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Edge of the Axe (1988)
Hmm... not much doing here, to be honest. If you're coming to this one as a fan of José Larraz, well, the good news is that the opening car wash murder is quite sombre and stylish - but after that, you can turn the damned thing off and reclaim 85 minutes of your life, because the rest of the movie could have been directed by any old bozo with a basic understanding of how to keep things in focus. If on the other hand you're approaching it as a fan of way-past-their-sell-by-date oddball slashers, well.... it's watchable, I suppose.
In fact, although this film is objectively bad in every respect, it actually had a certain misfit charm that made me quite like it. Mainly I think, this was due to English-as-a-second-language scripting which, though it never scales 'Troll 2'-like heights of surrealism, frequently has the poor cast members enunciating mouthfuls of garbled blather which no human being would ever actually say.
Elsewhere, the stuff about the lead couple pre-empting the internet by plugging their delightfully bulky home computers into "the central terminal" so that they can talk to each other chatroom-style was kind of charming, some of the violence is quite violent, and it was nice to see Jack Taylor and Patty Shepard pop up briefly. In terms of positives, that's really all I've got.
Strangely, about the only thing I could find to connect this to Larraz's earlier work is an unusual subplot involving a young man who has ill-advisedly married a woman many years his senior. Although the film is generally pretty sexless (sadly), this possibly speaks to the director's career-spanning interest in the sexuality of older women (albeit entirely off screen in this case).
Exterminator 2 (1984)
Wow, what a trainwreck. '80s bubblegum action trash at its most brainless... which isn't necessarily a criticism, but this is definitely second tier Cannon product - has a kind of 'Death Wish III on safety wheels' feel in places. Definitely a far cry from the grim ambiguity of Glickenhaus's original, that's for sure.
It's interesting to see a young Mario Van Peebles pop up as the main villain - inexplicably dressed as a member of Humungous's gang from 'The Road Warrior' despite the fact that no apocalypse has happened - but he's pretty ineffectual to be honest. (I wish his Dad had been in this film - that really would have been something.)
In fact, one of 'Exterminator 2's biggest problems as an action movie is that the heterogenous evil punk/b-boy gang who comprise the sole bad guys simply aren't very threatening. I mean, if the main challenge to law & order in NYC is a bunch of goonish stage school rejects tootling about on rollerskates, I'm confident that a pair of heavily armed Vietnam vets in an armour-plated garbage truck can probably deal with that threat quite effectively, thanks very much - so not much tension there.
In the first film, Robert Ginty worked so well because he was an emotional blank slate, numbed by PTSD, just goin' through the motions of murder and mayhem. Here, they have him playing this good-hearted, happy-go-lucky dude who's cracking jokes, gettin' romantic and trying to teach his crippled girlfriend to walk again. As a result, there is absolutely NO connection with the guy who spends his nights flame-throwering punks in alleyways - literally so in fact, as most of those scenes seem to have been filmed with stuntmen in welding masks standing in for him. Only Cannon in the mid '80s could hire a stone faced, tough guy leading man, then have him awkwardly play through a load of emotive character scenes, whilst they double him for all the action! Absolute madness.
Still plenty of entertainment value and crazy, wrong-headed ideas here of course (random contortionist break-dancing was a highlight), but of a variety which is probably best appreciated when you're on the right/wrong side of at least eight cans of beer, I would suggest.
Incidentally, the interview on the blu-ray with writer/co-director William Sachs is great. He seems like a real character. Lots of fun stories about working as an all purpose 'fixer' for Cannon, and his breakdown of the reasons 'Exterminator II' went so far off the rails (an indecisive/inexperienced director whose rich dad bought the franchise for him, additional shooting which the principal cast members refused to turn up for because they weren't getting paid enough) seems entirely plausible.
Hmm... not much doing here, to be honest. If you're coming to this one as a fan of José Larraz, well, the good news is that the opening car wash murder is quite sombre and stylish - but after that, you can turn the damned thing off and reclaim 85 minutes of your life, because the rest of the movie could have been directed by any old bozo with a basic understanding of how to keep things in focus. If on the other hand you're approaching it as a fan of way-past-their-sell-by-date oddball slashers, well.... it's watchable, I suppose.
In fact, although this film is objectively bad in every respect, it actually had a certain misfit charm that made me quite like it. Mainly I think, this was due to English-as-a-second-language scripting which, though it never scales 'Troll 2'-like heights of surrealism, frequently has the poor cast members enunciating mouthfuls of garbled blather which no human being would ever actually say.
Elsewhere, the stuff about the lead couple pre-empting the internet by plugging their delightfully bulky home computers into "the central terminal" so that they can talk to each other chatroom-style was kind of charming, some of the violence is quite violent, and it was nice to see Jack Taylor and Patty Shepard pop up briefly. In terms of positives, that's really all I've got.
Strangely, about the only thing I could find to connect this to Larraz's earlier work is an unusual subplot involving a young man who has ill-advisedly married a woman many years his senior. Although the film is generally pretty sexless (sadly), this possibly speaks to the director's career-spanning interest in the sexuality of older women (albeit entirely off screen in this case).
Exterminator 2 (1984)
Wow, what a trainwreck. '80s bubblegum action trash at its most brainless... which isn't necessarily a criticism, but this is definitely second tier Cannon product - has a kind of 'Death Wish III on safety wheels' feel in places. Definitely a far cry from the grim ambiguity of Glickenhaus's original, that's for sure.
It's interesting to see a young Mario Van Peebles pop up as the main villain - inexplicably dressed as a member of Humungous's gang from 'The Road Warrior' despite the fact that no apocalypse has happened - but he's pretty ineffectual to be honest. (I wish his Dad had been in this film - that really would have been something.)
In fact, one of 'Exterminator 2's biggest problems as an action movie is that the heterogenous evil punk/b-boy gang who comprise the sole bad guys simply aren't very threatening. I mean, if the main challenge to law & order in NYC is a bunch of goonish stage school rejects tootling about on rollerskates, I'm confident that a pair of heavily armed Vietnam vets in an armour-plated garbage truck can probably deal with that threat quite effectively, thanks very much - so not much tension there.
In the first film, Robert Ginty worked so well because he was an emotional blank slate, numbed by PTSD, just goin' through the motions of murder and mayhem. Here, they have him playing this good-hearted, happy-go-lucky dude who's cracking jokes, gettin' romantic and trying to teach his crippled girlfriend to walk again. As a result, there is absolutely NO connection with the guy who spends his nights flame-throwering punks in alleyways - literally so in fact, as most of those scenes seem to have been filmed with stuntmen in welding masks standing in for him. Only Cannon in the mid '80s could hire a stone faced, tough guy leading man, then have him awkwardly play through a load of emotive character scenes, whilst they double him for all the action! Absolute madness.
Still plenty of entertainment value and crazy, wrong-headed ideas here of course (random contortionist break-dancing was a highlight), but of a variety which is probably best appreciated when you're on the right/wrong side of at least eight cans of beer, I would suggest.
Incidentally, the interview on the blu-ray with writer/co-director William Sachs is great. He seems like a real character. Lots of fun stories about working as an all purpose 'fixer' for Cannon, and his breakdown of the reasons 'Exterminator II' went so far off the rails (an indecisive/inexperienced director whose rich dad bought the franchise for him, additional shooting which the principal cast members refused to turn up for because they weren't getting paid enough) seems entirely plausible.
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