We’re in the year 1968, and we see a teenage girl who has gotten herself a baby alligator. Sounds like the perfect pet, right? At least the girl loves the little thing. Her parents, though, are not quite as thrilled. After finding alligator-poo on his clothes, the father flushes the poor baby alligator down the toilet, in agreement with the mother while they plot finding some excuse when their daughter gets back home. A-holes. Well, that’s not the end of baby gator, of course.
Fast forward 12 years later to 1980, body parts are exiting the sewers and getting police detective David Madison involved, a slightly world-weary “tired of all this bullshit“ guy who is still struggling with the the loss of his partner in a botched case in St. Louis, which has given him a reputation of being extremely unlucky for whoever should be assigned as his new partner. And David once again proves to be a “partner-killer“ when the rookie cop Kelly willingly goes with him to check out the sewers, and becomes a gator snack. Oops. David’s still got a long way to go if he wants to beat Chuck Steel out of that department, though.
David, with two recently lost partners, missing locals, and also mysterious dog carcasses appearing in the sewers, finds himself in search of more than just a giant alligator. He teams up with herpetologist Marisa Kendall, who (surprise, surprise!) actually happens to be the baby alligator girl from the opening scene, and they develop some kind of (rather uninteresting) romance. To top it all David’s also got the problem of a receding hairline, which seems to be a big issue for both him a lots of other people for some reason. Apparently is was the actor himself, Robert Forster, who insisted on adding these jokes on behalf of his real-life thinning hair.
So, here we have the creature feature film Alligator from 1980, directed by Lewis Teague (who also made Cat’s Eye) from a screenplay by John Sayles. It was produced independently and released by Group 1 Films, and became somewhat of a box office flop in North America, but became more successful in other territories, and of course, have garnered a cult following since. Now, you might have heard about the “alligators in sewers“ urban legend, based on how people allegedly flushed alligators down the toilets. Yes, they sold these as pets back in the day, with people buying them and probably thinking they looked so cute as babies, and freaking out once they realized that they actually grow…you know, like babies usually do. In 1967 alligators were listed as an endangered species which stopped the sales, but the myths and legends about giant gators surviving in the sewers lived on, and inspired this movie.
And yes, this is a B-horror movie through and through, but as far as creature feature flicks go this one does at least give us a good amount of actual creature scenes. And it really tries to go all the way, and you don’t have to wait ages before something starts happening. Sewer workers are chomped up, a kid gets eaten after falling into a swimming pool, a wedding reception is totally wrecked (don’t worry, those people were just a bunch of rich, arrogant and not-quite-innocent douchebags anyway) with the latter being the most fun scene of them all. The effects are pretty solid, mixing many good old-school practical effects with an actual real-life alligator. The name of the real-life alligator was Morris, and he starred in several other films aside from this one. Last year he passed away from old age at his longtime home, the Colorado Gator Farm. R.I.P. big guy.
Overall, Alligator is one of those creature features that delivers the goods without too much dilly-dallying or uninteresting subplots. There’s a lot of fun to be had here with a campy and solid charm, combining the creature horror with some humor and action.
A direct-to-video sequel called Alligator II: The Mutation was released in 1991, but that one’s got jack shit to do with the original.
Director: Lewis Teague
Writers: John Sayles, Frank Ray Perilli
Country & year: USA, 1980
Actors: Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Michael V. Gazzo, Dean Jagger, Sydney Lassick, Jack Carter, Perry Lang, Henry Silva, Bart Braverman, Morris
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080354/
