Alligator DVD > Reviews > Snap This One up

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Liked it
Story	Satisfactory
Characters / Performances	Satisfactory
Special Effects	Standard
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	see review
Disadvantages:	see review

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

If you saw Lake Placid and though the idea of a killer alligator was a new one, then think again. Alligator from the pen of John Sayle came some years earlier, and whilst not being the greatest horror movie out there, is infinitely superior to this mediocre modern comedy shocker.

Tongue in cheek horror abounds here as a mutant alligator goes on the rampage throughout the streets of Chicago. Some years previously a little girl was bought a pet alligator as a present - it was a yuppie fad in the US to do so, and as with many others, Ramon ends up being flushed down the toilet. People seemed to have this strange idea that baby alligators didn't grow up into hulking great man eating monsters...and when they started growing flushed them away. Well, this movie lets the alligator wreak his own revenge for the cruelty imparted upon his bretheren. You see, rather than dying like many of the others(although apparently, alligators are a common occurrence in the sewers of Chicago even to this day where people had disposed of them in this way) Ramon finds food and survives. In fact, the food he finds are the hormonally treated corpses of animals from an animal testing laboratory and the hormones cause him to grow big - bigger than a car in fact and eventually he goes on the rampage, breaking out of the sewer and hunting out new food - human food. David Madison(Robert Foster) plays a homicide detective whose task it is(along with the rest of the B-Movie cast) to track down this beast and prevent any more killing...but this proves harder than you would have thought.

This is a prime example of 80s B-movie horror in the same vein as something like Pirhana, both coming on the back of Jaws in the revival of the big monster scenario. Alligator saves itself from mediocrity by never even attempting to be anything more than a totally tongue-in-cheek horror movie. It never tries to take itself seriously and you'll probably find yourself laughing throughout rather than being horrified - although there are some tense and rather horrible scenes. One of the best is of child's birthday party where one child forces another, dressed as a pirate to "walk the plank" into the swimming pool - classic. The best scenes are however reserved for the wedding where pure carnage ensues, or from where the alligator chases the mayor of Chicago through a building, into his limo and then proceeds to crush him inside. Great stuff.

You are of course asked to suspend disbelief throughout. This alligator is bigger than a car, longer than a bus and yet manages to turn up, cause havoc and then completely disappear without a trace in the big city. Not likely, but somehow it doesn't really matter. Also, for example, he chases the mayor, only the mayor, in a crowded hall and then still goes after him when he is in his limo, ignoring all those easier targets around him. Great symbolism, but hardly believable. But who cares.

This is a highly entertaining movie, full of slapstick horror and really funny moments - unintentional and otherwise, so that you can even ignore the fact that all the acting is absolutely abysmal, the effects equally bad and the script attrocious. Its Funnnnnnn...nothing more, nothing less and taken as such, its a movie well worth checking out te next time it makes its umpteenth television appearance. Taken as a serious horror movie is a pile of trash, but it was never meant as such - its like taking Austin Powers as a serious spy movie.