Customer Reviews

Alligator

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I remember in Brooklyn N.Y., hearing the commercial for Alligator on am radio in early 1980, and always wanted to see it, but I never got around to it, I finally saw it on tv in the mid 1980s. I must say I wasn't dissapointed in the mid 1980s and I'm not dissapointed with this 2007 dvd rerelease. Great pristine film transfer. Nice dolby 5.1 sound, make Alligator sound in a whole different way on a theatre system. Alligator came out in 1980, during this time the Age Of Gore 1978-1983 was in full swing, so Alligator was one of the gore gems to come out during this Age Of Gore. Alligator was based on urban legend about alligators in the sewar. The year is 1968, and a pet alligator named Ramone gets flushed down the toilet by an angry father. Twelve years later in 1980, this gator has grown to a prehistoric sized 36 foot. Thanks to the gators diet of discarded lab steroid tested animal experiments, it has grown to this enormous size. Alligator writers John Saylesand Frank Perilli and director Lewis Teague makes the viewer aware of the sociol status and economics in society. ex: As you watch this gator wreck havoc through the movie, Ramone( the Gator) starts its havoc in the impoverished neighborhoods and finally action is taken when the gator becomes a problem for the upper class. Robert Forster plays a believable detective David Madison, say what you want about this movie, but Forsters part was played incredibly well. Forsters charachter Detective David Madison was likable, calm collective guy, or a guy who would steal every cent you have. Robert Forster made you believe he was this charachter. Robin Ryker plays a a belivable herpetologists Dr. Marissa Kendall and an attractive love interest for detective Dave Madison. Apearences by Actors Henry Silva and old time western screen legend Dean Jagger added some interesting charachters to Alligator. One charachter that really brought life to this move was Herpetologists Dr. Marissa Kendalls mother Madeline, actress Patti Jerome. Madeline was a fun interesting charachter that may have annoyed you but your interest was kept, watching actress Patti Jeromes great performance. Great production on the soundtrack by composer Craig Hundly. I thought the soundtrack was great for this kind of movie. A facinating interview with Director Lewis Teague opened new light on this B- film, which I'm happy Lionsgate finally released this cult classic. Alligator is good trashy B-film fun, that I enjoy every time I watch. And you will to. If you like movies like Humanoids From the Deep, or Piranha you will enjoy Alligator.

This flick is a potpourri of great trivia. Star Robert Forster made his mark in "Medium Cool" only to slip into B-movie abyss before being resurrected(and Oscar nominated) by Quentin Tarantino in "Jackie Brown". Co-star Robin Riker would later play Chris Elliott's nemesis in the cult sitcom "Get A Life". The film's perfunctory heavy, Dean Jagger, won an Oscar for "Twelve O'Clock High". Oscar nominee for "Godfather II", Michael V. Gazzo is also on hand here. Sidney Lassick who plays the diabolical pet store owner was in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". John Ford regular Mike Mazurki has a bit as a security guard. Sue Lyon, the original Lolita, has a bit as a TV reporter. As for John Sayles' script it's intelligent but it's not as witty as it want's to be. There are too many obvious gags like a decapitated sewer worker named Ed Norton or a hospital intercom paging a Dr. Howard. What I felt distinguished the film was Lewis Teague's direction. Teague really knows how to ratchet the scares and suspense. The alligator looked realistically menacing and that compensates for a lot of the flat tongue-in-cheek qualities of the film. On a final note, when are they going to release Teague's shot-in-Philly vigilante flick "Fighting Back" with Tom Skerritt and Michael Sarrazin on DVD?

"Alligator" is a very good little B movie that deserves a much wider audience than it has to date. I don't even remember it being commercially released; I've caught it several times on late night TV. But it's a tight, fast-paced, unpretentious film, generally well acted and with a few nifty surprises. At the start of the movie, a little girl buys a baby alligator from an old Seminole Indian in Florida. Dad isn't thrilled to have a baby gator in the house, and in a fit of pique one afternoon he flushes it down the toilet. Down goes the gator into the town's sewer system, which coincidentally is chock full of dead pets, mostly kidnapped cats and dogs, which a villainous vet has been injecting growth hormones into before dumping them into the sewer. Fast-forward 12 years later; the baby gator, still in the sewer after chowing down on animal cadavers bloated with growth hormones for the past dozen years, has grown into a behemoth with a ravenous appetite and an indiscriminate taste for anything it can chomp on, including humans. Yuck... body parts start turning up in the city's sewage system, including a couple of sewer workers, a newspaper reporter, and a policeman who went down into the sewer to investigate the shenanigans. His erstwhile partner, nicely played by Robert Forster, and a young biologist (who else but the little girl now grown up?) team up to try to find out what's going on. But the alligator is getting kind of bored stuck in the sewer, and one hot night it blasts itself through a concrete sidewalk in the middle of a stickball game, and the chase is on as the gator turns up in dark alleys, a swimming pool, and the town lake, before indecorously crashing the villainous vet's wedding reception and chomping on the guests. The movie jolts along to a suitably explosive ending and it's great fun from beginning to end. "Alligator" spawned an absolutely dreadful sequel which has nothing to do with the original; the people who made the first "Alligator" knew better than to mess with a good thing. It's a very good, modest, low-budget film that proves again that sometimes small is best after all.

Following his success with Piranha, screenwriter John Sayles added another tounge-in-cheek B-movie to his resume with Lewis Teauge's highly-underrated giant monster flick, "Alligator". This one has a baby alligator that was flushed down the toilet by its owners and ends up devouring discarded test animals. As a result, it grows to be inhumanly big and ends up feeding on anything and anyone that gets in its way. Robert Forester's overworked homicide cop is the hero of the story as he tries to convince the skeptical press and his superiors that the dismembered body parts floating around in the sewer aren't the work of any ordinary killer. Another childhood favorite of mine, "Alligator" is an old-fashioned fun creature feature from a forgotten time when CGI was still a work in progress. It's a real shame they don't make them like this anymore.

Alligator is an over the top, ridiculous and fun man vs. beast horror movie. Think a B-movie version of Jaws if he were on steroids and able to jump out of the water and run through the streets looking for food. And instead of Roy Scheider as a cop hunting the beast we get Robert Forster as a cop with bad hair hunting a beast in a sewer instead of the ocean. There is even some Jaws like music with a huge alligator face shadow on the sewer walls approaching instead of a fin rising from the water.

How could this be? Well from the start we have a family at a zoo watching the alligators and soon after one of the trainers is attacked and mauled by one, our family of course has to buy a baby alligator immediately following this incident and bring it home only to have dad flush it down the toilet alive!

That would be all well and good but there is an evil corporation doing experiments with steroids and growth illegally using local dogs as their test subjects only to dump there steroid filled bodies in, you guessed it, the sewer, which they then become alligator food, duh duh duh! Hence how as one of the local kids explains the alligator being the size of an El Dorado. Don't worry animal lovers the director Lewis Teague let's the dog have his day three years later in 1983 when he directs Cujo.

Now our stage is set for our hero cop with baggage and bad hair plugs played by Forester to lead the hunt for the El Dorado sized 20ft alligator with a red haired, green eyed, and sexy local alligator expert. Oh, and they might just get it on. And she also may have ties to this particular alligator, I smell a prequel.

For the viewer that likes his horror gory Alligator has significant bright red blood splattered about as the beast chomps away and devours his victims throughout the city neighborhoods and sewers. The film and the bright blood had a slight look of old school Italian horror to it. And there also is a plethora of body parts that wash up throughout. The film albeit the definition of so bad it's good does have it's moments of actual shock, specifically at a Halloween party, where as a joke some older kids make one of there friends walk the plank aka the diving board of there in ground swimming pool, wait! Is the alligator still in the sewer?

Alligator is great over the top fun and pure entertainment.

DVD:
Picture
The transfer is worth mentioning and looked pristine.
Sound
You get a Dolby Digital 5.1 track, which is nice but is just ok.

A baby alligator named Ramon is flushed down the toilet of a suburban Chicago home and into the sewers. 12 years go by and Ramon has grown into a very large ( 30 feet long ) ravenous monster ,thanks to the illegal dumping of toxic waste into the sewers by a pharmaceutical company .
When it turns its attentions to gobbling up humans action is needed and the intrepid pair of policeman David Madison ( Robert Forster) and herpetologist Dr Kendall (Robin Piker) descend into the sewers to track and destroy the beast .She is particularly absorbed in the case since it was her pet ,before her Dad disposed of it down the sewers
There are lots of gory deaths and the atmospheric scenes in the strom drains evoke pleasant memories of the classic 50's ant movie Them .The basic scenario follows the template set by Jaws very closely -official coverups and City Hall corruption ,the cop who knows there is a problem and the final confrontation .
John Sayles contributes a sharp script with some digs at corporate corruption ,there are excellent performance especially from Henry Silva who goes just abou then right amount over the top as a big game hunter using his jungle honed skills in a new subterranean hunting ground and -essential in a movie like this -Ramon looks pretty good and suitably scary

Intelligent and lively B movie creature feature with lots to recommend it

This should be right up there with the B Movie greats like "Grizzly", "Anaconda" and "Day of the Animals". Pass the popcorn :)

Before he wrote and directed such films as EIGHT MEN OUT, MATEWAN, LONE STAR, CITY OF HOPE and BABY IT'S YOU, the extremely talented John Sayles graced us with screenplays for 3 of the most entertaining horror movies of the late 1970's and early 1980's. For director Joe Dante, he penned the delightful PIRANHA (1978), THE HOWLING (1981)- still the best werewolf movie ever made in my opinion, and 1980's ALLIGATOR, for director Lewis Teague.
Giant 'gator movies come and go, but this is the best one ever made. It has suspense, humor and delightful characters, finely acted by Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Henry Silva and even Dean Jagger, amongst others. Director Lewis Teague helmed two other fine horror movies that come to mind - Stephen King's CUJO (1983) and CAT'S EYE (1985).

Sure, this movie is as old as I am and F/X are pretty outdated. So what! Alligator is awesome. The use of real alligators was smart thinking. The fake alligator does not look all that bad, but you can still tell it's fake. The gore in this movie is done pretty well, you get to see a man get eaten whole body and all, body parts, lots of blood, the alligator crashes a wedding and goes on a bloody rampage. Skip Lake Placid if you want to see a good alligator horror movie. This is the one.

As the title would suggest, "Alligator" (1980) is a "Jaws" rip-off nature-runs-amok flick, but "Alligator" only plays it semi-serious and is, in fact, a semi-spoof of "Jaws." You'll even hear Jaws-imitation suspense music as the creature approaches and attacks.

THE PLOT: A baby alligator is flushed down the toilet and mutates to great size from eating chemically contaminated dog carcasses in the sewers. A policeman and a beautful reptile expert team up to kill the beast after it starts eating people.

"Alligator" barely runs 90 minutes and is kind of boring for the first half hour, but the last hour perks up and keeps your attention. Unlike "Jaws," which is completely serious and scarey, most adults won't take "Alligator" too seriously or find it remotely scarey. In fact, I busted out laughing numerous times when the creature would attack people. Some understandably compare "Alligator" to "Piranha," which came out two years earlier in 1978, but "Piranha" takes itself a bit more seriously and is more entertaining overall. Actually, as far as creatures-on-the-loose flicks go, "Piranha" is a definite 5/5 Star piece.

What makes "Alligator" a necessary purchase is the awe-inspiringly gorgeous redhead Robin Riker, who doesn't appear until half an hour into the story. After that she's featured prominently. Robin was 28 years old at the time of release but possesses such a mature and classy air (I mean that in a good way, of course) that she seems at least 35.

Since the last hour of "Alligator" is worthwhile and fun I'll rate the story 3.5/5 Stars, even though it can't be taken seriously. Robin Riker, on the other hand, rates 5/5 Stars (actually there aren't enough stars in the universe!); hence, my overall 4/5 Star rating.

Men join in with me: Robin Riker, Robin Riker, Robin Riker, Robin Riker, Robin Riker, Robin Riker, Robin Riker (continue ad nauseam).