It has been many years since I last seen this. I rented it a few times when I was younger at the video store by my house that I later worked at...Picked up the Synapse Blu a while back and it sat in my unwatched pile. Finally checked it out again and I just don't remember it being as brutal as this. I'm sure the rental version that was out was cut up and whatnot, but I am not one of those that microanalyze every release. Anyway, I thought it was pretty damn good, although depressing. The scene with the old woman really bugged me. One would think I am desensitized after all these years, maybe I am going the…

Released in 1980, James Glickenhaus’ “The Exterminator” came out at a time when urban vigilantism was at its peak. Bookstores were overloaded with cheap paperbacks geared to the male reader with titles like “The Exterminator”, “The Marksman”, and “The Sharpshooter”. Dozens of films were released during this time period as well, exploiting urban decay and excessive crime in the inner cities. The cops were powerless, the elected officials were corrupt, and violent men had control of the streets.
Robert Ginty plays John Eastland, a Vietnam veteran, who returns to the United States a fairly broken man. After witnessing some horrifying violence during the war, including an incredibly graphic beheading (which is played out on screen via a $20,000 prop dummy…

‘The Exterminator’ followed two years after Michael Cimino’s masterful emotionally shattering depiction of the psychological damages caused by the Vietnam War with 1978’s ‘The Deer Hunter’. If it was not for this film’s title, tagline that reads, “In war, you have to kill to stay alive... on the streets of New York, it's often the same” and poster image of a man welding a flamethrower wearing a motorcycle helmet the first 15-minutes of the first act could easily be mistaken as another post-Vietnam War melodrama.

This is how the movie is seemingly going to play out up until a vicious act of violence followed by swift retribution from its protagonist John Eastland (the late Robert Ginty) abruptly turns the proceedings…