Movie: "Alligator"
Year: 1980
Rated: R
Genre: Horror
Directed by: Lewis Teague
Writing credits: John Sayles, Frank Ray Perilli

Reviewer: -RoG-
Posted: 9/1/2009

Plot: Alligator gets flushed. Alligator survives and ingests experimental drug. Alligator grows to gargantuan proportions and wreaks havoc on everybody. Hooray!

Review: Forget about Lake Placid, Rogue and Primeval... if you want to see a movie about a killer alligator done right, then look no further than the classic 1980 horror flick simply entitled "Alligator".

It all starts out with a teenage girl who purchases a baby alligator while vacationing in Florida. When she brings it back home to Chicago, her dad flushes it down the toilet because he hates animals and clearly hates FUN too.

Of course, this isn't the end of the story for the baby alligator, it's just the beginning. It survives the dreaded flush and ends up living in the sewers of Chicago. Then it starts feeding on the carcasses of some animal corpses that were discarded in the sewer. This being a horror movie, the dead animals were naturally being tested on with an experimental growth hormone. You see where I'm going with this? Of course you do. So now the alligator has grown to a whopping 36-feet long and begins terrorizing the citizens of Chicago.

Did I mention the girl actually named the alligator Ramón? Because she does, and that's a fucking awesome name for an alligator and you know it.

If you enjoyed the comedy "The Wedding Crashers", just wait until you see what happens when Ramón crashes an ultra-fancy wedding full of rich people! It's funnier than anything you'll see in the aforementioned comedy film, I assure you.

What's particularly nice about the flick for me is that I grew up in New York and heard many versions of the old urban legend about giant killer alligators living in the city sewers (you can learn all about that here). This movie really plays into those fears people had about New York's sewers at the time (even though it takes place in Chicago) and provides many laughs as well. As far as alligator-based horror films go, this one will forever be my favorite and I'm sure many of you will feel the same if you watch it. Keep in mind, this film was written by John Sayles, who also wrote one of my other favorite killer animal movies, "Piranha".

Now I know it's hard to sell some people on "killer creature" flicks since so many of them are godawful and not entertaining in the slightest, so I've taken the liberty of uploading something that should help convince you to get a copy of it. If the following scene doesn't sell you on the movie, nothing will:

Overall rating:
(Scored on a 0.5 - 5 pickles rating: 0.5 being the worst and 5 being the best)