Also known as: El cocodrilo mortal (Peru, Columbia), Der Killer-Alligator (Germany)
Release Date: November 13th, 1980 (Argentina)
Directed by: Lewis Teague
Written by: John Sayles, Frank Ray Perilli
Music by: Craig Hundley
Cast: Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Michael V. Gazzo, Dean Jagger, Henry Silva, Sydney Lassick
Group 1 Films, 94 Minutes
Review:
“How about cats? I got plenty of cats. I also got a parrot I’d like to get rid of.” – Gutchel
Alligator is just one of many Jaws ripoffs. However, this one takes the animal horror carnage and puts it on land. In fact, the killer beast in this movie gets urban, as he terrorizes a city: eating a kid in a swimming pool, eating people at a opulent wedding and snacking on idiots that go into the sewers. The scene where the alligator bursts up through the street while kids are playing baseball is fantastic.
This is one of those movies that used to be on cable almost weekly in the ’80s and early ’90s. I’ve probably seen it a dozen times and well, it still amuses me. Also, it was really my introduction to the great Robert Forster. I mean, I’m pretty sure I saw this before I saw him in The Black Hole. I definitely saw this before Forster’s grittier ’70s stuff and then his resurgence in the ’90s with films like Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown. But Forster is a man’s man and he’s no different here, as he makes it his mission to snuff out this giant gator.
I think that this film resonated with me the most out of all the killer animal movies because I grew up in South Florida and this seemed plausible to me. But at that time, I also believed that Cobra had bases in the Everglades and were doing experiments to create weapons to rule the world and destroy G.I. Joe.
Anyway, this film feels very early ’80s but it’s aged well for what it is. The special effects still look good and they are still quite effective. I’d rather watch this any day over some CGI killer gator movie. The practical effects just work so well in this low budget affair and I have to give props to the effects artists that brought the gator to life.
The wedding scene is superb, especially for 1980, and even though a few shots and angles may look a bit hokey, it doesn’t diminish the impact of the scene. I mean, that wedding sequence is batshit crazy but it is better than any big carnage scene from any of the other killer animal movies of the time.
Alligator is just a killer movie, pun intended. You don’t watch these sort of things for acting and stellar directing, you watch them to see people get chomped to bits. This accomplishes that and actually does it better than one would think.
Rating: 6.25/10
Pairs well with: other killer animal movies from the late ’70s/early ’80s: Jaws, Piranha, Orca, Grizzly and Alligator II: The Mutation from 1991.
Talking Pulp 