AH the good old days....

If I am not mistaken, this film almost received an X rating here in the U.S., for the violence alone. I haven't seen it since its initial release, but I remember it well. I think.

Anyway, you'll be hard-pressed to find anything released in US theatres today with such a cold-blooded viewpoint towards revenge and vigilantism. The acts of violence committed by the protagonist border on the psychopathic, but they are amply justified by the nastiness of his victims, and no punches are pulled. From the first scene, murder is depicted full screen, in garish color, with no "looking away". If you don't want to see every drop of blood and sliced piece of flesh shed in the opening beheading, you'll have to cover your own eyes ;-)

Films like this - "exploitation films"; movies that find the flimsiest excuses for the nastiest content, and then push them to their furthest, most questionable limits - still get made, but rarely find their way to the big screen these days. But that alone is not what makes it an artifact worth seeking. What made this film a cult hit, and likely what contributed to its banning in the UK, Norway and other places, was the very fact of the skill with which it was made. There are hundreds of films like it - knockoffs of "Deathwish" as one person posted - and most of them went straight to video. Some of them are quite a bit more violent than this film, but their low production quality; their hackneyed storylines and bad acting; their awful special effects; their very CHEEZINESS, give them a high quotient of suspension-of-disbelief. In other words, credibility is stretched to the point where the level of violence simply cannot overcome the laugh factor, and they are rendered tame by default.

But films like "The Exterminator", "Last House on The Left" (the original a truly grotesque film), and "A Clockwork Orange" draw you into their world by their intensity and the high level of craft with which they are made. You identify with the characters and end up experiencing the horror of each bloody moment much more than you would in say, "2000 Maniacs," or other H. G. Lewis flicks when a mannequin is covered with cherry sauce and pulled stiffly apart. The better films also attract that much more loathing from those viewers and critics who find the subject matter objectionable by default.
In my memory, "The Exterminator" had that level of quality that made the horror more real, and its cold, clinical viewpoint made it almost feel like a documentary.
Man it creeped me out ;-)



“ A policeman's job is only easy in a police state.”
-- Orson Welles, "Touch Of Evil"