Exterminator 2 is a 1984 American vigilante action film written and directed by Mark Buntzman (with additional scenes directed by William Sachs), starring Robert Ginty, Mario Van Peebles, and Deborah Geffner, with cameos by Arye Gross in his debut role, and John Turturro in his second role.
The film opens with a robbery of a liquor store by a group of well-armed young men, as an unseen man listens to a police scanner.
That man, wearing a welding mask, suddenly appears behind the store as the men flee, incinerating two of them with a flamethrower.
The survivors flee underground, revealing their membership in a street gang led by a charismatic man named X.
A garbage truck passing by driven by Be Gee swerves into the crowd of gangsters, scattering them right before the police can arrive.
The gang performs a torch-lit execution of the armored car driver in the subway, while X's brother is incinerated by the masked man.
Eastland and Be Gee attack one of the gang's warehouses, only to discover that they were interrupting a drug sale between X and the Mafioso.
In the ensuing firefight, Be Gee is killed by X, the Mafioso and his crew are blown up along with the money, and Eastland steals the heroin.
Vowing revenge, Eastland installs improvised armor on the garbage truck, while strapping machine guns and antitank rockets to the sides and top.
A final showdown ensues in a factory, where Eastland kills most of the gangsters with the armored garbage truck, and incinerates the survivors with a flamethrower.
Exterminator 2 had a very troubled production which included budget problems, heavy re-editing and reshoots, and censorship issues.
We threw garbage in the streets and painted the curbs in LA a different color, to make it look like New York.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.
The MPAA made Sachs cut down an early gory scene in which an elderly couple is shot up by the gang: I'm not really excited about violent stuff.
We had six shots and ended up with one quick shot.In the 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.
Ginty couldn't return for reshoots for the scenes in which John wears a fireproof mask and burns down the gang members with a flamethrower.
The first earlier workprint is after production of the movie was shut down, the original story is complete with the nightclub explosion, Caroline survives and is in a wheel chair for the 3rd act but also suffers from a lack of footage filmed as it has title cards explaining missing scenes and also no ending, this cut is only 58 minutes long.
The second workprint is a later cut while the reshoots were still taking place, this cut seems to be trying to complete the story from the original script while adding more action using the stunt double for the flame thrower scenes and the new ending that was still not yet complete as the explosion scene with the bag isn't included, instead X simply falls to his death with some very blurry footage and in this version a stunt double is standing over X with his welding mask down as Robert Ginty was not available for filming.
Factory released Exterminator 2 as part of a four-film "Action-Packed Movie Marathon" DVD set on March 19, 2013.