Alligator (film)

1980 film directed by Lewis Teague

In 1968, a teenage girl purchases a baby American alligator while on vacation with her family at a tourist trap in Florida and gives it the name Ramon. When the family returns home to Chicago, the girl's surly, animal phobic father promptly flushes it down the toilet and into the city's sewers. The baby alligator survives by feeding on the discarded carcasses of animals used in illegal experimentation and dumped into the sewers. These animals had been used as test subjects for an experimental growth formula intended to increase agricultural livestock meat production. However, the project was abandoned because while the formula had the desired effect of making the animals larger than normal, it had the unwanted side effect of massively increasing the animals' metabolism, causing them to develop an insatiable appetite. During the 12 years spanning 1968 and 1980, the baby alligator bioaccumulates concentrated amounts of this formula from feeding on these carcasses, causing it to mutate and grow into a perpetually ravenous monster resembling a Deinosuchus Purussaurus hybrid with an almost impenetrable hide. The alligator begins ambushing and devouring sewer workers. The resulting discovery of body parts exiting the sewers draws in world weary police detective David Madison who, after a horribly botched case in St. Louis, has gained a reputation for being lethally unlucky for his assigned partners. As David works on the case, his boss Chief Clark introduces him to herpetologist Marisa Kendall. Kendall was in fact the teenager who bought the baby alligator in 1968. The two of them edge into a prickly romantic relationship, and during a visit to Kendall’s house, Madison bonds with her motor mouthed mother. Madison's reputation as a partner killer is confirmed when the alligator devours a young officer named Kelly who accompanies Madison into the sewer searching for clues. No one believes Madison’s story due to a lack of a body, and partly because of Slade, the influential local tycoon who sponsored the illegal experiments and therefore wants the truth concealed. This changes when obnoxious tabloid reporter Thomas Kemp, one of the banes of Madison’s existence, goes snooping in the sewers and procures graphic and indisputable photographic evidence of the beast at the involuntary cost of his life. The story quickly garners public attention, and a citywide hunt for the monster is called for. An attempt by the police to flush out the alligator proves unsuccessful, forcing the alligator to escape from the sewers and come to the surface, where it first kills a police officer and later a young boy who, during a party, is tossed into a swimming pool in which the alligator sought rest. When Madison makes the connection between the alligator and the illegal growth formula experiments, Slade uses his influence with the mayor to get Madison suspended from the force. The ensuing hunt continues, including the hiring of pompous big game hunter Colonel Brock to track the animal. Once again, the effort fails: Brock is devoured, the police trip over each other confusedly, and the alligator goes on a rampage through a high society wedding party hosted at Slade's mansion; among its victims are Slade himself, the mayor, and Slade's chief scientist for the hormone experiments and intended son in law. Madison and Kendall finally lure the reptile back into the sewers before setting off explosives, killing it. As they walk away, a drainpipe into the sewer spits out another baby alligator, thus potentially repeating the cycle all over again.

John Sayles wrote the screenplay inspired by the urban legend alligators living in sewers with the added element of exposure to illegally dumped growth hormones from a pharmaceutical company. Location shooting took place in and around Los Angeles, including in various service tunnels beneath the city streets. Also the movie states multiple times it takes place in a city in Missouri other than St. Louis. Bryan Cranston worked as a special effects assistant on this film, in charge of making and rigging "the alligator guts" for the film's finale.

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, it holds an 86% approval rating based on 29 reviews, with an average of 6.7/10. On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 62 out of 100 based on 10 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Vincent Canby of The New York Times gave the film a mostly positive review, writing that its "suspense is frequently as genuine as its wit and its fond awareness of the clichés [it uses]". The staff of Variety concluded: "Dumb as it is, director Lewis Teague brings some plusses to the pic. Robert Forster, as a detective, and Riker are amiable leads, never taking the film too seriously. Tech credits are cheap but serviceable." Roger Ebert, writing for the Chicago Sun Times, gave the film one out of four stars, suggesting that it would be best to "flush this movie down the toilet to see if it also grows into something big and fearsome." In 2000, Kim Newman of Empire praised the perceived wit of the film's script, as well as the "solid performances, effective effects", and "spirited B level direction". In 2007, Entertainment Weeklys Chris Nashawaty called the film "Clever, funny, and wonderfully bloody," and wrote that "[this] B movie deserves an 'A In 2013, Jim Knipfel of Den of Geek awarded the film four and a half out of five stars, calling it "intelligent and stylish". Film historian Leonard Maltin gave the film a score of three out of four stars, and wrote: "If you've got to make a film about a giant alligator that's terrorizing Chicago, this is the way to do it—with a sense of fun to balance the expected violence and genuine scares." Alligator, along with films such as Grizzly (1976), Orca (1977) and Piranha (1978), is sometimes seen as made to capitalize on the success of the film Jaws (1975), whose main antagonist is a man eating great white shark. John Sayles, who wrote the script for Alligator, also created the screenplay for Piranha two years earlier. In an interview, filmmaker Quentin Tarantino said that Robert Forster's character, David Madison, inspired the character Max Cherry (also played by Forster) of his 1997 film Jackie Brown.

On September 18, 2007, Lions Gate Entertainment released the film on DVD for the first time in the United States. The disc features a new 16x9 anamorphic widescreen transfer in the original 1.78:1 ratio and a new Dolby Digital 5.1 channel sound mix in addition to the original mono mix. The included extras are a commentary track with director Lewis Teague and star Robert Forster, a featurette titled Alligator Author in which screenwriter John Sayles discusses the differences between his original story and the final screenplay, and the original theatrical trailer. The film had previously been available on DVD in other territories, including a version released in the United Kingdom in February 2003 by Anchor Bay Entertainment. This release features an optional DTS sound mix, includes the sequel Alligator II: The Mutation (1991) on a second disc, and includes the same Teague Forster commentary found on the recent Lions Gate U. S. release. The Shout! Factory released a collectors edition of Alligator in the two disc 4K Ultra HD and Blu Ray set on February 22, 2022 under their Scream! Factory label.