1980 Week: Alligator

          A highly enjoyable creature feature that revels in its own derivative nature and that occasionally feels like a real movie instead of a drive-in schlockfest, Alligator was one of the three above-average monster flicks that John Sayles penned during his breakout period, when he alternated between gun-for-hire gigs and early directorial efforts. Like Piranha (1978) and The Howling (1981), this movie conveys a strong sense of self-awareness, often simultaneously perpetuating horror-cinema clichés and winking at them. If nothing else, Alligator is almost certainly the best movie that anyone could have made on the basis of a ridiculous urban myth. The myth in question involves the notion that baby alligators adopted as pets survive in sewers after being flushed away by owners who discard the animals, growing to gigantic size beneath city streets.

          Sayles’ fanciful script adds a sci-fi flourish to this premise, tracking the lifespan of a particular baby alligator who survives by consuming animal carcasses that are illegally dumped from a laboratory conducting experiments on how to genetically increase the size of animals. Thus, once the titular creature begins his inevitable rampage, he’s a 37-foot mutant with a nasty disposition and a super-tough hide. Borrowing more than a few tropes from Jaws (1975), Sayles contrives an opponent who at first glance seems ill-equipped for defeating a gigantic monster—disgraced and unlucky policeman David Madison (Robert Forster). Once the alligator begins eating people in Chicago, David investigates and actually sees the alligator, reporting the amazing discovery to his superiors and receiving only disbelief and ridicule in return. Undaunted, David seeks help from a scientific expert, just as Sheriff Brody does in Jaws, so he teams up with reptile researcher Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker). Adding a bit of pathos to the mix, it turns out Robin owned the monstrous alligator when she was a little girl, and she was helpless to stop her parents from flushing the critter down the shitter. And later, just like in Jaws, concerned officials hire a grizzled hunter, Colonel Brock (Henry Silva), to wipe out the monster.

          Yes, it’s all very by-the-numbers, and some of the FX shots used to convey the scale of the monster are questionable. But as directed by the capable editor-turned-filmmaker Lewis Teague, who previously collaborated with Sayles on the potent crime picture The Lady in Red (1979), Alligator hums along nicely, bouncing from enjoyably creepy sewer scenes in which the monster is barely seen to outrageous above-ground sequences featuring the giant gator chomping on people. Forster grounds the piece with an appealingly grumpy characterization, and Sayles ensures that gentle sight gags and verbal humor complement the bloodshed. An almost completely unrelated sequel, Alligator II: The Mutation, was released in 1991 to universal scorn.

Alligator: FUNKY

1980 Week: Battle Beyond the Stars

          Roger Corman’s most successful attempt at riding the coattails of Star Wars (1977), this somewhat enjoyable space adventure represents an important juncture in several cinematic careers. It was the last of several projects that John Sayles wrote for Corman, because Sayles graduated to working for bigger producers in addition to writing and directing his own independent films. Perhaps more significantly, Battle Beyond the Stars was the first big FX job for James Cameron, who was just a handful of years away from directing his first proper feature, The Terminator (1984). Both men contributed strong elements to Battle Beyond the Stars, notably Sayles’ dry wit and Cameron’s visual ingenuity, but that shouldn’t give anyone the impression that Battle Beyond the Stars is a good movie. Quite to the contrary, it’s typical Corman junk, rushed and silly, but it has better production values than one might expect, and the combination of a familiar plot and a lively cast generate some interest.
          After all, the movie is a shameless sci-fi riff on The Magnificent Seven (1960), which in turn was a remake of the Japanese classic Seven Samurai (1954), so the underlying narrative is rock-solid even if the campy execution is not.

          Battle Beyond the Stars revolves around farmers who live on the planet Akir and are terrorized by an interstellar villain named Sador (John Saxon). The farmers send one of their own, naïve young Shad (Richard Thomas), into space so he can hire mercenaries. Eventually, Shad gathers a crew including Gelt (Robert Vaughn), an assassin hiding from outer-space authorities; Saint-Exmin (Sybil Danning), a Valkyrie seeking battlefield glory; Space Cowboy (George Peppard), an intergalactic trucker with a grudge against Sador; and others, including the predictable coterie of anthropomorphized robots. Hiring Magnificent Seven veteran Vaughn accentuates the connection to the earlier film, as does James Horner’s rousing score, which emulates the spirit of Elmer Bernstein’s famous Magnificent Seven music.

          As should be apparent by now, very little in Battle Beyond the Stars is even remotely original, and the movie’s recycled quality is as problematic as the episodic story structure. Making matters worse is the all-over-the-map acting. Peppard gives an amiable turn as the wisecracking antihero and Vaughn is suitably icy as the killer seeking redemption, but Danning is amateurish and Saxon operates on moustache-twirling autopilot. (In Danning’s defense, the voluptuous actress contributes some of the most spectacular cleavage ever seen outside of a Russ Meyer movie.) Even the effects are a mixed bag. While some design elements are interesting, Corman cuts far too many corners, so battle scenes that should be epic end up feeling anticlimactic. Plus, the movie falls victim to the usual sci-fi foible of too many goofy-sounding names and silly-looking aliens. Still, Battle Beyond the Stars has enough colorful elements to merit a casual viewing, especially for space-opera junkies.

Battle Beyond the Stars: FUNKY

The Lady in Red (1979)

          One of the strongest entries in producer Roger Corman’s seemingly endless cycle of Depression-era crime films, The Lady in Red builds an intriguing story around the woman who accompanied famed ’30s gangster John Dillinger to the movies the night he was executed by federal agents. Written by John Sayles, who began his career crafting whip-smart scripts that elevated potentially exploitive Corman projects into the realm of quasi-respectability, The Lady in Red is, of all things, a politically driven character study with a feminist bent.

          The story begins on a small farm, where Polly Franklin (Pamela Sue Martin) dreams idly about becoming a dancer in Hollywood movies. This doesn’t sit well with her harsh, pious father. Driving into town one day, Polly is grabbed by a gang of criminals and used as a human shield during a violent getaway. Suddenly charged with excitement, she lets go of her inhibitions and enjoys a tryst with a handsome older man. Returning home that night a changed woman, Polly rebels against her father’s abuse and flees for a new life. So begins an odyssey in which Polly is lied to and used by men, jealously attacked by vicious women, and befriended by the few kind females she encounters in the big, cruel world. Polly ends up in jail after an act of workplace defiance, and her only choice for securing early release is to accept work as a prostitute. This puts her into the orbit of assorted big-time criminals.

          Yet by the time Polly meets John Dillinger (Robert Conrad), she’s actually come out on the other side of her lawless years and built an honest life of hard work and meager paychecks. The kicker, of course, is that she never realizes her new lover is America’s Most Wanted; he presents a fake identity and she’s learned not to ask too many questions about people. Alas, her romantic redemption is endangered by fate, because Polly’s friend and former madam, Anna (Louise Fletcher), discovers Dillinger’s identity and rats him out.

          The Lady in Red is an epic compared to other Corman ’70s productions, simply because it covers so much time and traverses so many locations. Yet Sayles’ tough screenplay keeps the story close to the central theme of Polly’s sociopolitical awakening—although her weapons of choice are her body and, eventually, a machine gun, Polly is as rich as any of the characters in Sayles’ more overtly political films. This thematic content is heady stuff for a quickie period drama filled with sex scenes and shootouts, but the way Sayles inserts meaningful content proves the genius of Corman’s approach at its apex—so long as filmmakers delivered the B-movie goods on budget and on schedule, Corman was happy to let them transform drive-in flicks into “real” movies.

          Lewis Teague, a former film editor who marked his second feature-length directorial assignment with this project, calls on his old cutting-room skills to give the movie more zip than one might expect—his detail shots of clothing and objects and surfaces lend credibility and texture. However, one should not extrapolate from all of this praise that The Lady in Red is great cinema; it’s merely a fine example of ambitious people capitalizing on the potentialities of a humble project. Even the actors seem imbued with a sense of purpose given the strong storytelling, because Martin puts her lean, pouty sexiness to good use—she’s a long way from the G-rated fluff of her Nancy Drew TV series—and the normally stilted Conrad, of The Wild, Wild West fame, is charmingly loose. Costar Fletcher, sporting a thick Eastern European accent, gives an effectively dimensional portrayal as a no-bullshit survivor.

The Lady in Red: GROOVY