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

Dirty O’Neil (1974)

Filled with equal measures of sleazy sexual content and unpleasant violence, Dirty O’Neil offers the equivalent of two atrocious movies for the price of one. Exploring the lurid life of a small-town beat cop named Jimmy O’Neil (Morgan Paull), the picture devotes much of its energy to depicting the way Jimmy uses his badge to get laid. He exchanges protection for sex with the waitress who lives next door, cajoles suspects into carnal situations while he’s on duty, nabs quickies from compliant prostitutes, and nails his boss’ voluptuous wife while he’s supposed to be on patrol. Yet the other half of the movie features straight-up police action, complete with gore and nastiness—a victim gets shot in the face, a thug gets taken down by a fork jabbed into his crotch, and so on. The tonal shifts between the sex scenes and the violent scenes are enough to induce whiplash, especially when a horrific rape is intercut with a jokey bedroom romp. Writer and co-director Leon Capetanos, who subsequently helped write such credible comedy movies as Greased Lightning (1977) and Moscow on the Hudson (1984), clearly wasn’t at his best while making this project, and one can only presume that B-movie stalwart Lewis Teague got a co-directing credit because he was brought in to juice the material Capetonis had acquired. Leading man Paull, perhaps best known as the robot hunter who gets killed at the beginning of Blade Runner (1982), is completely miscast for the role of a swinging stud, thanks to his everyman face and stately bearing. In fact, it’s embarrassing to hear him intone idiotic voiceover lines like this one: “A cop is usually underpaid, overworked, and misunderstood, but he should never be horny.” (Dirty O’Neil features the kind of unfunny sex humor one usually encounters in porno flicks.) Aside from the morbid fascination of watching a movie that runs off the rails right from the beginning, about the only appeal that Dirty O’Neil possesses is an amazing amount of female nudity. The women in Jimmy’s life have terrific bodies, and they’re not shy about displaying their physical gifts. However, it’s difficult to recommend Dirty O’Neil simply for its eye-candy quotient because the movie’s sexploitation elements are juxtaposed with so much mean-spirited ugliness.

Dirty O’Neil: LAME

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