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

Contract on Cherry Street (1977)

          Notwithstanding a two-year hiatus from showbiz, legendary entertainer Frank Sinatra spent most of the ’70s on music, letting his Oscar-winning movie career go fallow. That was probably wise, given the diminishing returns of such projects as the forgettable comedy Dirty Dingus Magee (1970). By the time Sinatra resumed acting for this telefilm, however, the wiry swinger of yesteryear had been supplanted by a lethargic, middle-aged fellow wearing an iffy gray toupee. At least Sinatra’s performance here in Contract on Cherry Street not as distractingly halfhearted as his drab turn in the 1980 theatrical feature The First Deadly Sin, which marked the final starring role of his acting career.
          A grim and slow-moving melodrama about cops working outside the law to gain the upper hand on criminals, Contract features Sinatra as Deputy Inspector Frank Hovannes, the boss of an elite NYPD organized-crime unit. After seeing one too many crooks escape justice by bribing officials, Frank and his people embrace a dangerous idea—why not murder a crook, frame another crook for the hit, and start a war in which bad guys kill each other? Naturally, this is easier said than done, so the cops face obstacles ranging from sketchy informants to an unstable member of their own team. Additionally, the criminals are more clever than the cops anticipated, so the more the cops stir up trouble, the more they risk exposing their own scheme.
          There’s a nasty little potboiler buried inside this storyline, and someone like Sidney Lumet could have made a crackerjack thriller by collapsing the events down to a shorter running time (Contract runs two and half hours) while giving the leading character more emotional shading. Unfortunately, bloat and shapelessness keep Contract mired in mediocrity, and some of the ego-stroking indulgences associated with Sinatra’s participation hurt the movie. It’s one thing for Sinatra to have his own glamour lighting during closeups. It’s another to burden the movie with various scenes of the protagonist’s wife all but begging him for sex. (Sinatra was 62 when the picture was broadcast.)

          For all its flaws, however, Contract on Cherry Street is basically watchable. Extensive New York location photography lends a sense of place, and some of the supporting performances are strong. Reliable players Martin Balsam, Harry Guardino, and Henry Silva play cops, as does fresh-faced Michael Nouri, although Steve Inwood steals the movie as a twitchy informant/junkie. Having said that, his gritty work is probably more suited to the imaginary Lumet-directed version than this so-so slog.

Contract on Cherry Street: FUNKY

The Animals (1970)

Soul-sucking dreck expunged from the bowels of the American film industry, The Animals is a crude Western about a woman seeking revenge against men who violated her. (A year after this movie was loosed upon an unsuspecting world, the moderately superior Raquel Welch vehicle Hannie Caulder took the same basic story into the mainstream.) Michele Carey stars as Alice McAndrew, a schoolteacher traveling by wagon across the sun-baked American wilderness. Unfortunately, one of her fellow passengers is heartless criminal Pudge Elliot (Keenan Wynn), who is being transferred between prisons. Pudge’s henchmen attack the wagon and kill everyone aboard except Alice. The criminals then strip her, tie her to stakes on the ground, and rape her. Inexplicably, a soulful Apache named Chatto (Henry Silva) watches all this happen from a nearby hiding place. Then, after the thugs leave Alice for dead, Chatto transports her to a cave and nurses her back to health, eventually teaching her to shoot and helping her track down the rapists so she can murder them. Obviously, none of this has any credibility. Carey looks glamorous throughout the movie, New York native Silva’s casting as an Indian is ridiculous, and the idea that Alice falls in love with her caretaker is absurd. How warmly can she feel toward a man who watched her assault instead of intervening? Excepting Wynn’s reliable villainy, the acting in The Animals is as bad as the storytelling, and the score—by Rupert Holmes, later the purveyor of ’70s soft-rock staple “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”—is an atrocity dominated by screeching acid-rock guitars. Making matters worse, The Animals is widely available in a choppy UK cut bearing the alternate title Five Savage Men, and the UK cut suffers from distracting fade-out transitions and prudish optical adjustments during the nastiest scenes. Still, anything that hides even part of this terrible movie from human view should be considered merciful.

The Animals: SQUARE

Man and Boy (1971)

          After scoring in the ’60s as a comedian and TV star, Bill Cosby tried expanding his popularity to movies in the early ’70s, beginning with this Western about a former cavalryman who embarks on a dangerous quest with his young son. Perhaps because the movie cast Cosby in a purely dramatic role, Man and Boy failed to connect with audiences, but it’s actually a fairly strong piece of work, blending life lessons with violent action and rich characterizations. As the title suggests, the story is shot through with themes of male identity, and specifically African-American male identity; throughout the movie, the protagonist uses deeds instead of words to convey notions of duty, honor, integrity, and loyalty in a world that expects black men to behave like second-class citizens. As directed by journeyman TV helmer E.W. Swwckhamer, Man and Boy makes the most of a thin budget by employing vivid locations and a lively supporting cast. Reliable players including Yaphet Kotto, Dub Taylor, and Henry Silva enliven small roles, while young George Spell, who plays the protagonist’s son, effectively conveys the experience of a youth discovering the troubling complexities of the adult world.

         In the first act, we meet Caleb Revers (Cosby), a proud man struggling to make his small farm viable, despite meager resources and pressure from racist neighbors. Through a fortunate circumstance, Caleb comes into possession of a fine horse, which aggravates whites who resent blacks becoming property owners. One day, because of carelessness on the part of Caleb’s son, Billy (Spell), the horse is stolen, so Caleb takes Billy on a trek to recover the animal. Most of the film depicts their adventures out on the frontier. An encounter with an old enemy of Caleb’s turns violent, forcing Billy to grapple with the idea of standing up to thugs, and a visit with a lonely widow who comes on to Caleb stretches Billy’s understanding of the way men and women relate to each other. During the picture’s final act, the travelers cross paths with a black outlaw named Lee Christmas (Douglas Turner Ward), giving Billy a harsh view of life outside the law.

          In some ways, Man and Boy is obvious and schematic, as if the filmmakers made a list of lessons they wanted George to experience, then contrived a narrative situation for each lesson. And, indeed, the storytelling hits a few bumps as the storytellers move too conveniently from one episode to the next. But because screenwriters Harry Essex and Oscar Saul avoid easy sentimental payoffs, the picture feels relatively credible and tough all the way through. Cosby’s performance helps create the desired illusion. Imbuing his portrayal with equal parts idealism and world-weariness, Cosby creates a portrait of a man with one foot in the cold truths of everyday reality and another foot in the empowering possibilities of dreams. Regrettably, Cosby’s next attempts at drama netted similarly middling results, though he’s excellent in the TV movie To All My Friends on Shore (1972) and intriguing in the theatrical action picture Hickey & Boggs (also 1972), so he mostly ditched serious acting once he returned to comedy in the mid-’70s. It would have been interesting to see how his dramatic chops evolved.

Man and Boy: GROOVY