Alligator (film)

Alligator is a 1980 comedy horror film, directed by Lewis Teague with a screenplay by John Sayles. It stars Robert Forster, Robin Riker and Michael V. Gazzo.

The film follows the attempts of a police officer David Madison and a reptile expert, Marisa Kendall to stop a deadly alligator which is killing humans in the sewers of Chicago.

The film received praise from critics for its intentional humour and in 1991, an apparent sequel was released entitled Alligator II: The Mutation. Despite the title this film shared no characters or actors with the original, and the plot was essentially a retread of the first film.

Tagline : Beneath Those Manholes, A Man-Eater Is Waiting ...

Directed by
Lewis Teague

Writing credits
John Sayles (story) and
Frank Ray Perilli (story)

John Sayles (screenplay)

Plot

The film opens with a teenaged girl purchasing a baby alligator while on vacation with her family at a tourist trap in Florida. After the family returns home to Chicago, the alligator (named "Ramon" by the girl) is promptly flushed down the family's toilet by her surly, animal-phobic father, and ends up in the city's sewers. Twelve years go by, during which the alligator not only survives, but eventually feeds on covertly-discarded pet-corpses which are spiked with an experimental growth formula, causing it to grow into a 36-foot long behemoth with an almost impenetrable hide. Apartments for rent in Chicago

The alligator begins picking off humans in the sewer, and the resulting flow of body parts draws in world-weary police officer David Madison who, after a horribly botched case in St. Louis, has gained a reputation for being lethally unlucky for his assigned partners. As Madison works on this new case, his boss Chief Clark brings him into contact with reptile expert Marisa Kendall, who years earlier was the girl who bought the alligator. The two of them edge into a prickly romantic relationship, and during a visit to Kendall's house, Madison bonds with her motormouthed mother.

Madison's reputation as a partner-killer is "confirmed" when the gator snags the young cop who accompanies Madison into the sewer searching for clues. No one believes Madison's story, partly due to a lack of a body, and partly because of the influential local tycoon who sponsored the illegal growth experiments and doesn't want the truth to come out. This changes when an obnoxious tabloid reporter goes snooping in the sewers and supplies graphic and indisputable photographic evidence of the beast, at the cost of his own life. (Ironically, the man had up until that point been one of the banes of Madison's existence.)

An attempt by the police to flush out Ramon comes up empty, and Madison is put on suspension, but then the gator literally smashes his own way out of the sewers and comes to the surface, killing a young boy who gets tossed into a swimming pool during a party. The ensuing city-wide hunt turns into a media circus, including the hiring of pompous big-game hunter Colonel Brock to track the animal. Once again, the effort fails: Brock is killed, the police trip over each other in confusion and Ramon rampages through a high-society wedding party; among his victims is the tycoon who helped create him. With only Kendall to help him, Madison finally lures the alligator into a trap back in the sewers and destroys the beast with a massive charge of explosives, barely escaping with his own life.

Cast

Robert Forster - David Madison

Robin Riker - Marisa Kendall
Michael V. Gazzo - Chief Clark (as Michael Gazzo)
Dean Jagger - Slade
Sydney Lassick - Luke Gutchel (as Sidney Lassick)
Jack Carter - Mayor

Perry Lang - Officer Jim Kelly
Henry Silva - Col. Brock
Bart Braverman - Thomas Kemp (reporter)
John Lisbon Wood - Mad bomber
James Ingersoll - Arthur Helms
Robert Doyle - Bill Kendall
Patti Jerome - Mrs. Madeline Kendall
Angel Tompkins - Newswoman
Sue Lyon - ABC Newswoman