Hello and welcome back to KID NOSTALGIA, your online guide to monster, science fiction and horror movies ranging from the oldies to more modern releases, from the classics to more obscure films – ones like this! Brandon Chase and Robert S. Bremson present an Alligator Inc. production “ALLIGATOR” a BLC release starring Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Michael Gazzo, Jack Carter, Dean Jagger, Sidney Lassick, Perry Lang, Sue Lyon, Angel Tompkins and Henry Silva as Colonel Brock. It lives 50 feet beneath the city. It’s 36 feet long. It weighs 2,000 pounds. And it’s about to break out! Directed by Lewis Teague. This one’s been a long time coming since December when I first watched it. I think reviewing it now is the third time I’ve watched it.
After reviewing Piranha (1978) last Friday, I decided to check out the other John Sayles-written Jaws (1975) knock-off, and by far my favorite. The movie I’m talking about is ALLIGATOR. Alligator was not the first collaboration with director Lewis Teague and writer John Sayles, as they had previously worked on The Lady in Red (1979). Lewis Teague’s probably most well-known for his two Stephen King adaptations, Cujo (1983) and Cat’s Eye (1985), while you probably know John Sayles for, as said earlier, Piranha, and a second Joe Dante film, The Howling (1981). He wrote Alligator around the sewer-gator urban legend and the mechanical Alligator used was built by Richard Helmer, who worked on the shark in Jaws. Bit of a drop in quality there, but not a lot. A lot of critics liked the movie, while others panned it, but it earned over 5 times its budget and even managed to garner a sequel… 11 years later. Enough said, let’s not waste any more time, and get into the movie… after I warn you that, as always, this post will contain spoilers, so viewer discretion is advised.
In 1968, a little girl buys a baby Alligator after watching a fully grown one maim an Alligator wrangler, because nothing makes you want a pet more than watching one horribly injure someone, and she names it Ramon after the wrangler that was maimed, but her father flushes it down the toilet, and from a piece of dialogue during this scene, I think he flushed a couple hamsters at another point too! Don’t tell me we’re gonna get a spin-off with a giant 36-feet-long man-eating hamster! Skipping ahead 12 years to 1980, we meet Detective David Madison (Robert Forster), who is investigating a number of deaths of sewer workers connected to a lab where a pet-shop owner is kidnapping dogs and selling them to the lab where they test an experimental growth formula intended for livestock for food purposes, but a side-effect of the formula is an unsatisfiable hunger. It turns out that the bodies of these dogs are being dumped in the sewers after they’ve served their purpose by the pet shop owner who, on one of his trips, is attacked and killed by an unseen animal. Based on the title of the movie, I think you and I both know what said animal is. A man comes into the police station wired to explode but the cops get the bomb off him. It’s a rather random scene, it’s just an excuse for the cops to have access to a bomb. David, who is renowned for his partners having bad luck due to an incident five years earlier, and this comes to fruition when he and a younger cop go in the sewers to investigate and the younger cop is killed by a 36-feet-long Alligator that has grown due to eating the bodies of the dogs that have been dumped giving it an insatiable appetite. David survives the encounter, but no one believes his story due to the lack of the officer’s body, and the tycoon sponsoring the experiments on the dogs covering it up. When a nosy journalist hears David’s story, he goes down into the sewers, and Jaws 2 (1978) style, he takes photos of himself being eaten alive, meaning that photos show the Alligator’s eye and mouth, proving that the Alligator does in fact exist. Herpetologist Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker) gets involved in searching for the thing as it turns out she was the little girl from the prologue, and she eventually forms a relationship with Madison.
After a failed attempt by the military to flush the creature out and kill it, the Alligator bursts out the ground and bites a police officer’s leg off before heading into the nearby lake. Colonel Brock (Henry Silva), a big game hunter gets involved, and mind you, this predates Jaws 3-D (1983).
Later, a kid at a party is eaten in a pool, and Colonel Brock is in way over his head, and soon is eaten himself. For being the Quint figure, Brock doesn’t do a whole lot which is sort of a waste, but that said, he’s not a very likable character, so it doesn’t matter a whole lot. Attempts are made to kill it in the lake by the police and military, but all that ends up happening is 3 more people winding up dead.
The Alligator then trashes a rich person’s wedding party and it kills the mayor and Slade (Dean Jagger) who sponsored the experiments on the dogs earlier, which is karma. David then heads into the sewers and plants the bomb from the police station and barely makes it out when a truck covers the manhole, but Marisa gets the person to move the truck, and David gets out while the Alligator, and half of the goddamn street explodes. I’d expect some time later, someone’s just driving and just the whole street caves in. The cycle starts again though when yet another Alligator is flushed down the toilet, and that’s the end. There isn’t a lot to the movie, and essentially it’s just “how many people can a mechanical Alligator eat in 90 minutes” but it’s a well made movie and a lot better than Piranha in my opinion. Piranha tries to have more plot, but the overall film didn’t age very well, while fans of body count movies, which is essentially just the entire horror fandom because why else would the Saw franchise exist, would enjoy both. For now though, that’s it for me. Later!
Kid Nostalgia 