There's something I need to get off my chest right now, technically I'm only the co-owner of Exterminator 2. My friend David and I both dug $1.50 out of our pockets to cover the $3.00 price tag on this tape back in the 8th grade, and we purchased it together from a nice old lady at the flea market. I think we were both mesmerized by the box, both how big it was and what was on it. So David took it home that Saturday to watch it and report back to me at school on Monday. I sat around all weekend watching lesser films, only imagining the greatness contained on that tape. When David brought it to school on Monday he reluctantly handed it over to me, telling me how amazing it was. After school I went home and popped it into my VCR as soon as I could, and I understood what he was talking about. In fact I was so enraptured that I never gave the tape back to David. I kept it all to myself. I'm sorry David, I wronged you. But to get to the point...
Garbageman by day, masked vigilante by night. Wielding the most unwieldy of weapons: a flamethrower. Without any prior knowledge of The Exterminator, I knew everything I needed to know about the character and the series after watching the opening scene of Exterminator 2. A gang of unruly punks hold up a convenient store, taunting and casually murdering the elderly shop owners. They take what they want and run out through the back door only to be confronted by The Exterminator. He blasts them without warning, burning two of them alive. That kind of sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Two of the punks do manage to escape from The Exterminator and tell the tale to their gang leader, X (Mario Van Peebles).
"This guy came out of nowhere like some fucking ghost with a fucking flamethrower."
The rest of the gang members (including a guy named Eyes who always wears roller skates) are already familiar with The Exterminator, they've seen him on the news and read about him in the paper. But the Exterminator is really John Eastland (Robert Ginty), a Vietnam veteran just trying to find his place in the world and do his part to clean up the streets of New York. With the help of his garbageman friend, Be Gee (Frankie Faison), he finds gainful employment, and a chance to clean the streets in a second, more literal, way. His love interest, Caroline (Deborah Geffner), is an exotic dancer with dreams of making it big on Broadway. Things are looking up for John, he's finally starting to put his life back together. Until X discovers that John Eastland and The Exterminator are the same man, now no one in John's life is safe. X and his gang brutally assault Caroline in the park while John is distracted by an impressive breakdancing crew, crippling the young dancer and destroying her dreams of fame. Armed to the teeth, mad as hell, and behind the wheel of a dangerously modified garbage truck, John vows to take down X and his gang once and for all.
Exterminator 2 is a grungy, violent, sometimes mind-boggling, but undeniably above average example of low budget 80's action. Although the filmmakers attempt to handle the subject matter fairly seriously, the movie sinks into total camp on occasion (most notably when Eyes kidnaps a woman by throwing her over his shoulder and roller skating away with her). But who said camp is a bad thing? It wouldn't be Exterminator 2 if Be Gee didn't have a machine gun that he was saving for a special occasion, or if John didn't know how to mount that machine gun on the garbage truck and fire it remotely. It wouldn't be Exterminator 2 if there wasn't a terrible love ballad playing over one of the least erotic sex scenes of all time. Those are the things that make Exterminator 2 special. The action scenes are loud and frequent enough to satisfy any genre fan; plus the gunshots are bloody, the dialogue is hilarious, and the dead bodies are extra crispy. Exterminator 2 was the perfect movie for 13 year old me, and I guess I haven't really changed that much.
