Alligator (1980)

Episode 194, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd.

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  Well, Craig, as we often do, we, sometimes when a very famous or very popular actor dies, we try to pay tribute to that person by finding a horror movie that they may have starred in or appeared in and reviewing that. I think it was a couple weeks ago that a person named Robert Forster died. Now, that is not a name that immediately springs to my lips when I think of famous actors. But if you’ve seen this guy, you you know that you’ve seen this guy. He’s got over a 180 credits to his name on IMDB. He’s played in a ton of very big movies, as well as a lot of TV. He’s just one of those familiar faces, one of those people that you would see quite regularly, often on on television or in movies. Sometimes playing a leading role, more often than not playing a kind of a side role.  And he and he died at the age of 78 in, on October 11th. So we went back through his history, his ouvoir, and we found a movie that had actually been on my list for a while. It’s a film from 1980 called Alligator. And I think I was just perusing around the Internet as I am doing and looking at these lists of movies to see. And I probably saw a list of of monster movies, basically. And this one was on it in some way, shape, or form. And I had added it to my little personal list of movies to see, and so we saw this as an opportunity to to to chalk that one off the the list. Now it’s interesting because this movie has an 83% positive rating on, Rotten Tomatoes.  However, I’m a fanboy of Roger Ebert, and, he gave it 1 star out of 4 and said, you might as well just flush this one down the toilet like the alligator in the film. So I have to say on the outset, I’m a little bit more on the Roger Ebert side of the fence than I am on the Rotten Tomatoes audience approval rating. So how about you Craig? What’s has have you seen this before or heard of it before?

Craig:  No. I mean, those of us who grew up in the eighties knew about the whole urban legend of the alligators in the sewers. Like, but even when it was an urban legend like it was always kind of a joke. Like I don’t think anybody, or at least nobody I knew really believed that that was going on, but it was an urban legend there for a little while so it doesn’t surprise me that, somebody capitalized on that. I am surprised at the high rating. It’s not terrible, it’s it’s just kinda terrible. It’s it’s just not very good. I mean, it’s it’s it’s alright, I suppose, but, you know, it it is what you would expect it to be.  There’s an alligator in the sewer, and people have to go for it, and eat some people, and that’s about it. That’s about it.

Todd:  You know, I was getting shades of it’s alive with this one. Maybe because the baby ends up in the sewer by the end of it. But for some reason, It’s Alive was just a much better movie than this one. And but it it has I mean, it kinda comes from the same era. And if you was another movie I was getting shades of while I was watching this, and that was called Avalanche. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. Robert Forster was also in that movie. And just at this time, there were a lot of these disaster movies, like Avalanche and The Towering Inferno and Mhmm.  And then also these kind of, like, monster ish type movies where, you know, some natural occurrence we’re really concerned, as we are now, about the environmental impact of things and True. You know, nuclear waste making things grow big or dumping alligators down a sewer and then drug testing happening and the alligator eats the dead dogs that are being subjected to these drug testing, as it is in this movie, and then becomes really, really large and we have to hunt it Todd. And, oh, you know, man shouldn’t play with things he doesn’t understand. And It’s Alive had a similar bent to it, right? It was all about, the was it bad food or or chemicals and products and food materials or whatever that supposedly caused this baby to be a monster. So, I mean, it it all kinda falls along the same lines. And I don’t know if it’s also just because of the era it was in. All the movies also kind of have the same feel to them. Maybe just by today’s standards, they’re not high tension.  There’s not a lot of music, kind of a score behind it, just, you know, sort of pumping. And especially in this case, I just never felt like this alligator was such a big a threat as everybody in the film was making it out to be, you know?

Craig:  Yeah. Kinda like if they would’ve just left it alone. Yeah. Like, right? I mean, unless you unless you worked in the sewer, you’re probably gonna be okay.

Todd:  It’s quite true. The problem was they went down there to try to find it and coax it out. Right? And then it just ended up back in the sewer anyway, so Right. It’s but that’s kinda like saying, you know, what’s the big deal about Jaws? If you just don’t go in the water, you’re fine.

Craig:  So Right. True.

Todd:  I mean, I get that. And this movie tries to do something with it, but, Todd, it was just so boring Yeah. Most of the time.

Craig:  I mean, it is it it’s it’s a Jaws rip off, and and to say rip off is fair, but at the same time, Jaws was really successful. And so it makes sense that other people would try to capitalize on that success, and it’s virtually the same thing. You’ve got this natural predator who, for whatever reason, I mean, in Jaws, it just happens to be a really great big shark. In this movie, it’s an alligator, and they are, you know, vicious, carnivorous predators in their own environment. But here, you know, you take it out of its environment and you put it somewhere where it’s never supposed to have been and then yes, you expose it. You throw in that element of, you know, humans kind of messing with hormones or or whatever and and we probably really shouldn’t. I don’t know, you know, obviously like hormone therapy and stuff, there are good things about that. But it’s one of those kind of, you know, man playing Todd kind of things where we kind of bring it on ourselves.  I don’t know. I’m getting all philosophical. It’s just a big alligator in the sewer and it eats people.

Todd:  Well, maybe that’s part of the problem with this movie is it doesn’t even try to get philosophical like that. I mean, the movie is really about this this alligator that gets flushed down the toilet and 12 years later has grown to this massive size. And it gets tracked, sort of tracked back to this lab that’s performing experiments on dogs and, the Craig, like hormone treatments on dogs. And the guy who’s supplying the dogs to the lab is also disposing of the dogs from the lab, and he’s not disposing of them properly. Everything’s a little secret hush-hush. I’m not even sure why it has to be. It sounds like the therapies and everything that they’re doing are pretty normal and pretty typical, and the fact that they’re experimenting them on the dogs isn’t raising any red flags. And so I’m not sure, except to save money, maybe, why

Craig:  this I think that’s what it is. I think they’re trying to cut down on cost. But,

Todd:  but even that is really like harped on in the movie. You know, it’s like, it’s kind of like, okay. Well, now we figured out where it’s coming from. But let’s get the alligator kinda thing. And so it’s not like it’s alive or some of these where this kind of moral question about that is really coming back to as a theme in the film. It’s like you said, it just it just becomes a giant alligators movie.

Craig:  Yeah. Well, and that’s the thing, like, what they kinda try to make the pharmaceutical company seem very kind of like shady and nefarious, but what they’re doing really isn’t I mean, we’re still doing it today. They’re trying to do hormone therapy on animals like cattle to make them larger for consumerism. You know, the bigger the cow, the more meat you get. You know, like, it’s it’s not like they’re trying to raise an army of mutant cows that are gonna take over the world or anything. I don’t know. You’re right. It I think that on the one hand, it does kind of try to make this pharmaceutical company seem very corrupt.  And they are really, but what they’re doing doesn’t really warrant that level of corruption. So it’s just all kind of silly. I wanted to talk about the opening scene just because I thought it was kind of funny and that it it set up the and and I also have a question. So allow me to summarize. This opening scene opens in one of these, like, Florida style alligator parks, which, again, we still have, where they have, like, these in America, we have them. I don’t know. Maybe the rest of the world has

Todd:  Oh, Todd. No. Trust me.

Craig:  Has evolved.

Todd:  I’ve been to a I’ve been to a tiger park here in China, and I won’t that’s that’s a that’s a story for another day. That is a that was quite an experience.

Craig:  We may have to talk about that later. Definitely. Anyway, okay. So this little family goes to this alligator park, and they’ve got these alligator wranglers, you know, kinda like these Steve Irwin type guys who get in there with the alligators. And and they say at one point, the guy who’s doing the announcing says, you know, we promised you alligator wrestling or whatever. But the Wrangler, trips and is attacked, by one of the gators. And this little girl in the audience is watching this in horror as her parents are like, oh, it’s just part of the show. And she’s like, no.  No. It’s real. But they get the guy away. I mean, he’s hurt. You know, he he got bit in the leg, but, you know, they get him away. He he’ll probably be fine. Mhmm. I don’t think we do this anymore, but I do know that this was a thing back when we were young that they would sell baby alligators as pets

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  To children. So this young girl, Marissa, gets a baby alligator, and she names it Ramon, and I will refer to the alligator from this point forward as Ramon because I’m like, that’s hilarious.

Todd:  You gotta roll roll your r when you say that. Come on. Give him proper respect.

Craig:  Ramon.

Todd:  Ramon.

Craig:  Yeah. So she gets this little alligator, and she takes it home, and she puts it in a little terrarium, and it’s all cute, and she’s talking to it. And then, for no apparent reason, her dad comes home in a rampage and because he can’t find her, like, this is my question. What is his problem? Like he comes in the house, he’s freaking out. He can’t find her. So, like, they let their kid keep getting these pets, and then they just keep killing them because they’re irritated? Like, what?

Todd:  I didn’t get

Craig:  that either. Freedom.

Todd:  That was that was so cheap. I could not understand that at all. I mean, I guess the one thing you gotta say for this movie is it doesn’t take long to get to the point. The problem is Right.

Craig:  That’s true.

Todd:  Maybe it gets to the point a little too soon and doesn’t have much to go with afterwards.

Craig:  Maybe. So you get we get to watch this little baby alligator get, you know, like fly through the sewers and there are the the pipes and then land alive, of course, down in the sewers. And then it cuts to 12 years later. But, gosh, it was just such a funny set up scene to me and so random.

Todd:  Yeah. It wasn’t clever. Let’s just put it that way.

Craig:  No. It wasn’t clever. I mean, then later, we meet Marissa again, but nobody ever realizes that it’s Ramon. Gallipigator. And this one time, she’s like, oh, when I was little, my dad bought me an alligator, but it died and they had to flush it. That’s that’s the only connection. But it cuts to 12 years later, and we’ve got this cop, detective Madison. Now is that I wasn’t even paying attention.  Is this the gentleman that we’re Yes. Paying tribute to?

Todd:  This is yes. This is Robert for this is Robert Forster who we are paying tribute to today.

Craig:  Yeah. And I, I’ve I mean, he is recognizable, but nothing clicked for me. Like, I I yeah. He was a familiar face, but not one that I could specifically tie to anything. But he’s a nice looking guy. There’s a running joke that apparently he ad libs, you know, jokes about, and he did this in other movies that he was into, he’s got a receding hairline. And like there’s this recurring joke that people are always pointing out and mentioning his receding hairline and what he should do with it. Kind of funny.  Yeah. I guess. But anyway, so he’s in a pet store and he buys a puppy because somebody he had a dog, but somebody stole it. And the pet shop owner, who was far more familiar, but I didn’t look him up

Todd:  Oh, Todd. You’ve seen him in a 1,000 things, haven’t you? He was playing the same character. Right? He’s a similar Yeah.

Craig:  He’s goofy. He’s a little bit effeminate. He’s got kind of the he’s a bigger guy. He’s bald. He wears glasses. He’s got kind of a higher pitched voice. He’s been in a 1,000,000 things. It doesn’t matter.  But, anyway, he’s acting shady, and it becomes pretty apparent right from the beginning that he is the one who is stealing these dogs. Amidst all of that going on, detective Madison is also a cop, and he is called Todd, like, these sludge tanks, I guess. I don’t know if it’s, I I guess it must be part of the sewage system. And they have found a human arm, and they’ve talked about how recently they found some other human pieces. So they’re trying to figure it out. And they’ve also found this dead dog, and they have done investigation, and there’s only, like, 3 of these dogs registered to anybody in town and they found the owner, but the owners like, this looks just like my dog, like the exact same markings and everything, but my dog was little tiny and this dog’s like great big. Mhmm. So we know there’s yeah.  So there’s something going on. And then we see the pet shop guy stealing more dogs, and he’s selling them to this place called Slade Pharmaceuticals. As you already mentioned, not only is he supplying them, but also taking the dead ones and dumping them in the sewer. And when he goes to dump them in the sewer, he, like, throws them over this wall. But when he looks down there, he realizes that they haven’t actually gone into the water. They’ve just landed on this, like, ledge near the water. So he goes down there to kick them into the water, and while he’s down there, he gets eaten by rummo.

Todd:  Yeah. And thus begins this investigation because the body parts are kind of showing up in there. And of course, they find this guy. I guess, people are down in the sewers all the time to find all this stuff.

Craig:  I guess.

Todd:  And and our investigator gets called in and and he’s and this is the funny thing. So then this guy has a past as is very typical for these police procedural movies. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Which is kind of what this ends up being to its detriment, I think. Most of the movie becomes about him. And the problem is it’s not terribly interesting because he has a past. He had a partner who got killed on one of these assignments.  And for some reason, the press is really hounding him about it.

Craig:  Well, just this one guy, like, there’s just this one asshole reporter who, like, brings it up out of nowhere. Like Yeah. It’s o of nothing. Like

Todd:  Yeah. Why do you care?

Craig:  Yeah. It’s just, you know, let’s let’s poke at the elephant in the room or whatever. Like, it doesn’t have anything to do with the investigation. It apparently happened some time ago. You know, it’s not like it’s a big story. So I don’t even know why this I mean, I guess he’s just like a muckraker or whatever. But Yeah.

Todd:  And and it’s hard to understand why all of the reporters in this room, when they do their little press conference on what’s going on, are so are hounding the cops so much. I mean, who expects them to really know what’s going on this early in in the game? Uh-huh. Let alone blame them?

Craig:  Officer Madison, aren’t you the same David Madison who lost his partner in the Hotel Baldwin incident in Saint Louis?

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Believe in that case, your partner was stabbed to death, wasn’t he?

Todd:  He was shot.

Craig:  That’s right. I’m sorry.

Todd:  It’s like, what what are you saying? This guy has been chopping up bodies and putting them in the river and then discovering them and starting investigation about it?

Craig:  Well, it doesn’t even seem like he died mysteriously. Like, he just died on duty. Like Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, sadly, these things happen. I mean, that’s part of police work. Yeah. So I don’t really know what the big deal is.

Todd:  You don’t pound them about it. And then it becomes this thing where the he goes down into the sewer and, they’re looking for stuff. And he goes down with another

Craig:  He takes another guy with him. Like this Yeah.

Todd:  The red shirt guy.

Craig:  Yeah. The red shirt guy. Nobody nobody wants to go with him but this one, like, rookie, like, volunteers to go with him. And and I think that this rookie goes with him because he’s interested in his past, and he kinda wants to know more about it. But, you know, he’s not being a jerk about it. No. He he’s just, you know, kinda talking to him or whatever. And they they go down there to check it out, and they, like, the movie tries to build tension.  And that’s the other thing Todd. Like, I’ve got all these notes, like, other things happen, but they’re just not even worth mentioning because they’re just Yeah. Like some guy comes in with a fake bomb into the precinct, and, like, that’s supposed to be all tents and stuff, and it turns out it’s just a radio and, like,

Todd:  Again, apropos of nothing.

Craig:  Right. And then they’re down there in the sewer, and to build tension, Kelly is the rookie guy, he disappears. And Madison’s running around looking for him and shouting his name, and then he just reappears out of nowhere and gooses Madison like it was some Joke. Big joke or whatever. Yeah. Todd, I say whatever a lot. I listen to our I listen to our podcast and I’m like, stop saying that. You sound so stupid.

Todd:  Oh yeah. I keep all those Sorry. Sometimes I stick a few extra in just so you sound a little more stupid than me.

Craig:  I’m, like, I’m, like, a nineties teen girl

Todd:  or whatever. Like, it’s down to sewers and whatever. Gooses him and, like, whatever. And then they, like, run out whatever. And, like, he, like, shimmies up, like, whatever. I don’t even know. Yeah.

Craig:  So okay. Right. So Ramon you know. And we see, you know, there there’s some cute stuff, like, after Kelly Goose’s mess, and, like, they’re just standing there. And one of them happens to kind of swing their flashlight so that it shines behind them just briefly. And you see that the alligator is right behind them. They’re just, I don’t know, walking around

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And we get POV shots from the alligator, and it starts chasing them. And it chases them, and Madison starts to, like, shimmy up. What do you call those? A

Todd:  Bladder? It’s a bladder. Right?

Craig:  But, like yeah. It’s a manhole. Right?

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. He goes up there and and Kelly follows him, but Madison can’t get the manhole cover off. And so it’s tight in there, and so Kelly’s legs are still hanging out where Ramon can get them, and it does. And it grabs him and drags him off. So now, Madison has been present for the death of 2, quote unquote, partners. Yeah. Which just spurred that reporter on even more.

Todd:  Yeah. And so then the reporter is like, oh, what’s going on? And he decides to just go down in the sewer and look for himself, which is I don’t understand this part either. But he decides, I’m gonna go down in the sewer with my camera and investigate this for myself and see if there really is this mysterious alligator that he’s blaming this death on. So he does. He goes down to the sewer, and sure enough, the alligator eats him too. But the lucky thing is that his camera’s going off, like, you know, 10 times. And they do find the Todd, and they find his his camera, and they develop the film. And sure enough, they have indisputable proof that there is indeed a massive alligator in the sewer.  And I just felt at this point, like, the movie just kinda blew its wad right there at the beginning because I thought this reporter was gonna be the bane of his existence,

Craig:  like,

Todd:  you know, for basically half the movie and this was gonna be this huge thorn in his side. No, he gets offed right away and he ends up supplying the proof to everybody that there is indeed an alligator. So this whole thread of blaming this cop and teasing this cop ends about 30 minutes in. And the rest of the movie just is about, okay, now we all know there’s a giant alligator. Let’s go find it and get it. But the movie still tries to make half of the movie about this cop and about his relationship and how he is, and he gets kicked off the force because you know, in the midway through this investigation because he’s asking questions Todd the pharmaceutical company and the guy who runs it’s, you know, really important or something. And so he apparently just nudges the chief to knock him off the force. The chief says, you got too close.

Craig:  Mhmm. Which It’s out of my hand.

Todd:  I don’t know. It it all comes across as a little silly. Yeah. You know, quite honestly. And then he, in the meantime, has hooked up with this girl. The the girl is now a woman. The girl whose alligator got flushed down the toilet decided to become a reptile expert. Luckily, she’s still in the same town.  The town has a need for a reptile expert. And, it’s doing experiments and things or whatever. And he hooks up with her, and they form a little bit of a relationship as well. By the end of the movie, it becomes him and her trying to find the alligator while nobody else can.

Craig:  Oh, and that whole thing is so forced. That relationship is so forced. Bad. Todd, we’ll get to it. Like, and I can’t believe that we’re just we’re barely halfway through the movie. Because I’m reading, like, the things that happened next Todd him. Like, isn’t this the end? No. It’s smack in the middle.  Like, once everybody believes now, because everybody was making fun of him before for saying there was an alligator in the sewer, but now everybody believes. And so they send, like, a SWAT team down into the sewer, and they’re they just go down there with, like, pots and pans to make a bunch of noise. And the scientist, Marissa, is like, Yeah, As long as, you know, they keep moving and and making noise or whatever, they’ll flush the alligator out. The alligator will come out. And we see them doing this and we see that Ramon is on the move, but they fail to flush it out. But apparently, I guess because it’s been so disturbed in its habitat, Ramon then bursts out of the sewer drain onto the street, which I guess was my favorite part of the movie. Like it was the most exciting part. And it looked stupid and fake, but at least fun.  Like this giant alligator, like bursts out of the sewer through the sidewalk. Concrete. Yeah. Through all of this concrete onto this populated street where kids are playing and people are walking and it just kinda goes on this little rampage, and it bites a cop’s legs off, and, you know, at least it was exciting for a second.

Todd:  It’s a bunch of excuses to get people laying down on the ground where they’re easy prey for the alligator. I I don’t know if this is true, but I’ve heard that if you’re ever approached by an alligator, the best thing for you to do is just stay standing because apparently they can’t turn themselves sideways to bite you. I’m not sure if that’s actually true. But at least in this movie, it seemed like really, the only danger you were in with this alligator coming towards you is if you could do more than walk. And, you know, you were laying down on the ground for some reason while it’s coming at you. I’m still not convinced that this alligator was super fast. And it was just from here on out, now that it’s above ground, it’s this sort of magical alligator that can be where he needs to be at any given time. Well, even though he’s so massive, nobody can seem

Craig:  to find him. Enormous, and they can’t find him. Like, that doesn’t even make any sense. No. Like, get in a helicopter. Like, he’s it’s supposedly bigger than a car. If it’s really bigger than a car, it shouldn’t be that hard to find.

Todd:  Well, it’s still moving like an alligator. I mean, it’s not teleporting or anything. You know, it’s not like running like a dog.

Craig:  And they find its footprints and, like, make casts. And so I guess, you know, Marissa says he’s agitated and he’s had all of this exercise, and so he’s gonna need to rest. So He’s gonna go for water. Like, they track him to this lake or pond in the city and they bring in this Heavy, this Colonel Brock, who’s like a large wild game hunter or something. Like, he’s clearly supposed to be the equivalent of Quint from Jaws. But he’s not cool. He’s just a douchebag.

Todd:  He’s douchebag.

Craig:  And he hardly has any role at all. Yeah. I mean, he he shows up to brag about how great he is, and then he disappears for a while. And then he has one more scene where he finds the alligator in an alley and immediately gets eaten by it. Like, that’s just it. The alligator. Because it’s old.

Todd:  The alligator who almost like Jason style is just hiding in a pile of garbage at the end of the alley waiting for somebody to come out. It’s bad. At least it’s kinda fun, like, when everybody gets eaten, you see them kinda get eaten. I mean, the movie doesn’t do it all in shadow. It’s not super convincing, but at least there’s an animatronic alligator involved in some blood.

Craig:  There is. And when it when it works, it it works pretty well. You know, just like with Jaws, you know, they built this big animatronic creature, and just like with Jaws, it malfunctioned all the time. And so they were only able to use it partially and otherwise they just had to film an actual alligator on scaled set.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Which, you know, I was reading I was reading the trivia and it said, you know, they had to do that and it’s totally obvious. I didn’t think it was

Todd:  totally obvious. I think it was actually quite cool. Especially toward the end of it, we get this, you know, kind of the I I realize I’m jumping way ahead, but there’s the obligatory end scene where it’s just the alligator and the detective running through the sewer. And there’s this long tracking shot of the alligator stalking through the sewer, and it’s quite good.

Craig:  Yeah. That that stands out vividly in my memory. Yeah. I I like that.

Todd:  It’s because it’s a real alligator, and he’s moving. And, I maybe I’ve just never seen an alligator really move up on its legs like that before. But because of the scale, it looks really big and it seems to be moving just a little bit faster in a in a very determined way towards him. And that was that was cool.

Craig:  No. I I mean, it didn’t bother me at all. I I thought it looked natural. I mean, and and I suppose it was if it was an actual alligator. But, you know, at the same time, it is very like it’s stalking. Like, I don’t know. I’m no expert. I I supposedly alligators can move fast.  I mean, this alligator in this shot was not moving fast. It was just kind of ambling down the the sewer. But I didn’t it that it didn’t bother me because it seemed menacing just because it was so big.

Todd:  Yeah. Big and muscular.

Craig:  Right. Exactly. I didn’t need to see it racing down the sewer in order for it to be intimidating.

Todd:  My favorite bit in the whole movie. So so the alligator’s loose, but nobody can find it. This guy gets killed in the alley, but then it scurries off somehow. And then we get to a house where these kids are having a party.

Craig:  Oh my Todd. And we knew. We knew. So we had seen that the alligator had been hanging out in the swimming pool. This part is so funny because I don’t know where, but I have had seen just this scene somewhere else. I have no idea in what context, but I know that I had seen just this scene before. And it had to be on some kind of countdown of like craziest deaths or or something. I don’t know.  But it’s hilarious. It’s

Todd:  I thought for a minute it was Halloween, and I thought, oh, this is, like, perfect, like, Halloween movie for us. These kids are having, I guess, this costume party or maybe a themed birthday party at night. And a few of these kids are dressed up as pirates, and they come out of the house into the backyard and mom’s sort of calling after them like, hey, hey, come back. But they decide they’re gonna walk one of their friends the plank. They’re gonna have him walk the plank, which is the diving board that leads into the pool. And so we know that the alligator is in the pool, and I’m thinking, no. This isn’t actually gonna happen, is it? Because this movie up to now has been kinda TV movie. Right? I mean Yeah.  Very much. It’s TV movie tame and lame, but they walk this poor kid who’s blindfolded down down the plank, and then you see this alligator in the bottom. And about the same time the kid notices there’s an alligator in the bottom and starts to scream, he either slips or the other kids don’t notice and they push him. Something happens. Anyway, kid falls into the pool and right into the jaws of his alligator and gets eaten. This little, like

Craig:  There’s blood in the pool.

Todd:  Oh my god.

Craig:  I couldn’t believe

Todd:  It is

Craig:  a little tiny kid. I know. I was surprised well, I wasn’t surprised because I had seen this scene before, but I mean, it’s you don’t see that.

Todd:  No. You don’t. They usually they pull punches here, but no. Just toss the little kid to the alligator. That was great.

Craig:  Yeah. Meanwhile, you know, Marissa has studied the pituitary gland of that big dog from earlier. And so we find out that it’s they’ve been bombarding them with hormones and the alligator must have eaten the hormones and that’s why it made it so big. Okay. Great. Story. Whatever. And like you said, Madison gets kicked off the force because he’s pushing too hard on this pharmaceutical company, and the pharmaceutical guy obviously has ties.  He calls the mayor, and Madison gets kicked off the force. But before he leaves, he goes into the evidence room, I guess, and steals that fake bomb that I mentioned from earlier,

Todd:  and

Craig:  he also steals some real dynamite. So, like, I guess he’s planning on making a real bomb out of it.

Todd:  That’s convenient, isn’t it?

Craig:  Yeah. And not hugely illegal at all. No. Of course. But, Madison and Marissa go into the sewer with the sewer guy and they find the nest and Marissa says, If it can come back, it’ll come back. Somehow we find out that the old corporate guy Slade, from Slade Pharmaceuticals, is going to be throwing a wedding for his daughter. And the second that he mentions that, you know exactly what’s gonna happen. And I’m like, oh my Todd.  Thank god. There’s gonna be a huge alligator at this wedding. It’s gonna be amazing.

Todd:  I was thinking the

Craig:  same thing. I was like, at least

Todd:  I could slog through this movie to get to the alligator rampage at the wedding.

Craig:  Yes. Yes. And then they go off on this whole thing where Madison, like, I feel like they kind of try to make him a ladies man. Like he’s like flirting with Melissa, but his flirting is so bad. He’s like, let’s go to dinner. And she’s like, okay. He’s like, okay. But before we go, I’m going to need to know if you’re going to spend the night with me afterwards, because if you are, I’m going to have to like eat up or something.  Like, well, I might have, but since you just said that, gross, no. Like That’s

Todd:  not what she said.

Craig:  She’s like, yes.

Todd:  They don’t even make

Craig:  it to dinner. No. Hey, Jess.

Todd:  It’s so forced and bad.

Craig:  It is. It’s unnecessary. You don’t care. You know, they could’ve been friends.

Todd:  Yeah. Like, nobody cares. It’s he’s not that interesting. She’s not that interesting. They’re

Craig:  No. She’s really pretty. I mean, I get why he’s into her, but whatever. It does give him the story as they’re lying in poise coital bliss for him to tell the story of how his partner got killed. But again, it’s really not all that dramatic.

Clip:  I was looking at the guest book checking the license plate numbers. This guy comes up behind me, sticks this thing in the back of my neck, says he’s gonna blow my brains out. Took my gun, gave it to somebody else who was hiding. Made me lay on the desk face down. I heard yelling upstairs and the shots. Guy behind me ran, I couldn’t move. It’s like my legs were gone. When I finally turned around, Jerry was coming down the stairs.  He was dying.

Craig:  But it was later that he found out that the guy who stuck a gun in his back didn’t even really have a gun. Like, it was just his fingers or a marker or or something.

Todd:  And

Craig:  so that’s why he feels so guilty about it. But then that’s it. Like Yeah. The end of this backstory Yeah. It’s, what’s the point? Mhmm. Yeah. And then they go to dinner, and he’s just unnecessarily mean to her for no reason. Like like, she she says something like, I trust you or I see you.  And he’s like, woah. Back off. Don’t get so close so soon. And she’s like, okay. I’m gonna go home. He’s like, all right. Bye. Bye.  Like, this is not drama. This is just stupid. And it’s completely without any purpose or point because then just the next morning he goes and finds her at her house where she lives with her mother, and they make up and get busy in her childhood bed. Like

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  Stupid.

Todd:  Yeah. And then they just kind of, stand over a map for a while and decide that the alligator must be going downstream. And downstream leads right to the Slade mansion.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  There’s a scene where the cops find the the alligator in the water and, they’re in a boat and they’re shooting at it with like machine guns and stuff. It’s it’s still diving under the water and they fly their boat over it and the flips over, and then a bunch of them end up in the water. The other part of the boat, like, they have, explosives in their boat. Grenades. I guess Todd to try to explode the alligator or to try to get it out of the water by setting charges. This was Brock’s suggestion anyway earlier. And the dude, when he flips the boat, it detonates one of those and that explodes too. So we got all these kind of convoluted reasons for these high action scenes that really, like it’s also like the police officer earlier who crashes his car because the alligator’s in the middle of the road and he swerves.  It’s like he doesn’t just crash his car into another car. The car hits a parked car, completely flips over, everything explodes, and then he crawls out of it. Just doesn’t really ring true.

Craig:  No. That’s the problem with the action scenes. Like, they the writing is just bad. I mean, there there’s not, it doesn’t feel like a natural progression. It’s just like, okay it’s time for an action scene now. Yeah. Let’s do it. And they’re fine, you know, I can only imagine that like this boat scene, you know, probably costs some money and you got things exploding, you know, boats exploding and the alligator attacking, but, it doesn’t advance the plot in any way except for it’s just another alligator attack.  And either these cops are entirely inept or this is an indestructible alligator because there are like 5 or 6 guys shooting at it with a machine gun.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And if it were completely submerged, I could kind of buy, okay, maybe the water is causing the bullets to change trajectory or slowing them down, so it’s not hurting them, whatever. But it’s, you know, like they can see it, and it’s supposed to be 30 to 40 feet long. If they can’t hit that, what is, what is the point of having these guns? Like you may as well just stand on the shore and throw rocks at it.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And and so, you know, it it makes no difference. Again, it’s just an alligator attack scene, but, yes, it leads to it’s headed towards the sewers, but for some reason, it’s going to need to make a stop at the slave mansion.

Todd:  To get revenge upon its creator. Come on.

Craig:  I guess.

Todd:  This is beautiful.

Craig:  And attack this wedding.

Todd:  It’s like Frankenstein. It’s clever.

Craig:  Well, this scene alone is really worth it.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  But you could just go on YouTube and search for this scene. Like, that’s all that’s all you need to see. The alligator shows up and like, a dog, like, runs up and sees it, and then the dog turns her tail and runs away. And then the alligator just attacks. But the best part of it is just, they are just I don’t know how they’re doing it, but they’re just throwing people around. Like, you just see people flying through the air Yeah. In every direction.

Todd:  Well, it’s hilarious. Because apparently, the alligator is whipping its tail around as well as eating people. So that’s what’s supposed to be slapping people through the air. It’s really cool, actually. And and then, again, when it’s when it’s chomping down on people, it really is. So it’s fun to see. Again, the action is really poorly done outside of that. There’s a whole deal where the Slade has locked himself in the car and won’t let one of his underlings in, and yet the car doesn’t really move or go anywhere for about 5 minutes to give the alligator time to mow through the Craig.  So it can get and and have that that scene where it bites the guy as he’s trying to get into the car. And then it, like, bites the guy, eats the guy up in front of this of Slade in the car, and then uses his body and also his tail to just bash the car in, which is Smashed it entirely. Yeah. It was quite nice.

Craig:  Smashes it to the ground. And, you know, you see Slade’s, I don’t know, some appendage hanging out all bloody. So at least you know that the real bad guy got what was coming to him. That was kinda satisfying.

Todd:  It’s nice that the alligator, you know, knew knew which address to go to and how to take care of business, you know.

Craig:  Because I thought it was it was so funny. The the slayed guy had like gushed over his future son-in-law earlier, like Todd a ridiculous extent. Like he’s my right hand man. He’s my right hand man. Like, stop talking enough about this guy. And then I don’t know if you noticed, and this is super mean because it’s not nice to judge people on their appearances, but his daughter is ugly. Like, did you notice? Like, he’s marrying off his ugly daughter Jesus. To this guy that he had a big crush on, apparently.

Todd:  He just wanted to get closer to him, I think. Yeah. Well, he did have a weird scene earlier in the office that was very awkwardly staged where he came around the desk and sat, like, a foot away from him on the edge of the desk, but was basically towering over him.

Craig:  That was weird. Wasn’t it? With his legs wide open?

Todd:  I kinda thought, like, what’s gonna what’s gonna go on here?

Craig:  Yeah. It was suggestive. Like, that that was a power move. Like

Todd:  It was.

Craig:  I’m gonna sit right in front of you with my stuff right in your face. Undurling. Oh, man. Anyway, whatever.

Todd:  It’s hilarious.

Craig:  So Ramon goes back into the sewers, right?

Todd:  Yeah. Because that’s where he retreats to.

Craig:  And Madison and Marissa are there, and Madison goes down there by himself. Marissa never encounters, really, the alligator at all. I mean, I guess she kinda sees him in the river, but that’s as close as she ever gets to him. And Madison goes down there, and he’s gonna set this homemade bomb that he made. And he finds Ramon, and it’s already been established earlier that there are these methane pockets in the sewer, and they end up in one of these methane pockets. And Madison sets the bomb, and then he ascends a manhole that he’s gonna come out of. But just as he gets to it, a car rolls over it and is stuck behind a garbage truck. And it’s a funny kind of thing where Marissa is, like, trying to convince this woman to move, and she’s like, what? There’s a garbage truck.

Todd:  But what I don’t understand is how did Marissa know he was there under that manhole?

Craig:  Well, he said something about I’ll plot out which manhole I’m coming out of.

Todd:  He did? Oh, okay.

Craig:  He said something about it. I don’t know.

Todd:  So she ended up there.

Craig:  But it seemed it seemed like while he was down there, he was just kind of running around at random.

Todd:  So Yeah. It didn’t seem like there was a rhyme or reason to it, but I guess there was. He had his his explosive on him, and he said it, you know, to count down. And, he had dropped it down into the alligator’s mouth, I guess, or down at least into the sewer, below him and was just gonna pop out the manhole, but it got blocked. So, anyway, there’s this tension filled scene, and she runs in and eventually moves the car. And he climbs out just in the nick of time for the whole sewer to explode and the alligator to be definitively dead. And they stare down the manhole and go, well, that’s that. Like, they literally say that.  And then, at the end, the camera zooms down back into the sewer, and you see another little baby alligator pop out. Maybe in 12 more years, we’ll have another giant alligator to contend with.

Craig:  Yeah. Well I don’t know.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  It I mean, I for what it is, you know, there were these creature flicks around this time. You know, many of them inspired by the success of Jaws, and none of them ever captured what Spielberg was able to capture, for whatever reason. You know, I don’t even remember I think there was like Grizzly. Right? Like, wasn’t there a bear one?

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And there were some other ones Todd, and and this just followed suit. And it makes sense when there’s a popular formula, there are always going to be people out there who are gonna try to capitalize on that, and I get it. It’s not by any stretch of the imagination the worst movie we’ve ever watched. It was fine. The the acting wasn’t great. It wasn’t awful. It it the whole thing, aside from being a little bit more gory than TV movies would have been at the time, It felt very much like a made for TV prime time movie. Yeah.  But there’s nothing inherently wrong with that either. The story’s not great. The character I I don’t particularly care about any of the characters or their backstory. There’s there’s nothing to say, oh, well, at least there’s this.

Todd:  It’s just a cash in movie, and that’s a shame because it’s got some decent names behind it. I mean, the writer is John Sales. John Sales is Yeah. Another guy to come out of Corman’s shop. You know, he did Piranha. He wrote the screenplay for that. The Lady in Red, he did Battle Beyond the Stars, which was a childhood favorite of mine. After he did this, he was he was doing The Howling, Clan of the Cave Bear, 8 Men Out.  You know, he’s still writing.

Craig:  Well, and the director, Louis Teague, directed Cujo, which is excellent. And he did Cat’s Eye, which isn’t excellent, but I enjoyed a lot.

Todd:  Jewel of the Nile, which isn’t excellent, but we watched that a Todd, and that was big. Navy SEALs. He’s done a lot of great stuff. So it’s it’s it’s and and, again, the guy that we’re that we’re honoring here, Robert Forster, certainly fine in this movie. I mean, he’s doing the best with what he has. Yes. He just isn’t given anything. You know? But there’s there’s nothing wrong with his performance.  It just isn’t a great movie. It just really isn’t. It’s not scary. I mean, it’s just kinda fun to watch this alligator do its rampage, every now and then. And it doesn’t pull too many punches there. It eats a kid. That’s cool. We don’t see that that often.

Craig:  True. That that that scene is, memorable. That’s that’s true. And, you know, and and that’s the thing. There are a couple of memorable moments. I’ll remember that scene. I’ll remember the scene that we mentioned before of the alligator kind of tracking through the sewers. That looks cool.  And the alligator bursting out of the subway grate. It didn’t look real. And I think that what made that part satisfying for me is because there were so many people around Todd witness it and to react to it. Overall, I I wouldn’t watch it again. Todd doesn’t merit a second viewing. And aside from folks like you and me who just kinda try to get our hands on as much of this stuff as we possibly can, I wouldn’t recommend it? There are far better creature movies out there that you could watch.

Todd:  Yeah. Yeah. You can skip this one and just enjoy us making fun of it. That’s probably the best.

Craig:  Yeah.

Todd:  Well, thank you again for listening to another episode. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend. You can find us on Facebook and leave a comment there. Just search for 2 guys in a chainsaw. We also have a website out there. Leave a comment there as well. Give some requests. We do have a growing list of requests, and we do, hit those from time to time.  We also have some holidays coming up. We have Christmas and Thanksgiving, and we’re definitely looking for appropriate movies to do for there. So if you have some good holiday horror films, please give us a ring and, give us some ideas. Until next time. I’m Todd.

Craig:  And I’m Craig.

Todd:  With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.