‘Alligator’ and the Alligators in our Sewers
Editor’s Note: This review is the third in our series on folklore adapted to film. Past reviews are posted on our ‘Reviews’ page.
Alligator
Directed by Lewis Teague
Starring Robert Forster and Robin Riker
One of the earliest urban legends I can recall hearing was that alligators practically clogged the sewer systems of most major cities. My second grade teacher told my class the story of baby alligators, purchased as pets at ‘gator farms’ in the Florida swamp, growing into monsters after being flushed into the pipes beneath New York city. Despite the distance between our rural texas town and New York, I convinced myself that our sewers were also filled with these reptilian threats and often hoped to catch a glimpse of one in the drainage ditches near our home.
I discovered the truth behind this story much later, when I found the book THERE ARE ALLIGATORS IN OUR SEWERS. And Other American Credos in my middle school’s library. The book introduced me to the subject of folklore, and also to the idea that maybe teachers weren’t to be trusted completely.
The story of sewer alligators is an old one, possibly as old as sewers, but its modern appearance can be traced to the 1930s. A New York Times article from 1935 describes the mysterious discovery of an alligator by several young men shoveling snow, but the lack of corroborating details suggests a hoax. Snopes.com lists news articles about urban alligator incidents going back to 1927, and the youth may have been inspired by these reports.
While the earliest versions of the story leave the origins of the beasts a mystery, the advent of the family road trip allowed for the ‘flushed pet’ explanation, and this is the version presented to us in the 1980 movie Alligator.
The film opens with a young girl visiting a Florida alligator farm on her family’s vacation. She brings home a baby alligator as a pet, but her father, for reasons I couldn’t quite grasp, flushes the poor thing down the toilet. The movie then adds a new twist to the story, when the alligator grows to Cadillac-size after dining on improperly disposed of pharmaceutical research animals.
Clearly taking its cues (and stealing its music) from Jaws, the movie turns the idea of ‘man versus nature’ into ‘man perverts nature and is killed by it.’ The movie also contains a fair dose of social commentary, and a pinch of satire, as the gator begins its feeding frenzy in the city’s ghetto neighborhoods, then works its way through various social strata until it attacks, in my favorite sequence, the garden wedding of a wealthy society couple.
For a monster movie about a giant alligator, the film displays a surprising level of craftsmanship, and a lot of its depth comes from the screenplay by John Sayles. Sayles began his screenwriting career working for schlock master Roger Corman, but also wrote the werewolf classic The Howling, and went on to write and direct the classic Lone Star.
The effects have aged as well as can be expected, at least as well as those in the various Jaws movies, but unfortunately other parts of the movie show their age. The most glaring example is the love story between the gruff-but-handsome police detective that discovers the monster and the beautiful-but-brilliant herpetologist that assists him. I’m not certain if their relationship was believable nearly three decades ago, but I found it laughable at best. Still, most of the performances in the film are fun, with the sort of manic character parts that movies from later decades eschew.
If you like monster movies, check out Alligator
