The Exterminator (1980)

Hugely successful on its release, despite being quite crudely made, The Exterminator (1980) is of interest now mainly because it took the vigilante film back for the working classes.  Prior to The Exterminator, the best known contemporary vigilante movie had been 1974's Death Wish, which starred Charles Bronson as an architect turned avenging street angel.  While Bronson might have been unlikely casting for a white collar professional, his character's middle class status casts the film as a depiction of class warfare, with all of the muggers, rapists and gang members he offs clearly being from the lower classes.  The Exterminator, however, with its blue collar hero (he's a meat packer), gives the vigilante action a somewhat different slant, with the majority of his victims being Latino gang members which, intentionally or not, gives the action an underlying feel of being cast in terms of a 'race war'.  To be absolutely fair, there are some victims who aren't Latino lowlifes - there's a mob boss (who is Italian American), a pimp and State Senator who is into kiddies.  But they are very much the exceptions.  The other notable aspect of the film is that it is, quite possibly, the first vigilante movie to employ the trope of having its protagonist be a disturbed Vietnam vet, still haunted by his experiences in the jungles of South East Asia, something which would be echoes in dozens of subsequent direct-to-video vigilante movies.  Of course, the idea that the title character is re-enacting his Vietnam trauma on the streets of New York only reinforces that race agenda, with the Latino gang members being equated to the Viet Cong in his mind.

The film has a number of problems beyond such sub-texts, the main one being that the vigilante plot alone simply can't generate sufficient running time for a feature film - there are only so many times we can watch our hero variously gun down, burn and run over scumbags before it gets repetitious.  So a bizarre sub-plot involving the CIA is introduced, with them suspecting that 'The Exterminator' is actually some kind of terrorist employed either by a foreign government or the political opposition to try and undermine the current administration's anti-crime policies in an election year.  (Bearing in mind that Jimmy Carter was in the White House when the film was shot, the clear implication is that the Reagan campaign was prepared to encourage urban vigilantism to whip up votes).  Ultimately, this move into paranoid political thriller territory amounts to very little, (beyond providing a deus ex machina at the film's climax which allows the protagonist to disappear).  Plus, why would the CIA be involved?  Surely vigilantism, as a domestic issue, would come under the purview of the FBI, even if foreign inspired?  Another big problem is the characterisation of the main character - he's simply too much of an obviously deeply disturbed psycho to be truly engaging.  To be fair, Robert Ginty plays the role very well, his performance never shying away from the fact that he appears to have no compassion, remorse or twinge of conscience regarding his victims - even if they are scumbags, they are still human beings, yet his killings are callous in the extreme.  It's noteworthy that Ginty actually only gets third billing, below Christopher George and Samantha Eggar, with his screen time restricted for long stretches.  While George and Eggar are doubtless there primarily in order to provide the financiers with some 'name' stars - while George, as detective does play a key role in proceedings, Eggar's role as a doctor is pretty perfunctory - it is also probable that their presence reflects a worry on the producers' part that audiences might well recoil from Ginty's brutalism and therefore more conventional sympsthetic leads were needed.  Worryingly, though, in the event audiences seemed to love Ginty's use of extreme violence.

While James Glickenhaus' direction moves things along a decent pace, the film nonetheless has a very rough around the edges and unrefined feel, with jumpy cutting between scenes and a somewhat jerky narrative flow.  The action set-pieces, howver, are extremely well staged and the film conjures up a suitably sleazy ambience for its stree scenes and locations like the pimp's pad, where children are abused and prostitutes tortured by his clients.  As noted, Ginty gives a decent performance as title character, always seeming on the verge of tipping over the edge into complte psychopathy, but George is also notable as the tough police detective who, while not entirely unsympathetic to the vigilante's crusade, remains determined to fulfil his duty to enforce the law.  The Exterminator is very much a product of its era and should be judged in those terms.  Like all vigilante films, though, it ultiately doesn't have the courage of its apparent convictions, never allowing its protagonist to have his actions judged in court and held to account - if his actions truly were righteous, surely a jury would never convict him?  Instead, it simply lets him off the hook at the end by trying to characterise 'the system' as being his moral equivalent, with government agencies also prepared to take the law into their own hands and dispense instant 'justice'.