Alligator (1980)

For many years, a popular urban legend had it that the sewer systems of various American cities were home to alligators, bought as pets and flushed down the toilets when they became too much hard work for their owners. Rumours of reptiles stalking the waterworks beneath the streets of New York City date back as far as 1932, after one was allegedly seen basking in the sunshine on the banks of the Bronx River. By the late 70s the legend was so pervasive that writer John Sayles was able to use it as the basis of his second monster movie script (after Joe Dante’s Piranha (1978)), the equally bluntly titled Alligator.

A 1968 prologue sets up the back story – an angry father dispatches “Ramon”, the pet alligator of Marisa Kendall, down the bowl and it survives the ordeal, thriving in the sewers for he next 12 years feasting on a diet of dead dogs full of growth hormones carelessly dumped it the sewers by the shady Slade Pharmaceuticals. Now thirty foot long, it resurfaces (one of the film’s most memorable scenes has it literally bursting through the pavement) and begins menacing the residents of a large American city (it’s never identified though many sources say it’s set in Chicago – given that the Kendall family are seen returning home from their holiday in Florida and driving past a “welcome to Missouri” sign, this seems unlikely). As it lays waste to various hapless passers by, the creature is pursued by dogged cop David Madison (Robert Forster), the grown up Marisa (Robin Riker), now a herpatologist, and an eccentric “big game hunter” (Henry Silva) who hires a pair of street kids as his “native guides”. At the climax it exacts its revenge, gate-crashing the high society wedding of the daughter of Slade (Dean Jagger), the venal head of the corporation that created the monster in the first place, and making short work of the guest list.

The plot may be strictly stock but it’s the incidentals that make Alligator so much fun. There’s plenty of Sayles’ trademark wit, humour and knowledge of film history on offer (everything from a “Harry Line lives!” graffito scrawled on a sewer wall to a tip of the hat to Them! (1954) as the military scour the sewers in search of the monster) and the taut direction by Lewis Teague, an alumnus of the Roger Corman school, keeps things ticking along quite nicely. He pulls off a few neat, unexpected shots, notably one of Madison discussing the thorny problem of what’s causing all these human body parts to keep appearing around the city with his doomed partner (Madison has a habit of losing his sidekicks in action) with the alligator briefly popping its head out of a tunnel behind them (unseen by the cops) to briefly eye up its next meal.

There’s a fantastically nasty moment when a bullied child is forced to “walk the plank” during a game of pirates by walking off the end of a swimming pool’s diving board, unaware that the alligator is lurking, open mouthed, just below the surface. Body parts litter the film, often used as excuses for jokes, and Teague doesn’t skimp on the gruesomeness as the alligator works its way through the supporting cast. Having directed second unit on the likes of Death Race 2000 (1975), Thunder and Lightning (1977) and Avalanche (1978) for Corman and The Big Red One (1980) for Samuel Fuller and co-directing Dirty O’Neil (1974) with Leon Capetanos, he graduated to solo director with The Lady in Red (1979), also written by Sayles. In the wake of Alligator he made a brace of Stephen King adaptations, Cujo (1983) and Cat’s Eye (1985) and scored a big mainstream hit with his adventure duo Romancing the Stone (1984) and its sequel The Jewel of the Nile (1985).

The cast are great fun, particularly Forster as the increasingly frazzled Madison, battling incipient hair loss as well as genetically mutated reptiles, making the most of what should have been a rather hackneyed role but which is made rather more than it should have been thanks to some snappy Sayles dialogue and character quirks. Sadly, Robin Riker is given a rather nothing role as the reptile expert/love interest but is as likable and smart as the script will allow. The lower orders are made up of an interesting cast of veterans – as well as Jagger and Silva we get glimpses of Sidney Lassick, Michael V. Gazzo and, in her final film to date, Sue Lyon playing a television reporter. Bart Braverman is particularly good fun as the doomed photo-journalists who ignores advice and ventures into the sewers in search of a scoop only to end up snapping his final minutes as the alligator bears down on him.

A little rough around the edges (the editing could have been sharper) Alligator is nonetheless a first rate low-budget monster film. It recycles many of its ideas – and part of its score – from Jaws (1975) but no matter. Sayles injects enough inventive twists and endearing silliness to the proceedings to make it feel fresh again and Teague’s direction doesn’t leave you time to ponder the similarities as the story rattles along. It was followed by the inevitable inferior, in-name-only sequel, Alligator II: The Mutation (1991) and, most bizarrely, a children’s game that featured a large plastic alligator that players had to feed with plastic household objects, hoping to be the one not to cause its enormous jaws to slam shut. Yes, it sounds unlikely, but here’s a vintage TV ad to prove that it did indeed exist…