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April 09, 2006  Robert Ginty is one of the more unlikely action heroes of the 80s; he's the Edward Norton-ish, everyman 70s TV actor from Baa Baa Black Sheep and The Paper Chase who landed the leading role in the indie 1980 vigilante thriller The Exterminator. That film told the story of John Eastland, a mild-mannered Vietnam vet trying to fit into civilian life in New York whose best friend is killed by street thugs. Eastland vows and extracts revenge, most memorably via meat grinder. The movie was a surprise hit, thanks to its anticipation of several 80s trends, like ultraviolence, vigilantism, and Vietnam flashback prologue sequences. (The films of James Glickenhaus--director of The Exterminator, The Soldier, The Protector, McBain, and others--are also required viewing.) Ginty, a New York native, parlayed his Exterminator success into a number of different arenas, including fine arts and theater. Most relevant for fans of obscure movies, however, is the string of cheapo actioners he made all around the world in the wake of The Exterminator. These films include the bizarre Turkish-French co-production White Fire (pictured above), the unwatchable Thai actioner Gold Raiders, the Italian post-apocalypse classic Warrior of the Lost World, the Spanish thriller Scarab, and others, including a few like the Rambo rip-offs Code Name Vengeance and Mission: Kill that look like they were shot in my backyard. Ginty seems laughably out of place in most of these movies, although he carries himself with a trademark nonchalance that becomes charming after you've watched a couple of them in fast-forward. White Fire is probably the funniest of the lot, and is also available on Netflix via a really cheap DVD released by an incompetent DVD company. (The DVD does pass the minimum threshold of looking better than the 1984 videotape of the film, however, if only barely.) White Fire features a theme song, which is played about a hundred times during the film, and several different ingenious plot machinations that I will not reveal. It may take place in the world of the near future, although for budgetary reasons this idea seems to have been abandoned halfway through production. The film has some nasty violence, mostly involving hardware equipment like chainsaws and table saws. (On the heels of Ginty's meat grinder escapade in The Exterminator and Ginty's stunt double's flamethrower heroics in Cannon's Exterminator 2, other Ginty movies were evidently under considerable pressure to use creativity in their weaponry.) Also, one of the plot points involves Ginty being intensely attracted to a woman because she looks exactly like his sister. I do have to give some points to the Turkish film industry, however, for investing in original material this time, instead of creating bizarre copies of popular American movies like they apparently usually do. In the end, Ginty seemed to emerge unscathed from a decade of hilarious action movies, in 1990 directing and starring in Vietnam, Texas, which is actually a good movie, and going on to various other artistic pursuits not involving flamethrowers or chainsaws. |