'The Exterminator' (1980) - James Glickenhaus.

The once notorious, but still harrowing Vietnam flashback includes some audacious pyro and a spectacularly lurid practical effect by future FX visionaries, Stan Winston and Tom Burman! Our tall, handsome, blue-eyed anti-hero, John Eastland (Robert Ginty) is freed by his best buddy, Mike Jefferson (Steve James), and they desperately blast their way to freedom! James Glickenhaus's tabloid-baiting, street tough, flint-edged, squib-tastic, skell slaying revenge classic still delivers! 'The Exterminator' has one of the more strikingly iconic poster artworks of the era, and is endowed with the immortal strapline: '...if you're lying, I'll be back!'

Running contrary to the multitudes of revenge thrillers that followed in its inflammatory wake, our 'pushed-too-far' death dealer Eastland is no bulletproof superman. During a robbery at the warehouse where he is employed, his honourable attempts to intervene fail, and he is rescued by his loyal, far more physically capable friend, Jefferson. Eastland is profoundly affected by this episode, and while darkly ruminating upon the rooftop, torturous memories of Vietnam are gruesomely reawakened by the no less cruel, apparently lawless streets of pre-gentrified New York City. This manifestly decayed, once futurist metropolis brought to its rat-infested knees by political corruption, sickening vice, crippling poverty and increasingly brutal crimes.

Gutsy director, Glickenhaus digs unflinchingly deep into the City's scum-infested, morally diseased underbelly, and it is his intimate exposure to this nauseating mortal miasma and a great personal tragedy that galvanizes Eastland to action! If made today, 'The Exterminator' would be portrayed as an invincible, implausibly gymnastic, kung fu superman, whereas, John Eastland is far more of a 3-dimensional, eminently relatable protagonist. The softly spoken, steely eyed, seemingly unassuming everyman, Ginty is a wholly convincing avenger.It is an understated, coolly ruthless performance, he IS the 'Exterminator', no hypertrophic training montages, just a still, reflective man walking tall, and wielding a very, very big stick! It's Eastland's palpable lack of hysteria which makes him such a terrifying proposition. Eastland is methodical, meticulously preparing his mercury tipped bullets in the same calm, matter-of-fact manner he annihilates his prey. He gleans no illicit pleasure from his grisly equalizing, he simply knows that you absolutely can't reason with inhuman vermin, you simply exterminate them!

'Dare you take a gander at a greasy gangster goin' feet first into a murderous meat grinder? Because if your guts can take it 'The Exterminator is a bloodthirsty B-Movie blinder!'