I watched this last spring for the Robert Ginty podcast episode I did with Ty and Brett from Comeuppance. Why it's taken me so long to review it, I can't say. For some reason it's been sitting near the top of my review queue, but something else has always crept in ahead of it. Anyway, this is a complete the triangle film, as, in addition to Comeuppance, Mitch at the Video Vacuum has covered this as well, so you can go to their sites to see what they thought.
Exterminator 2 is the Cannon sequel to the Ginty classic. In this one, our hero is still wielding his flame thrower, but when he roasts the brother of a local gang leader, (Mario Van Peebles (as the leader)), they come for him and everyone he cares for. After they paralyze his dancer girlfriend, Ginty does the only thing he can do: outfit a trash truck so it's a tank, and take them all down. You've done messed with the wrong Ginty.
This is a pretty fun time. It's not the iconic film the first one is--also nowhere near as brutal either, which isn't to say this isn't brutal, just that that was a high bar to match. Ginty is the guy he was in that one, I think in tune with the character and just building off the work he did in part one to develop him. I also really enjoyed Van Peebles as the villain. He does it with a certain amount of aplomb without sacrificing any of the actual villainy, so we still sufficiently want to see him taken down. On the other hand, the film does drag in parts, and the fact that the girlfriend is first paralyzed, then murdered, felt a little too dark; but Ginty v. Van Peebles, with Frankie Faison as Ginty's buddy, delivered in a 90-minute 80s Cannon/Golan-Globus package, does the trick when you're looking to partake in some Ginty Moore Beef Stew.
I'm ashamed to admit that this is only the fourth Ginty film on the site. We last saw him a little over 10 years ago in November of 2011, when we covered the first Exterminator film. For such a DTV legend, one who was big enough to get his own podcast episode, to have so few tags, is a travesty that I freely admit I'm guilty of. The good news is, because I had to watch some other Ginties for that episode, we have more in the can that I can hopefully get to soon; the bad news is, I've had that Ginty in the can since May of 2021, and am just now reviewing one of them. The thing about Ginty is he played a huge part in making the DTV action world as we know it. I don't know if I can think of anyone in these early 80s days who had a bigger impact, other than maybe Fred Williamson. Hopefully we'll get more Ginty on the site, but because we say this often and seldom deliver, in the meantime you have the podcast episode to hear us chat about him.
Some of the complaints I had with the film were explained in the trivia section on the IMDb page. Apparently Cannon wasn't happy with Buntzman's final cut, so they did some extensive re-shoots, including using a stunt double to add in more scenes of Ginty firing his flamethrower, and forcing Cannon to have an NYC trash truck driven across the country to LA where the re-shoots were done. This explained the unevenness I noticed. Also in Buntzman's original cut, Ginty's girlfriend survived, which was a major qualm I had. According to the trivia, Ginty wasn't happy with the new edits, and that may explain why he doesn't do another Cannon film until 1987's Three Kinds of Heat. For as much as we love Cannon, this was something that seemed to happen a lot with them, they took films away from directors and made changes that they thought would make them more bankable. The best example is Cyborg. This movie still pulled in $3.7 million at the box office, so maybe it was worth it, but like Cyborg, it would be nice to see what the original cut looked like.
Mario Van Peebles is a great villain here, which, to some extent makes his villain in Seized look really pedestrian, but through no fault of Van Peebles. That's one major issue with modern DTV, the villains aren't as well developed as they were in the 80s. I think the reason for that is since that time, we've had baddies like Hans Gruber who gave baddies more nuance, and I think filmmakers have been trying to emulate that ever since. Throw in the verbose element of the Tarantino rip-offs, and now you have a philosophizing baddie with nuance written by writers who think they're smarter than they are, when a straight-ahead unhinged evil villain who brings death with him everywhere he goes often does the trick. One of the many reasons why these films were better in the 80s and pre-Tarantino 90s than they are now.
Finally, there's something about late 70s/early 80s New York City in a movie that really works. We think of NYC as the kind of city that is such a setting that it's its own character, but late 70s to early 80s NYC is the best version of that character for me. I think I like it even better than 1960s Paris. The sense of impending danger everywhere, juxtaposed with the sense that this city is one of the financial capitals of the world, it feels like a world of limitless possibilities. And what I love about this film, is the use of the garbage truck existing in that world. It feels like the bottom rung, yet is a real yeoman's job, something everyone takes for granted until all the sanitation workers go on strike. To turn that symbol into an engine of vengeance and destruction is the ultimate in cinematic allegory.
And with that, let's wrap this up. As far as I can tell, this isn't available to stream. It does have a Blu-ray, so for the physical media collectors, that's a possible option. When I caught it, it was a part of a free preview of some sort on my cable package I think. I'm not sure it's worth going too far out of your way, but if it comes up on one of your streaming services, it's worth watching. Who doesn't love some nice Ginty Moore Beef Stew?
For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087229
And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, A Girl and a Gun, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!
No comments:
Post a Comment