Trailer Trash XXI: The Exterminator (1980)

"The Man They Pushed Too Far..."

There is one golden item that this movie does right, and that item is done so right I'm almost willing to forgive this movie for existing. I'm talking about the poster, folks. This movie's poster rules and rules hard. Welcome to awesome:



WHOA HOLY CRAP THAT IS SWEET! Did you notice the motorcycle helmet? The flamethrower?? But, hey, wait a second... Is that a sleeveless leather jacket? Why is he wearing tight leather pants? Oh, shit.

Oh, shit.

Is the biker from the Village People going on a rampage??

The more you look at the poster, the less and less sense it makes. I suppose they're going for a "dimly-lit warehouse" look or something similar for the background. But it really, really looks like this guy went to the photo studio at Sears. Perhaps he was waiting in line behind these guys:


Are they in post-apocalyptic New York City? The background looks more or less the same. Hmmm... maybe if I give it a title, add awesome copy text...


Booyah! Now THAT's a movie I'd like to see. (Rejected titles: "FAMILITARY: SUBURBAN WARFARE" and "FAMASOCHISTS".)

But, back to business. Don't let the misleading Village-Person-Cop-with-nothing-to-lose poster fool you - this movie is pretty dumb, but it does do one other thing well: explosions. Boy, there are a lot of explosions in this trailer.

Roll the footage, Frank:



At 0:03 - BOOM! (And a helicopter! Helicopters make everything awesome.)
At 0:05 - BOOM!
At 0:08 - BOOM!
At 0:09 - BOOM!
At 0:13 - Bang bang bang bang!
At 0:14 - Man on fire!
At 0:20 - BOOM!
At 0:21 - BOOM! (And another helicopter!)
At 0:24 - BOOM!
At 0:38 - Are they going through these weapons in a hospital?
At 0:42 - Fight choreography by Adam West and Burt Ward.
At 0:49 - Fire!
At 1:05 - The title for like the fifth time, in case you're just tuning in.
At 1:18 - Can someone turn on the lights, please?
At 1:26 - BOOM!
At 1:30 - BIG SLOW MOTION BOOM!
At 1:33 - BOOM! (Is that a volcano?)

If we were taking shots for each explosion in that trailer, we'd all be on the floor right now.

When The Exterminator was released on DVD a few years ago, the designers seem to have caught on to the problem with the backdrop in the original poster, and decided to fix it. The new DVD cover is more indicative of the contents of the film:


Explosions! Helicopters! A vast improvement over the original poster.

But, I refuse to be outdone. TWO can play that game...


Yeah, THAT's the ticket!

"BOOM! BOOOOOOOM!"

Trailer Trash is a weekly tribute to oddball, cheesy and often just plain terrible movie trailers. Writers: These movies got made... so can yours! You can read through our archive by clicking here.