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Exterminator (1989)

Duration: 28:11

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20

Thanks go to ClassicR0cker for sending me this film. It didn't start off as a rant...but it becomes one as the video went on...I just feel that there are other much better vigilante films (its' sequel Exterminator 2, the Death Wish flicks, Death Sentence, Vigilante, Man on Fire, and more) than this one.

The Exterminator is a 1980 vigilante film that was written and directed by James Glickenhaus and starring Robert Ginty as Vietnam veteran vigilante John Eastland.

Eastland is also known as "The Exterminator", who takes out the street punks and those involved in organized crime when the law fails to do justice.

Glickenhaus's original lead for the role was to have been Joseph Bottoms as he felt that instead of a well known and high priced action star an everyman would appeal to audiences.

At the last moment Bottoms success in The Black Hole led his agent to demand more money. Glickenhaus refused him and found Robert Ginty who had had seen in The Paper Chase and Coming Home.

Then a stuntman, Steve James had originally tested for the role of a bartender but Glickenhaus was so impressed with his reading he enlarged the role of the lead character's friend.

The Vietnam sequence was filmed after most of the film was completed. It was filmed in Indian Dunes, California where Twilight Zone: The Movie was made; using the special effects by Stan Winston.

The sequence was done in five days using 15% of the budget.

The MPAA demanded and received 47 seconds of cuts to the violence which remained in the version shown in Japan.

Glickenhaus wished to make other types of films so was not involved with the sequel. In his opinion, the film First Blood would have been his ideal sequel.

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