EDIT: Due to a manufacturing delay this release has been pushed back to 2/12/24
ALLIGATOR (1980) & ALLIGATOR II: THE MUTATION (1991)
Limited Edition 4K Ultra HD & Blu-ray
101 Films presents cult classic creature feature Alligator (1980) on 4K UHD, along with the TV cut and 1991 sequel Alligator II: The Mutation (1991) on Blu-ray, title 033 on the 101 Films Black Label. Packed with interviews with cast and crew, this limited edition release is packaged in a rigid box with brand new artwork, and includes a limited edition booklet with new writing on the films.
A B-movie masterpiece, Alligator remains a standout picture from the post 70s creature feature boom, with surprising depth and an overtly critical take on the inaction on environmental issues of the time that is still relevant today. Its lesser-known sequel Alligator II: The Mutation, follows a similar path to its predecessor with a more comedic and knowing undertone in true B-movie fashion.
ALLIGATOR (1980)
Label: 101 Films
Region Code: Region-Free (UHD), B (Blu-ray)
Rating: 15 Cert.
Duration: 90 Minutes
Video: Dolby Vision 2160p UHD Widescreen (1.85:1), 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Audio: Uncompressed English 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). It opens with a Chicago family returning home from a Florida vacation where they witnesses an alligator wrestler getting his leg chomped off, so of course they buy their kids a pet baby alligator! When it totally predictably proves to be too much to handle the kids father flushes it 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 the city in a van and snatches pets off the street; then dumps their vivisected carcasses down into 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 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 to get ahead of the audience, and they're actually pretty funny 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 about the dismembered victims, as that is where the limbs seem to be coming from. The endeavor ends with Madison losing yet another partner with the giant gator emerging and chomping him. 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 no other clues were left behind, but the chief 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 Chicago sewers.
Those notions quickly change when tabloid reporter Thomas Kemp (Bart Braverman, TV's Vegas) who has a hard-on for dirt on Madison heads down to the sewers looking for clues about the death of the cop's partner. While down there he finds more than he bargained for, and is devoured by gargantuan-gator, but not before he manages to snap a few pictures of the toothy creature while it's eating him, just like Jaws 2. 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 erupt from the sewers and start working it's way from the alleys of the inner-city ghetto to a more upscale party at the Mayor's mansion.
When I was about eight or nine I first saw this when it aired on TV in the early 80's, and it stuck with me for all these years. The scene that was burned into my brain 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 toothy-maw of the giant alligator in the water 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 Jaws 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.
Special Features:
- Theatrical Cut (4K & Blu-ray)
- Alternate TV Cut (Blu-ray)
- Everybody In The Pool – An interview with actress Robin Riker (8 min)
- Wild In The Streets – An interview with Director Lewis Teague (25 min)
- It Walks Among Us – An interview with screenwriter John Sayles (10 min)
- Luck Of The Gator – An interview with special makeup effects artist Robert Short (12 min)
- Gator Guts, The Great River, and Bob – An Interview With Bryan Cranston (22 min)
- Additional Scenes From The TV Version (8 min)
- Teaser Trailer (1 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (3 min)
- TV Spots (2 min)
ALLIGATOR II: THE MUTATION (1991)
Label: 101 Films
Region Code: B
Duration: 94 Minutes
Rating: 12 Cert.
Audio: Uncompressed English 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: John Hess
Cast: Joseph Bologna, Dee Wallace, Woody Brown, Harlan Arnold, Nicolas Cowan, Brock Peters
In the oft maligned but still pretty freaking entertaining sequel we get more of the same, only more comical. A giant alligator is living in the sewers beneath the city of Regent Park, having been disposed of as a baby gator it has grown to abnormally large size thanks to another evil polluter - the Future Chemicals Corporation and it's crooked CEO Vincent Brown (Steve Railsback, Lifeforce) who have been dumping chemicals down there for years. Now any locals who frequent the city lake risk becoming gator-munch! Investigating the death of a pair of fisherman at the lake is Detective David Hodges (Joseph Bologna, Transylvania 6-5000), and Hodges wife Chris (Dee Wallace, Critters), a scientist at the local university takes one look at a severed leg and suspects that it's an alligator attack. Fearing more attacks Hodges tries to convince his the Chief of Police (Brock Peters, To Kill A Mockingbird) and the Mayor to call off a planned city party at the lake, but in true Mayor Vaughn of Jaws fashion both refuse to postpone the event. Hodges recruits rookie cop Rich Harmon (Woody Brown, Killer Party) to help him track down the gator, meanwhile no-gooder eco-polluter Brown hires professional gator-hunter Hawk (Richard Lynch, The Premonition) to track down the gator so as to avoid more unwanted publicity, and of course toothy gator-carnage ensues. This much lower-budget sequel is hampered by a pretty dopey script (no John Sayles this time around) as well as an alligator prop that basically just floated immobile on the surface of the water. The carnage is much more subdued and pretty laughable, but still plenty of fun in a dud-sequel sort of way, plus seeing Wallace and Lynch is always aces, even in this thing.
Special Features:
- From The Echo Lake Lagoon – An Interview With Director Jon Hess (16 min)
- Dead In The Water – An Interview With Special Effects Coordinator John Eggett (7 min)
- Cutting With Teeth – An Interview With Editor Marshall Harvey (5 min)
- Becoming The Hunted – An Interview With Actor Kane Hodder (10 min)
- Blood Brothers – An Interview With Second Unit Director Eugene Hess (6 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (4 min)
Audio/Video: Alligator (1980) arrives on both 2160p UHD and 1080p HD Blu-ray from 101 Films 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 WCG tone-mapping deepens blacks and improves contrast with depth-boosting layering, as well as giving those early late-70's primaries a subtle boost.
Alligator II: The Mutation (1991) gets a region-B locked Blu-ray, presented in 1080p HD widescreen (1.85:1), the scan offers filmic grain reproduction with tight detail in the close-ups, which certainly doesn't do the gator prop any favors. Colors are strong and well-saturated, blacks levels are solid, and depth and clarity look terrific.
Audio on both flicks comes by way of uncompressed English 2.0 dual-mono presentation with optional English subtitles. Both are 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 scores are delivered with precision.
Onto the extras for Alligator, this mostly mirrors the U.S. release from Scream Factory, minus the Audio Commentary; Alligator Author – An Interview With Screenwriter John Sayles; Trailers From Hell – Filmmaker Karyn Kusama (Jennifer’s Body) On Alligator; the Alligator Game Television Commercial; and Newspaper Ad Still Gallery By Drive-In Asylum.
We get 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 terrific in-depth extras, starting off Gator Guts, The Great River, And Bob – An Interview With Production Assistant Bryan Cranston, a fantastic 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 here 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.
Extras for Alligator 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.
Extras for Alligator II: The Mutation comes by way of
the 16-min From The Echo Lake Lagoon – An Interview With Director Jon Hess where the director talks about the original Moby Dick inspired script, shooting in Echo Park, dealing with gang members, the cast and working with live alligators; the 17-min Dead In The Water – An Interview With Special Effects Coordinator John Eggett, he speaks about being called in a sort of fixer for the mechanical special effects of the alligator, which didn;t work for shit, and nearly drowning when his hand was stuck underwater inside the mechanical creature. In the 5-min Cutting With Teeth – An Interview With Editor Marshall Harvey we get some talk about the possibility that this was meant as TV movie initially, as well as some amusing observations about the bulge in Lynch's pants; the 10-min Becoming The Hunted – An Interview With Actor Kane Hodder, the legendary stuntman talks about his work on both Alligator films and bonding with Lynch over their shared experience of having been scarred by fire. The last of the interviews is the 6-min Blood Brothers – An Interview With Second Unit Director Eugene Hess; the brother of the director, who speaks about the at times difficult shoot and how one of the live alligators they shot with at Echo Park supposedly got away! Extras are finished-up with the 4-min Theatrical Trailer.
Alligator (1980) and Alligator II: The Mutation (1991) finally get proper UK releases with a deluxe 4-disc 4K UHD/BD set from 101 Films, both have gorgeous scans and a massive set of extras, including the TV version of the first film. Highly recommended.
Order this Limited Edition set direct from 101 Films here: https://101-films-store.com/collections/black-label-limited-editions/products/alligator-i-1980-alligator-ii-the-mutation-1991-limited-edition-4k-uhd-blu-ray
