New York City factory worker Eddie Marino is a solid citizen and regular guy, until the day a sadistic street gang brutally assaults his wife and murders his child. When a corrupt judge sets the thugs free, he goes berserk and vows revenge.
Robert Forster Fred Williamson Richard Bright Rutanya Alda Don Blakely Joseph Carberry Willie Colón Joe Spinell Carol Lynley Woody Strode Vincent Beck Bo Rucker Frank Pesce Steve James Randy Jurgensen Henry Judd Baker Dante Joseph Vincent Russo Donna Patti Peter Savage Mike Miller Hyla Marrow Frank Gio Raymond Serra Sal Carollo Sandy Alexander Geri Martin Susan Phelps Gregg Stevens Show All…
George T. Norris Verne Carlson Robert Cardelli Joseph Lesko Bill Hudson Gary Rich Mollie Smollett Arthur Sokalner
Os Vigilantes, Shotgun, Vigilante - yön soturit, Yön soturit, Εκδικητές εκτός Νόμου, Каратели, Streetfighters, Саморазправа, 街头黑帮, 비질랜티, Mstitelé, Самосудники
France
Cannes Film Festival
USA
Sneak Preview / New York City
Italy
Milano
France
Philippines
Netherlands
France16
Germany18
Italy
USAR
Netherlands
France
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
Philippines
USA
This is my favorite vigilante film and another unflinching New York grime crime story from Bill Lustig that’s a deadly concoction of sleazy filth and nihilistic brutality while being as street as you can get.
Lowlife trash rule the neighborhoods, zero fucks given gang scum lords blow people away with shotgun blasts at point blank range, slimeball judges being easily bought, and the cops are utterly useless. This movie has everything I’d want in a picture like this—Joe Spinell (Maniac) shows up as a scumbag shifty lawyer, and Robert Forster gets to blow away derelict steet urchin scum in the concrete jungle slums of crime ridden 1980’s New York... if that’s not enough to sell you on this urban spaghetti western, I dunno what else to tell ya.
There’s so many great scuzzy vigilante movies, but none may be more sincere than Vigilante as far as its lead’s payoff.
Bill Lustig making Death Wish look like an episode of Sesame Street with Big Bird teaching the kids about vigilante justice.
80s NYC in all its piss stinking scum covered glory, playing host to the ultimate brand of scum and skeezy judges and lawyers corrupting most of the already less than minimal police force.
Grafitti lines every street leading the way to homes like homing beacons guiding bastards to victims so they can blow holes in kids and stab wives until their organs are unidentifiable mush in useless shells of comatose grief radiators.
The filthy pieces or sordid city goings on fall into place and open the floodgates to an S tier cast of vigilante vengeance mongers, cleansing the streets…
Resolute barnburner in which the valley of the morally gray is populated by the righteous and the sadistic alike. Adrenaline is the atmosphere, justice is the justification, and satisfaction is the means to an end that tells the tyranny of evil men exactly what time it is. Lustig appropriately casts everyman Robert Forster as audience surrogate, and this visceral revenge yarn enters the stratosphere by taking the time to have him engage with do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do deuteragonist Fred Williamson, both men illustrating the thoughtful viewer’s anxieties in detail before striking down upon their adversaries with great vengeance and furious anger. Jay Chattaway’s invigorating title theme quite purposefully calls Carpenter to mind: the politics here are in perfect step with Snake Plissken’s, and with great anarchy comes great responsibility.
The idea of seeing "what if Death Wish was remade by a real, talented director?" on a scratched-up, tin-sounding 35mm print in a smelly, rundown venue with 6-7 people in attendance was too good to turn down. Up front, there's no real defending some of the obviously troubling images in something like this: like a Che Guevara-attired goon breaking into your home and blowing up your child with a shotgun or a kangaroo court of corrupt liberal leniency that gives that gleeful murderer the same amount of time in prison as the blue-collar dad simply upset that his community and institutions have failed him. These things are obviously meant to play into a certain type of gross fear and paranoia…
"Vigilante" is a 1982 film directed by William Lustig. True to the film's name, the film fits securely with the "vigilante" brand of exploitation genre that held most of its power in the 70's and 80's. Now the genre isn't only confined within those two decades, it just when much of the prominence of activity was occurring. It's also a cross genre subtype, as honestly many "vigilante" mentalitied films can fit in multiple surrounds and not just gritty urban sprawl where it is usually accustomed. Honestly out of anything, the actual mentality of the genre subtype probably spurred from westerns, where the lawless could be subdued by the common folk who took it upon themselves to rise up. "Vigilante" absolutely…
Bill Lustig's exploration of vigilante justice will boil your blood then release the hounds appropriately and vigorously.
No creep shall last on these streets.
Opening on Fred Williamson as he preaches the gospel of protecting your own community while the pigs lay dormant and redundant, it immediately constructs the world that this tale of anguish and action will take place.
The story mainly focuses on Robert Foerster, a mild-mannered factory worker who comes home one night to a row of ambulances in front of his house. An image that would sink any soul into an agonizing abyss. His wife and son have been brutally attacked, leaving the son dead and wife seriously injured.
Foerster is in the throes - but…
“I always wanted to do a real gritty street movie”, Bill Lustig says in an interview about his second film, VIGILANTE (1982), a grim revenge thriller that follows Eddie Marino (Robert Forster), that after his wife and son were brutally murdered by a punk gang who targeted her from an earlier gas station incident, he and a few of his coworkers, seek their own justice following the verdict from the court case that allowed his family’s murderer to walk. “The idea came about through a true story of a group of blue-collar workers in southern New Jersey who had organized to fight crime in their neighborhood. That was the starting point”. Lustig is perhaps mentioning the Guardian Angels vigilante club…
What a vicious descent into gritty violence and unhinged gang warfare! When that toddler gets shotgun blasted into oblivion I knew this was going to be a mean spirtited rampage of revenge! And I really wouldn't expect any less from Lustig. Not sure how I overlooked this for so long but I'm glad I was finally subjected to this grimy piece of exploitation gold.
Crime is at an all time high and a couple of hard earning factory workers are becoming fed up! They can't count on the understaffed police or the flimsy justice system! Not to mention there's a deadly gang stalking the streets causing pure mischief and mayhem! When the gang brutally attacks one of the factory worker's…
Lustig's DEATH WISH, only rib-pokingly amoral - Robert Forster doing his own version of Paul Kersey as Fred Williamson attempts to drag him into a world of underground avengers. Unrepentantly nasty in the way all Lustig's movies are, as children are ruthlessly murdered, cops are machine gunned, and our "hero" ends the movie by detonating a judicial official's vehicle. Is the movie imploring us to pick up our own weapons and throw down with the miscreants destroying our towns? Kind of. But Lustig is a pure exploitation dealer through and through, winkingly getting us to cheer death and destruction on both sides, before playing us off with the gnarliest theme song ever. TAKE IT.
Street punks kill Robert Forster’s family, and then he is sent to prison by a lib activist judge for the crime of being a good person. After serving his time (including the obligatory shower scene), he joins Fred Williamson’s vigilante gang to become Paul Kersey and clean up the mean streets of Brooklyn. Costarring Woody Strode (who throws some unconvincing punches) and a very sleazy-looking Joe Spinell. Williamson and Forster are both very good, and it also contains an awesome musical score that goes 10x harder than the images, which are fairly prosaic.
The sort of movie that Siskel & Ebert would have rubber-stamped as a “Dog of the Week.” I had a great time seeing a 35mm print at the crumbling Kingsway Cinema in Toronto’s west end, which is as close as we can get to replicating the grindhouse experience in this town right now. Gonna give the movie a heart, I mean why not?
"You still wanna play? Alright punk, play Superman!"
Eddie Marino is the average Joe. A factory worker just trying to get by with a wife and a young son. Crime in New York City is at an all time high and the police are overwhelmed. Eddie learns that a few of his buddies at the factory go out at night time and enact their own justice on the local criminals to help keep the neighborhood safe. When a group of thugs break into his house, gravely injure his wife, and kill his son, Eddie chooses to believe in law and order. That is until a crooked judge lets the killer go. Eddie snaps and gets thirty days in jail for…
