Review: Alligator (1980)

One thing I have pushed for this year and last with my horror-movie-a-day tradition in October is to primarily watch movies I hadn't seen before and write reviews on them - a goal I have been fairly successful with.  But in doing so, I started missing out on several of my favorites and, more importantly, I didn't get the chance to recommend those beloved horror movies to the (beloved) people that read them.  So tonight's movie was an opportunity to address that.

For 1980's Alligator is amongst my favorite horror movies.  It's a real gem of a film, giving character actors like Robert Forster and Robin Riker the opportunity to play the lead while lampshading several famous critiques of this brand of creature feature.  It even goes out of its way to add extra plot points that one would think would've come up already in this particular genre.

This is a smart film.  People act like human beings (never a given in horror movies where we often get, at best, a singular trait for each of the characters), most of the decisions are fairly rational outside of the villains, and the story progresses in a fairly believable way.  Having this level of competence after watching movies like Tentacles or The Food of the Gods - even if I did enjoy the latter of those - is a balm of the soul.

Do we really need a plot summary?  If so: Building on the urban legend of giant alligators in the sewers after being flushed down the drain, Alligator follows Detective David Madison (Forster) as he deals with two investigations.  The first involves people's pets disappearing and, if they are found, the pets having grown much larger than they should have in a normal time.  The second involves people disappearing in the sewer systems under Chicago, with their remains eventually coming out from the same sewer exit as the oversized animals.  Seems our alligator has been feeding on test experiments dumped into the sewer and has somewhat mutated itself.

Now, to go into the genius of the script: it allows the audience to figure out the connection well before our characters do.  Madison starts to piece it together after meeting with herpetologist Dr. Marisa Kendall (Riker), and the movie doesn't waste time revealing who is responsible for both the pet kidnappings and the giant alligator (tying those two plot threads together nicely).  At that point it is off to the races as they try to stop the alligator from its killing spree.

Riker and Forster play off each very well throughout the movie, and while the early scenes aren't bad, the movie takes off once the two start working together.  There's also some dry humor throughout - including a particularly well done running gag.

The effects for this movie are also fairly strong.  While some of it has aged poorly - what wouldn't after 45 years? - the practical work rings truer than the CGI of many later films.  The centerpiece 'animal runs amok' scene still works all these years later because of the effort put into the practical effect.

If I were to critique it, I would say the direction - outside of one particular scene that scared me something good as a child - is pretty pedestrian.  Nothing mindbogglingly bad, but nothing of note outside that one scene.  There's also a character (Thomas Kemp, played by Bart Braverman) that seems to be missing a scene or two.  He very much comes across as having an agenda against Madison, but it feels underexplored.

All that said, I recommend this movie to everyone.  It has just the right level of everything - humor, gore, story, scariness - without going overboard.

8 out of 10

Published Oct 21, 2026