Exterminator 2

Exterminator 2
Directed by Mark Buntzman
Produced by Mark Buntzman
William Sachs
Written by Mark Buntzman
William Sachs
Starring
Music by David Spear
Cinematography Robert M. Baldwin
Joseph Mangine
Edited by Marcus Manton
George T. Norris
Florent Retz
Production
company
The Cannon Group
Golan-Globus Productions
Distributed by Cannon Film Distributors
Release date
 September 14, 1984 (1984-09-14)
Running time
 89 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Budget $3 million
Box office $3.7 million

Exterminator 2 is a 1984 action film written and directed by Mark Buntzman (with additional scenes directed by William Sachs), starring Robert Ginty and Mario Van Peebles, with cameos by Arye Gross in his debut role, and John Turturro in his second role. It is the sequel to the 1980 film The Exterminator.

Plot

Following from the previous film, it shows Eastland walking freely on the streets of New York, without any hint that his dual identity was compromised. He meets up with another old army buddy, Be Gee (Faison), who owns a garbage truck. As seen at the beginning of the film, Eastland wears a welders' mask and wields a flame thrower, while listening to a police scanner for possible crimes to stop. Slaying the brother of a gang leader named X (Van Peebles), the Exterminator gains the gang's enmity. Coincidentally, his army buddy happens to see the gang during a robbery of an armoured car, and scares them away with his truck. However, they get the truck's plate numbers, and vow revenge. Following the truck one night when the buddy loans it to Eastland, they follow Eastland to his home, and, not having seen who the driver of the truck was the night it scared them away, they presume Eastland was the man behind the wheel that night. They attack Eastland's girlfriend in the park, crippling her. Later, they break into her apartment and kill her.

Then Eastland and his buddy interrupt a drug deal between X's gang and the mob, stealing the narcotics in the process, though the army buddy dies. Having earlier captured one of the gang members, Eastland allows him to escape to draw X into a confrontation, with the drugs as bait, in a closed up industrial site. Curiously, X seems to be aware of the Exterminator's real name in this final battle. Eastland triumphs, but was shot when last seen, and is seen walking away.

Cast

Production

Exterminator 2 had a very troubled production which included budget problems, heavy re-editing and re-shoots, and censorship issues. The Cannon Group studio wasn't pleased with director Mark Buntzman's original rough cut of the film, so they hired film doctor William Sachs to do extensive re-shoots in Los Angeles to make the movie better.

In 2012 interview [1] about his work on movies, Sachs talked about his work on Exterminator 2. He was the one who came up with idea of Exterminator wearing the flame proof mask throughout the movie:

Bob Ginty was supposed to be doing another movie and they wouldn’t release him. I said, ‘I’ll fix it so you don’t need him.’ I couldn’t get any other stars, so that’s where I came up with the idea. There’s one shot of Ginty with the welding mask working on the garbage truck, and he lifts his mask and has a little torch. So I just used that shot at the end. I turned him into a vigilante with a welding mask for the whole rest of the movie.
— William Sachs, about working on Exterminator 2

Because of the budget problems, the movie had to be re-shot in Los Angeles:

They started shooting in New York, and they went so far over budget that they moved it to LA. They spent double their budget, it was supposed to be $1.5 million and they got to $3 million and they’d shot like 40 minutes. I had been working on the movie in New York as a co-producer. So I brought it to LA, and I had to ship the garbage truck from New York, because the ones in New York are metal and the ones in LA are fiberglass, because of the weight restrictions. We got permission. We have scenes where [the truck] goes around the corner of one street in New York, and the other’s in LA. We threw garbage in the streets and painted the curbs in LA a different color, to make it look like New York.
— William Sachs, about working on Exterminator 2

Sachs also mentioned that production’s initial struggles were probably due to Buntzman’s inexperience handling a large film crew:

I was in New York just to watch, and I saw what was going wrong. If you can’t make a decision, everyone starts giving you their two cents until it’s a committee. Mark Buntzman couldn’t make a certain decision, so the script supervisor had an idea and the DP had an idea, and soon there was a meeting going on. A directing lesson: if someone asks ‘Where do I point the camera?’ you just point. The first thing that comes into your head, you just say “there.” Nine times out of ten, it’s the right place. And if it’s not, you say later, ‘Well, I thought about it and it’d be better over here.’ But if you don’t give an answer, you lose them.
— William Sachs, about working on Exterminator 2

According to Sachs, the character of X got his name due to more indecisiveness from Buntzman, who couldn’t think of a better name. It was also Sachs’ idea to make the character more central.

Even in post-production, the film met with some troubles. The MPAA made Sachs cut down a gory early scene in which an elderly couple is shot up by the gang:

I’m not really excited about violent stuff. When you’re shooting it, it’s fun, but something a little more realistic affects people. When we shot that scene, the DP said it was the most realistic thing he ever saw. The squib and the gun went off in the same frame. It was timed perfectly, by luck, and you don’t usually see that. We had six shots and ended up with one quick shot.
— William Sachs, about working on Exterminator 2

In interview Sachs also had a funny anecdote about the casting of Arye Gross who played gang member Turbo in the movie: "He came in and read for me, and he was talking like Marlon Brando, through his nose. It was fantastic, so I gave him the part. And when we did the scene, he didn’t talk like that. I said, ‘You’re not talking like you did in your reading!’ And he said, ‘I had a cold.'"

Sachs tried to get co-director credit for his work on Exterminator 2 but wound up accepting a co-writer and "additional scenes directed by" credit due to a legal battle with Buntzman. "I joined the Director’s Guild after that," he said.

Original cut, re-shoots and deleted scenes

Theatrical trailer shows following deleted and alternate scenes from original rough cut of the movie;

Some lobby cards and stills also show several scenes cut from the movie;

Scenes in which John wears fire proof mask and burns down gang members with flamethrower were not in original cut of the movie. They were added during re-shoots and were filmed with Robert Ginty's stunt double. Originally only scene where John used the flamethrower to kill gang members was in the ending when he burns last few after he already killed most of the others with weapons from garbage truck. Shot of John taking his mask off in the ending after X dies is actually outtake edited from this same scene, which is why scene cuts abruptly when he starts taking the mask off. According to some interview from the time when movie was released, Ginty hated the way movie was cut down and re-edited by studio.

Original ending in rough cut of the movie was different than the one which was filmed during re-shoots and used in final version. Instead of the chase scene between John and X in the factory, both of them confront each other after John kills all of X's gang members and get into the fight. X almost kills John but Caroline shows up in her wheelchair (she didn't die in original cut, scenes where John finds her dead body were also filmed during re-shoots with Ginty's stand-in) and shoots X, wounding him. When police shows up, John puts X into the garbage truck and chase starts between him in his truck and police cars. Chase ends with John crashing the garbage truck into the river and X's dead body floating out of it. Some behind the scenes footage included in old making of documentary shows filming of the fight scene between John and X in original ending.

Despite the fact that studio demanded for more graphic scenes with John burning down gang members with flamethrower to be included into the movie, they also deleted some other graphic and action scenes from original cut during the re-shoots and re-editing. These include more scenes with garbage truck (including some chase scenes) and entire scene where police helicopter which is shot down by gang members crashes down on the night club filled with people and causes explosion which kills and injures many of them. Some more cuts were demanded by the MPAA for R rating since final version of the movie was originally rated X because of the violence. No uncut version of the movie was ever released.

DVD Release

Shout! Factory announced they would release Exterminator 2 as part of a four-film "Action-Packed Movie Marathon" DVD set on March 19, 2013.[2]

Reception

Red Letter Media reviewed the film in the second episode of Best of the Worst, a review show for low-budget films of the past.[3]

References

  1. ↑ http://hidden-films.com/2012/10/22/the-hollywood-fixer-galaxina-director-william-sachs/
  2. ↑ http://www.cityonfire.com/action-packed-movie-marathon-dvd-set-cyclone-alienator-eye-of-the-tiger-exterminator-2-shout-factory/
  3. ↑ http://redlettermedia.com/best-of-the-worst-the-new-gladiators-exterminator-2-and-aftermath/
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