Alligator (1980) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 20

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It cayman like a wrecking ball!

While the film Alligator is as much a ripoff of Jaws as a dozen other films, it has some elements that other giant, man-eating animal films don’t. It keeps a wry sense of humor as it follows a car-sized alligator around a city doing what it does best.

Before Viewing

This trailer has all the standard tropes for a film like this. The adventurous hero tells of a giant alligator that he saw, while the scientist says that it’s impossible something like that could survive. Word of alligators in the sewers gets out, so the alligator busts out of the sewer and starts eating people in the city, and at a fancy garden party where it grabs a server. Get ready for a giant Alligator, and some giant alligator-sized puns!

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

In Florida, in 1968, a young girl Marisa (Leslie Brown), and her family attend a gator Wrestling attraction where she convinces her parents to buy her a baby alligator. They return home to Missouri where she keeps it as a pet. A short while later her father (Robert Doyle), angry about “alligator turds in the hamper,” flushes the reptile down the toilet. Twelve years later, Detective David Madison (Robert Forster) is buying a new dog (to replace one that was “stolen”) at Gutchel’s Pet Store. Gutchel (Sydney Lassick) is nervous that a cop is in his store. He takes a load of stray dogs to Slade Pharmaceuticals and lets the scientist, Arthur Helms (James Ingersoll), know. Helms requests more puppies!

David investigates the local water treatment plant where they have found a human arm, and a dead dog–which is unusually large for its breed. Gutchel takes a load of dead dogs from Slade labs and dumps them into a sewer. When one gets stuck, he enters and is attacked and killed by something. David’s investigation leads him to talk to a sewer worker, and back to another crime scene where they have found Gutchel’s leg and distinctive shirt. This leads him to Slade Pharmaceuticals where he’s told “Everything is fine here,” by Helms. Old Man Slade (Dean Jagger) tells Helms not to talk to reporters, and that he’ll take care of everything.

During a press conference forced on David by Chief Clark (Michael Gazzo), Kemp (Bart Braverman), a reporter, brings up the death of David’s partner five years ago. Due to this stigma, only one officer will go with David to investigate the sewers, Kelly (Perry Lang). While in the sewer they are both attacked. Kelly is killed and David is injured. Kemp shows up at the hospital to question David about his second missing partner, which pisses David off. The Chief and David go to visit a local herpetologist, coincidentally, the same girl from the opening, Marisa (Robin Riker), while Kemp goes into the sewer after hearing reports that it may be an alligator. Naturally, he dies.

After speaking to Marisa, the police believe it’s an alligator killing people as well–though Marissa doesn’t quite believe it yet herself. They send a SWAT team into the sewers but emerge empty-handed. Instead of capturing it, they succeeded in driving the giant 20-foot alligator into a populated neighborhood where it eats a police officer. The Mayor (Jack Carter) hires a big game hunter, Colonel Brock (Henry Silva), to kill the creature. Marisa investigates a dead dog they found in the sewer which has high levels of growth hormone in its system–explaining the size of the alligator. This leads them back to Slade Pharmaceuticals, where Helms explains that they’re working to make animals larger to solve food shortages.

Due to the investigation, Old Man Slade calls in a favor with the Mayor and has David fired. Good! Because that gives him more time to hunt down the giant alligator which has just eaten a young boy in a backyard swimming pool. Marisa also begins dating David, but it’s difficult dating a man who’s losing his hair like he loses his partners. Colonel Brock hires three local “homies” as neighborhood guides, but they split when the giant alligator shows up. Brock is eaten. Marisa tells David that the gator will be heading towards a local canal, and they must stop it soon. Several cops die as they attempt to shoot in.

At Old Man Slade’s mansion, Helms is getting ready to marry Slade’s daughter when the rogue alligator crashes the party, eating a maid and a waiter. Slade attempts to escape in his limo but the gator eats The Mayor and then smashes the car flat with its tail. David remembers a bomb from a hoaxer they arrested earlier and steals it from the evidence locker. He lures the alligator to a methane-heavy part of the sewer and blows it up, managing to barely escape at the last second. He and Marisa go off arm in arm. The film ends with another baby alligator being flushed into the sewer.

“I’m gonna find that alligator, and I’m gonna kick his ass.” – Detective David Madison

It’s back into the sewers with the first official film in a week of big animal horror, Alligator. Last night’s Sci-Fi Saturdays/31 Days of Horror mashup, Mimic, was really just a warm-up. This movie starts a week of giant, mutated, or abnormally large insects, arachnids, and reptiles. Alligator was written by John Sayles and directed by Lewis Teague. Sayles, known best for some of his later work, like writing and directing The Brother from Another Planet, Matewan, and Eight Men Out, is also the same John Sayles who wrote Piranha, The Howling, and Battle Beyond the Stars–several of these for producer Roger Corman. Teague also had a history with Corman, having been a second unit director and assistant editor on Death Race 2000 before directing two films prior to Alligator. He is also known for his direction on two Stephen King-related film adaptations, Cujo and Cat’s Eye. Together they made a film that was better than it had any right being. While still a B-film, the characters and action of Alligator leans closer to A-list work and is better than is typically featured in films of this genre.

The thing that makes Alligator stand out in the world of low-budget Jaws ripoffs is that it knows what kind of film it is, and what has come before. Since the summer of 1975 and the success of Jaws, dozens of other films have been made about out-of-control animals–some on land, but many in the ocean. Grizzly (1976), Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976), Orca (1977), Tentacles (1977), Piranha (1978), Blood Beach (1980), and The Last Shark (1981) are just a few of these films. While most of these films are ludicrous, only Piranha and Alligator seem to be in on the joke regarding how crazy the movie is. This can be instantly credited to John Sayles’s talent as a screenwriter, even in a low-budget setting. But Alligator is not only about a berserk reptile attacking humans. It’s also about a giant berserk reptile attacking humans! Giant animal films have been popular since the 1950s. Usually a hybrid of science-fiction and horror, they initially featured stories of science run amok (or sometimes mad scientists using technology for evil) to turn ordinary animals into super large animals. A number of these films will be featured this week, but other examples include Them, Tarantula, Food of the Gods, Night of the Lepus, and dozens of kaiju films from Godzilla and beyond. A special shout out to Zombeavers, not because they are giant rodents, but because it’s amazing that it took until 2014 for someone to conceive of it. These films amuse audiences because they are about the randomness of attacks by animals which may be harmless under normal circumstances, but become murderous beasts when enlarged to human size or larger. They also serve as warnings and parables about unfettered capitalism and unethical science–teaching viewers to be a little more careful about their own environmental habits.

As with Piranha and a slew of other mutated animal films, the people responsible for the giant creature are messing around with scientific practices they do not fully understand. In the case of Alligator, the local pharmaceutical company is responsible for the mutated beast–but only indirectly. Slade Pharmaceuticals is diligently working on research in order to create giant livestock to aid with the world’s growing food shortage. Audiences see what appears to be a full-sized cow, only to be told it’s just a calf that has been given a growth hormone formula Slade is developing. This is an honorable experiment, aside from the fact that Old Man Slade wants the work done so quickly and cheaply that he authorizes unethical behavior from his lead scientist (and future son-in-law) Helms. Helms acquires “stray” dogs from Gutchel (which may not be strays to begin with), experiments on them with the growth hormone, and kills and autopsies them, before having Gutchel dispose of the biological waste into the sewers. In fact, Gutchel is most likely the person who caused his own panic, leading him into the sewers to get eaten. While David is buying his new dog from Gutchel, he mentions someone swiped his old dog from in front of the grocery store. I originally thought it might have been the alligator eating the dog, but at this early point of the story, the gator had not left its lair. It’s more likely it was stolen by Gutchel for sale to Slade. The behavior of these individuals creates a corporation that doesn’t care about anything except maximizing profit. Slade also uses his influence to get the Mayor to force the police chief to fire David–thinking that will somehow stop the tenacious Detective. Audiences cheer when the Old Man Slade and the Mayor get their end at the jaws (and tail) of the alligator, no matter how cheesy it is.

Another element that sets Alligator apart from similar films is the characterization of its leads. David’s backstory as a cop who lost his partner six months prior plays into the trauma he feels when having to team up with Kelly to head into the sewers–and then losing that young officer too. He is haunted by his own guilt around both accidents, but also by the reporter, Kemp, who never fails to bring up the event every time he sees the Detective. What good can come from constantly haranguing the officer about his past mistakes? Does Kemp think that there’s a bigger story there? Or is he just being a jerk? Either way, he too gets his comeuppance as he staggers into the sewers trying to break the big story, but becomes the front page lead instead. Having the scientist of the film, Marisa, be the same little girl who lost her alligator in the sewers is a tad coincidental, but something that keeps the film self-contained. The alligator that terrorizes the town is most certainly Ramón, the name she gave her pet gator. Her relationship with David certainly gives away the low-budget vibes of the film. There’s no doubt that Robert Forester is likable in his role, but the relationship between David and Marisa–and the speed at which they move–is hard to swallow (unlike Kemp, who went down easily).

Usually, the special effects of a giant animal film, especially during the 70s, were extremely low quality. Actual animals (spiders, ants, etc) were filmed on miniature sets and visual effects were used to place the actors into the same location. It usually looked cheap and unrealistic. Alligator uses some of those techniques, at least putting a small alligator onto a miniature city set. But for scenes where the creature interacts with the actors, a giant, full-sized prop was created. It had two actors inside working the legs and had a mouth large enough for an actor to lay inside–either across the teeth, or into the throat. And unlike other films with cheap-looking full-sized props, this alligator holds up to the scrutiny of longer takes. Teague didn’t have to resort to the shaky-cam and blurry movement during the attacks like other films. The addition of such a good-looking prop makes the film much more fun and a tad scary.

For the most part, the deaths in the film are all cheered on by the audience. The killings of Gutchel, Colonel Brock, Kemp, and Old Man Slade all provide punishment to the antagonists of the film. But there are a few deaths that are not celebrated. Kelly’s death reminds David of his trauma and is featured in at least two flashback/nightmare moments that he must recall. But Alligator also features one of the most brutal and unexpected deaths of this year’s 31 Days of Horror. A shot reveals the alligator lurking in a suburban swimming pool sometime after its escape. A few scenes later, at a costumed birthday party, two young boys dressed as pirates force a younger boy, Donald, to walk the plank–the pool’s diving board. Viewers might wrongly assume that this is a fake-out and that the filmmakers won’t allow any harm to befall the lad. They’d be wrong. Donald goes into the water and a churn of blood rises to the surface as the other two boys run off screaming. Horrific! Alligator is a good time, with a mix of obvious moments followed by some unexpected ones. It’s not a very scary film unless it unlocks some deep-rooted fear about reptiles in the viewer, yet it continues to entertain. Stay tuned for more giant animal horror films all week long on 31 Days of Horror.

Assorted Musings

• Alligators can live up to 50 years, which is why there is a high chance that they will see you later. A sequel turned up 11 years later, Alligator II: The Mutation (1991), which had little to no connection to the original.
• The first victim is a sanitation worker named Edward Norton. This is the same name as the character in the sitcom The Honeymooners, who was a New York City municipal sewer worker.
• The film not only shows that giant mutated alligators are dangerous. It also gives a brief glimpse of the dangers of normal-sized gators during the opening alligator wrestling show in Florida.