Alligator

We needed a break while waiting to see if Waldo was going to survive his wounds suffered to him by the Goose Lord and his gang. Luckily, I found an outdoor Italian restaurant that was kangaroo friendly. Edwige, my kangaroo companion from my misadventures in North America, had eggplant parmesan. The Revenging Manta, the ninja vigilante of downtown Orlando, had a bowl of Italian wedding soup. I had the baked ziti in case you were wondering. We polished it all off with some coffee and tiramisu.

— To be continued. 

Sometimes I get deja vu when it comes to blogging about movies. For instance, I could have sworn I covered 1980’s Alligator frome director John Sayles. I live in Florida. I’ve seen alligators in my backyard. They’re not cute. They’re not friendly. They’re hideous monsters that will take your arm off and not think twice about it. Alligator is a monster movie featuring an alligator five times the size of a normal alligator! And it eats people, lots of people. What more do you need from a movie?

The movie begins with a family visiting Florida and attending an alligator wrestling match. One of the wrestlers then gets mauled by the gator, but it’s all in good fun. A young girl’s parents buy her a baby alligator to take home with her. They go back to Chicago, but her dad flushes the baby gator down the toilet a few days later. Now, you’re not supposed to flush baby alligators down the toilet because then they end up in the sewers and, naturally, these reptiles eventually eat the sewer maintenance workers.

Turns out there’s an evil corporation experimenting on dogs. They’re using growth hormones to make them huge, but I guess they kill the animals when they become too unruly. What do they do with the carcasses? They throw them away in the sewer. And guess what’s been snacking on them. After the body parts of some drain technicians are discovered, the police are brought in and we’re introduced to a jaded Detective Madison (Robert Forster). He lost his last partner during a robbery and he has a bad reputation on the force as a partner killer. He persuades one of the rookie officers to explore the sewers with him and the giant alligator promptly eats the rookie. Madison wakes up in the hospital later on and the nurse tells him that he was found ranting about a giant alligator when he climbed out of a manhole in broad daylight.

Madison then seeks out the foremost expert on alligators in the area, a beautiful herpetologist named Dr. Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker). Turns out she was the little girl from the beginning of the film that got her alligator flushed down the toilet. The giant gator eventually bursts through the pavement and goes on the prowl through Chicago for some fresh meat. He bites the leg off of a police officer responding to the scene. At a pool party, some kids dressed as pirates force their friend to walk the plank, but when the kid hits the pool water, he’s gator dinner.

The authorities don’t know what to do so they call in a big game hunter named Colonel Brock (Henry Silva). Now we’ve got Henry Silva in this movie and all bets are off. He knows every gator mating call and carries a huge rifle, but that doesn’t stop him from getting devoured by the giant alligator. Later on, the giant alligator crashes the wedding being hosted by the crooked CEO of the growth hormone company. The gator crushes his limousine with its tail. It’s left to Detective Madison to face down this gator once and for all in an explosive finale. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I’ve got a chocolate gator that needs to be devoured. 

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, episode 284, episode 441, episode 442, episode 443, episode 444, episode 450, episode 477, episode 491, episode 492, episode 493, episode 495, episode 496, episode 545, episode 546, episode 547, episode 548, episode 549, episode 575, episode 596, episode 597, episode 598, episode 599, episode 642, episode 643, episode 644, and episode 645) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.