0
0
Mass Image Compressor Compressed this image. https://sourceforge.net/projects/icompress/
Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on September 18, 2007, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
The trailers for Komodo vs. Cobra and Attack of the Sabretooth that play at the beginning of Lionsgate’s Alligator DVD serve to remind just how far the giant-hungry-animal genre has fallen since director Lewis Teague and screenwriter John Sayles unleashed their reptilian rampage in 1980. As he previously had done on 1978’s Roger Corman production Piranha, Sayles took an apparently boilerplate Jaws-knockoff script and invested it with humanity and wit, and Teague (also a Corman veteran) wrangled Alligator’s limited finances into a much bigger-looking picture. Not every low-budget monster flick wins raves from Time, Newsweek and The New York Times, but Alligator deserved the praise then and holds up perfectly now, as it receives its long-overdue U.S. DVD release.
Using the old urban legend of gators in the sewers as a jumping-off point, Alligator begins with a little girl named Marissa bringing home a baby reptile, which she dubs Ramon, from a Florida vacation. Her dad gets upset with her new pet and flushes it down the toilet; cut to 12 years later, and people have been disappearing in the local sewers (including, in one of Sayles’ many fun in-jokes, one Edward Norton), with only the odd limb or appendage left behind. Detective Madison (Robert Forster) looks into the case and, with the eventual help of a visiting herpetologist (Robin Riker)—who just happens to be the grown-up Marissa—determines that a scaly aquatic killer has been preying on humans down in the dank tunnels. One of the nice things about Sayles’ script is the way it honors some genre conventions (Madison has a troubled past that impedes his ability to convince those around him of the truth) while eschewing others (Marissa never does figure out that she once owned the marauding monster).
Teague utilizes a judicious combination of full-sized props and an actual baby alligator prowling through miniature sets to create his monster, and stocks the human cast with a great ensemble of character actors. Gruff-voiced Michael V. Gazzo is perfect as Madison’s police-chief boss, as is Sydney (billed as Sidney) Lassick as a sleazebag pet-store owner who provides animal test subjects for a pharmaceutical company. It is the corpses of these experimental dogs and cats, shot full of hormones and dumped in the sewer, that have led Ramon to grow bigger than the average gator. When the monster inevitably crashes a big event at the film’s climax, the fact that it is the wedding of that drug company’s head doctor to the daughter of its owner (Dean Jagger) adds an aura of poetic justice to the carnage.
Touches like this among the effectively deployed severed-limb gore and gratuitous explosions help elevate Alligator to the top of the B-movie heap, and it receives its due in the DVD’s 1.78:1 transfer. Very sharp without looking too polished for the movie’s drive-in roots, it sports fine colors and is backed by a modest but effective Dolby Digital 5.1 sound mix. On a second track, Lionsgate has ported over a commentary by Teague and Forster from a previous British two-disc set that paired the film with its sequel, Alligator II: The Mutation (not present here, and no great loss).
Moderated by Dark Delicacies’ Del Howison, who asks many good questions (albeit not very scene-specifically), the discussion is lively and covers a lot of ground, from filmmaking basics such as scheduling and shooting styles to the duo’s sharp memories of Alligator in particular. Revelations include the fact that Forster was just coming off a bad case of meningitis when he took this job, and that Teague called Jaws editor Verna Fields for advice on how to cut together a particular attack scene. The conversation flags a bit toward the end, but overall, even those people who already know that it was Forster who suggested that other characters reference his thinning hair will find quite a bit to enjoy here.
Brand new to this disc is Alligator Author, an interview featurette with Sayles in which he discusses script issues both logical (like coming up with a better origin for the beast than in the original script—which was set in Milwaukee and had the gator somehow getting huge from discarded beer!) and sociological (the monster’s attacks begin in the ghetto and aren’t really dealt with until they begin striking at the upper classes). In a manner typical of the segments produced by Michael Felsher’s Red Shirt Pictures, there’s a nice balance of talking-head shots and movie excerpts to keep the piece moving, and it nicely rounds out the creative exploration of this modern cult classic.
