Alligator is a film based on a modern myth. Modern myths are a very popular cult species: there are films about flying saucers, about the Loch Ness monster, Bermuda Triangle, all that sort of thing, although as yet there hasn't been a movie about the 'poodle in the microwave'. Here, John Sayles and Lewis Teague offer us the oft-told story of the pet baby alligator flushed down the toilet, which takes up residence in the sewer and grows to be 100 feet long.
Sayles and Teague also collaborated on The Lady in Red (1979), a woman's gangster film produced by Julie Corman. The Lady in Red is a somewhat classier affair, but Alligator is extremely entertaining. Sayles is, of course, also a director of some repute, who writes scripts such as Alligator so he can direct films he wants to do: The Return of the Secaucus Seven, Matewan, Brother from Another Planet.
Alligator is reminiscent of the giant ant film Them! and Larry Cohen's It's Alive! There's also a reference to The Third Man. Alligator is bloodthirsty but very moral: the monster is generally politically correct in its choice of victims. Obviously the film owes a substantial debt to Jaws, but the alligator itself - created by the Stansbury Alligator Company and operated by Kevin Blackton and Tom Goeken - is the superior beast.
Look out for Dean Jagger - a character actor who specialised in benign old fellers like the general in White Christmas - in the role of the evil capitalist.