ALLIGATOR (1980)
4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray
3-Disc Collector's Edition
Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: Region-Free (UHD), A (Blu-ray)
Rating: R
Duration: 90 Minutes
Video: Dolby Vision 2160p UHD Widescreen (1.85:1), 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Director: Lewis Teague
Cast: Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Sidney Lassick, Michael Gazzo, Perry Lang, Bart Braverman, Jack Carter, Dean Jagger, Henry Silva, Royce D. Applegate
Early 80's creature-feature Alligator (1980) comes to us from director Lewis Teague (Cujo) with script that is both smart and funny by John Sayles (The Howling, Piranha). It opens with a Chicago family returning home from a Florida vacation where they witnesses an alligator wrestler getting his leg chomped off when he stumbles, so of course they bought their kids a pet baby alligator! When it proves to be too much to handle the kids father flushes him down the toilet. Twelve years later the cute gator has not only managed to survive down in the sewers, but has grown to the length of 36-feet, thanks to crooked eco-polluters Slade Laboratories who have been conducting secret growth hormone experiments on puppies, disposing of their carcasses in the sewer, thanks to a slimy pet store owner Gutchell (Sidney Lassick, The Unseen) who drives around town in a van and snatches pets off the street and then dumps their vivisected carcasses down in the sewer, where the king-sized alligator has been living undetected for over a decade.
Chicago police officer David Madison (Robert Forster, Vigilante) enters the picture when dismembered limbs start showing up at the water treatment plant. Madison is looked down upon by his peers after having previously lost a partner on-the-job, but seems a stand-up guy, handling both the stress of the job and his male-pattern baldness with aplomb. It seems that behind-the-scenes star Forster was losing his hair at the time and getting hair plugs, realizing that it would be rather obvious on-screen he requested that they throw in a few male-pattern baldness jokes into the film to get ahead of the audience, and they're actually fun jokes. I love Forster's introductory scene at Gutchell's pet store where Lassick's shop keeper tells Forster's character that he can relate to what he's going through, highlighting his own chrome dome much to Madison's chagrin.
Madison recruits fresh-faced rookie Kelly (Perry Lang, Spring Break) to explore the sewers looking for clues, as that is where the limbs seem to be coming from,. The endeavor ends with Madison losing yet another partner when the giant gator emerges and chomps him, dragging his body into the sewer. Madison himself can hardly believe what he's witnessed and his bushy eyebrowed boss Chief Clark (Michael Gazzo, The Godfather Part 2) doesn't believe it at all, it also doesn't help that the rookie's body was not found and there are no other clues, but he humors him by taking him to see a herpetologist named Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker, TV's Get A Life) who quickly dispels the notion that a 36-goot alligator could survive in the city sewers.
Those notions quickly change when tabloid reporter Thomas Kemp (Bart Braverman, TV's Vegas ) with a hard-on for dirt on Madison heads down to the sewers looking for clues about the death of his partner. While down there he finds more than he bargained for, and is devoured by alligator, but not before he manages to snap a few pictures of the toothy creature while it's eating him. When his camera is found and the photos developed it proves Madison correct, that there is a giant alligator loose in the sewers of the city. This leads to failed large-scale attempt to flush the creature out of the sewers, only for it to later that night erupt from the sewers and start working his way from the alleys of the ghetto to a more upscale party at the Mayor's mansion.
I have only previously seen this movie once, the TV cut when it aired in the early 80's, and it stuck with me for all these years. The scene that was burned into my brain from a young age was that of three kids playing at night by a swimming pool, with two kids dressed as pirates making a kid dressed as a cowboy walk the plank, pushing him off a diving board, unwittingly into the maw of the giant alligator in the pool below - that totally fucked me up as a kid, and in the same way that Jaws made people fear the ocean I totally looked twice before jumping into a pool after that, for fear that some mutated giant gator might be waiting for me! Obviously there's a lot of Jaws stitched into the DNA of this flick, it's a Jaws knock-off complete with a cop who is at first ignored, a scientist who assist in hunting the creature downs, and authority figures who this time around don't want to keep the beaches open, but instead we we have a corrupt mayor (Jack Carter, Caged Fury) who is in the pocket of chemical industrialist (Dean Jagger, Evil Town), CEO of Slade Laboratories, who are behind the evil growth hormone experiments, and worse yet, are puppy killers! There's also a fun turn from Henry Silva (Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold) as Colonel Brock, a great white hunter of sorts brought in to track down and kill the gator, but who ends up gator-bait himself. I also loved seeing character actor Royce D. Applegate (Stir Crazy, Splash) show up as a city employee in a few scenes.
Obviously a riff on Jaws the flick benefits from a terrific script from John Sayles, who was no stranger to Jaw knock-off having penned Piranha - which is a great double-feature with this - infusing the creature-feature with moments of humor, character quirks and some actual tension. It's also well executed by director Lewis Teague and nicely lensed by Joseph Mangine (Squirm, Neon Maniacs). The scenes with the giant alligator are pretty well done, while there's no denying that the hero-prop of the creature is stiff and a bit ridiculous in motion they do use some clever editing to mask that a bit, but it's still pretty ropey. They also use footage of an actual alligator shot from above rampaging through a miniature set.
The heart of the film is Forster as good-guy cop Madison, he's just a likable guy trying to do the right thing, the jokes about his thinning hair land well, and his brief fling with the herpetologist thankfully isn't overcooked. Alligator is just a fun creature-feature that hits all the right notes for me, it doesn't over think itself, it doesn't overreach, and it delivers some surprisingly bloody gator-carnage.
Audio/Video: Alligator (1980) arrives on both 2160p UHD and 1080p HD Blu-ray from Scream Factory framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, sourced from a new 4K from the original camera negative. A terrifically organic looking presentation with a bed of velvety grain, well-saturated colors and inky blacks with pleasing shadow detail. The layered blacks and shadow detail were especially appreciated during those very dark sequences down in the city sewers. This is a film I have not seen since it on TV as a kid in the early 80s, so I have no recent comparison but I thought it looks marvelous. The DolbyVision color-gamut deepens blacks and improves contrast with depth-boosting layering, as well as giving those early late-70's primaries a subtle boost.
No Atmos upgrade for this release it's a rock-solid uncompressed English DTS-HA MA 2.0 dual-mono presentation with optional English subtitles. A well-balanced presentation that is free of hiss or distortion, dialogue is rendered naturally and the sounds of gunfire, water, screams, gator-carnage and the Craig Huxley (Schizoid) score are delivered with precision - zero complaints here.
Like their release of King Kong Scream Factory give fans both the 90-minute theatrical cut and the longer 98-minute Television Version of the film. As it's a movie I'd previously only seen on TV as a kid I'm very pleased that the TV cut is included here on a dedicated third Blu-ray disc in widescreen HD with uncompressed audio, sourced from the same 4K original camera negative with additional footage scanned from an Internegative.
Not only do we get two cuts, but a selection of new and archival extras, starting off with a vintage, but new to me, Audio Commentary With Director Lewis Teague And Actor Robert Forster on both the UHD and Blu-ray theatrical cuts. All other other extras are collected on the Theatrical Cut Blu-ray, beginning with Gator Guts, The Great River, And Bob – An Interview With Production Assistant Bryan Cranston, a fantastic new 22-min piece produced by Red Shirt Pictures. Cranston looks back on his time as a struggling actor moonlighting as a very low-level production assistant on Alligator, getting the chance to move from the office to a more hands-on assignment mixing up vats of karo syrup, food dye, foam rubber and pasta to stuff into the exploding gator-prop seen in the finale. He also recollects sitting next to Forster in a van being driven to set for about 20 minutes and the impression the star left on him. He was surprised how kind and normal the star was, and how he carried that with him throughout his career, and how that sort of came full circle when Forster appeared on Breaking Bad.
Also new is the 8-min Everybody In The Pool – An Interview With Actress Robin Riker produced by Reverend Entertainment. In it the still quite lovely actress talks about smoking weed with Forster, noting he was a good kisser, and how director Teague allowed Forster to work in some lines about his male pattern baldness to get ahead of any comments audiences might have about his thinning hair at the times. The 12-min Luck Of The Gator – An Interview With Special Makeup Effects Artist Robert Short has the artist, who didn't construct the gator, nonetheless admires the work that went unto it. Pointing out it has a light weight skeleton rig constructed on bamboo and natural fibers with a rubber a skin which made it lightweight, and how well it worked. He then gets into his input on the film, creating dismembered limbs and amputation effects, and keeping the blood flowing, and his cameo in the film. He also tells a story about the alligator farm opening and how potentially treacherous it could have been if filmed as planned.
In the 24-min Wild In The Streets with Director Lewis Teague
the director describes this as sort of his big break, how he worked with Forster previously on a Corman flick, what John Sayles brought tot he screenplay. and getting into the particulars of the production like how certain shots were effects shots were achieved. Up next, the 10-min It Walks Among Us – An Interview With Screenwriter John Sayles the writer talks about the inspiration for the premise, hoe certain story point evolved, his early love of Kaiju and giant creature features, touching on Forster's thinning hair, and his thoughts in the finished film. Sayles also shows up in the 17-min archival interview Alligator Author – An Interview With Screenwriter John Sayles. He touches on many of the same things as the newer, expanding on a few and abbreviating others, touching on the script rewrite process, his childhood experiences seeing baby alligator for sale at carnivals, the urban legend of alligators in the sewer, the subterranean sewer underworld, and the casting of Forster, Henry Silva. There's also the Trailers From Hell – Filmmaker Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body) On Alligator, where she talks about her fondness of Sayle's penchant for bringing quality to genre filmmaking, mentioning that he was a mentor to her.
Extras are buttoned up with 8-min of Additional Scenes From The TV Version which look like they're VHS sourced, 1-min Teaser Trailer, 3-min Theatrical Trailer, 2-min of TV Spots. I love seeing the TV spots on here because I remember seeing them on TV as a kid. Another cool addition a 1-min Alligator Game Television Commercial, and we get a 3-min Newspaper Ad Still Gallery By Drive-In Asylum, and a 22-min Still Gallery containing movie stills, movie posters, lobby cards, and behind-the-scenes photos- there are 270 images - it's a whopper of gallery!
The 3-disc set arrives in a black flipper-tray keepcase with a sleeve of reversible artwork featuring both a new illustration and the original illustrated artwork. Its tough to beat the original poster artwork, the new illustration by artist Joel Robinson is alright, but not great, portraying the giant-gator erupting through a sidewalk. It's pretty hokey. I would rather they had kept the original artwork for the slipcover, like they did with their UHD releases of They Live and The Howling. The discs inside features both artwork options, plus a fun scene from the film on third disc of Silva being swallowed whole.
Special Features:
DISC ONE (4K UHD – Theatrical Version) (90 min)
- NEW 4K Scan From The Original Camera Negative
- Audio Commentary With Director Lewis Teague And Actor Robert Forster
DISC TWO (Blu-ray – Theatrical Version):
- NEW 4K Scan From The Original Camera Negative
- NEW Everybody In The Pool – An Interview With Actress Robin Riker (8 min)
- Wild In The Streets – An Interview With Director Lewis Teague (25 min)
- NEW It Walks Among Us – An Interview With Screenwriter John Sayles (10 min)
- NEW Luck Of The Gator – An Interview With Special Makeup Effects Artist Robert Short (12 min)
- NEW Gator Guts, The Great River, And Bob – An Interview With Production Assistant, Now Famous Actor/Director/Producer, Bryan Cranston (22 min)
- Audio Commentary With Director Lewis Teague And Actor Robert Forster
- Alligator Author – An Interview With Screenwriter John Sayles (17 min)
- Additional Scenes From The TV Version (8 min)
- Teaser Trailer (NEW 2K Scan) (1 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (NEW 2K Scan) (3 min)
- Trailers From Hell – Filmmaker Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body) On Alligator(1 min)
- TV Spots (NEW 2K Scan) (2 min)
- ALLIGATOR Game Television Commercial (31 sec)
- NEW Newspaper Ad Still Gallery By Drive-In Asylum (3 min)
- Still Gallery (Movie Stills, Movie Posters, Lobby Cards, And Behind-The-Scenes Photos) (23 min)
DISC THREE (Blu-ray – Television Version) (98 min) HD
- The Extended TV Version In HD For The First Time (NEW 4K Scan From The Original Camera Negative With Additional Footage Scanned From An Internegative)
Alligator (1980) finally gets not only gets a proper Blu-ray release but a whopper of a 3-disc UHD/BD Collector's Edition! Scream Factory have done it up right with a gorgeous new scan of the OCN, new extras and the TV version, this is a massive release, one we've been waiting a long time for and Scream Factory have delivered a terrific 3-disc release. This comes highly recommended!
Screenshots from the Scream Factory Blu-ray (2022):
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