is now a big city police detective and Mike runs an auto repair shop, (but won't work on foreign cars or automatics - which must severely limit his customer base, bearing in mind that manual transmissions were virtually unknown in US cars of the era).  Roger is hunting the vigilante dubbed 'The Executioner' who is terrorising  the city's underworld, while Mike, obviously, is the vigilante.  Deeply disturbed by his 'Nam experiences, Mike is still fighting the war in his head, substituting local muggers and rapists for the Viet Cong.  The paucity of the film's resources, however, mean that not only can't Mike muster a decent vigilante outfit (scruffy Army fatigues with  a scarf across his face instead of a mask) but his actual vigilante attacks are all very small scale.  While quite a few guns get toted, they don't get fired (even blank rounds cost money), with his confrontations with bad guys quickly degenerating into fistfights, knife fights or just plain old bludgeoning with blunt instruments.  It is clear that the makers wanted these fights to look as brutal as possible but the budget obviously placed severe restrictions on what sort of stunt work could be performed, not to mention how much fake blood could be spilled.

Meanwhile, in order to pad the film out, there's a sub-plot involving a criminal referred to as 'The Tattooed Man' who, with his cronies, likes drugging, kidnapping, torturing and raping teenaged girls.  Inevitably, he ends up targeting Roger's teenage daughter, who not only looks to be in her mid twenties at least, but has also fallen in with a group of chicks doing booze, drugs, sex and other unspecified wild stuff - all of whom are even worse actors than the girl playing the daughter.  Of course, Mike learns what's happened and single handedly storms the bad guys' hideout - cue more beatings, stabbings and bludgeonings.  A highlight of this sequence comes when a henchman is impaled on a couch with a samurai sword - and keeps right on fighting the Executioner.  But, the sofa impaling by sword aside, the climax ultimately fails to deliver the goods.  Not only are 'The Tattooed Man's' ideas of torture pretty tame, (the budget apparently wouldn't run to any torture devices beyond a lit cigarette), but he doesn't even have any much in the way of tattoos to justify his name.  I was expecting him to be like Ray Bradbury's 'Illustrated Man', his body entirely covered with the things.  But no, it's just a couple of modest tattoos of little artistic note.  

The film looks roughly made, with abrupt editing, apparently incomplete sound dubbing, (much of the expected background noise seems absent) and frenzied, yet scrappy looking action scenes.  (It was reputedly shot at weekends in order to minimise equipment rental costs on 35mm short ends left over from other productions, in order to keep the budget as low as possible).  Indeed, there are times at which you suspect that it might be intended as a parody of low budget vigilante films rather than just a cash in on the success of recent genre releases.  But it just doesn't seem to be sufficiently self-aware to be a parody, with most of its strangeness and off kilter feel stemming from a script written by a non-native English speaker trying to approximate normal English dialogue and put together every urban vigilante cliche into one script.  The result is a film that lurches from one cliched set-piece to another at breakneck speed, but doesn't actually have the resources to properly realise any of them.  All of this fuels the film's fever dream feel and general air of sheer surrealism, both of which, along with its unintentionally hilarious dialogue, make it hugely entertaining.  It really is one of those films which just has to be seen to be disbelieved - which you can, as it is currently available in its entirety on You Tube.  

(As a footnote, the actual Exterminator sequel, The Exterminator 2, turned out to be almost as ramshackle as The Executioner Part II, with large parts of the film being re-shot, with LA standing in for the New York locations of the original footage.  Star Robert Ginty apparently wasn't available for most of the reshoots, with his vigilante persona suddenly taking to wearing a welder's mask while meting out his brutal 'justice').