I Love It When Cops Are Hunting Animals Instead of People, Like in Alligator (1980)

Reader: I officially became a homeowner for the first time this week! I am very excited, but I don’t bring that up so that you can congratulate me or shower me with gifts, although you can do that if you’d like.

I bring that up because I’m going to be spending this holiday weekend—and, let’s be real, the rest of this month probably—furnishing and decorating my new condo. And part of that decorating process will include framing and hanging an original one-sheet poster for none other than Alligator.

Mind you, I acquired this poster before I had seen Alligator, which probably sounds rather odd. But a few years ago, my friend Evan was having a fire sale on a stack of old one-sheet movie posters from the 70s and 80s that she had acquired, and I got a whole bunch of them for such a good price that I could’ve resold them or given them away and felt fine about it. Besides, Alligator was written by John Sayles, a writer/director I really like, so how bad could it be? (I also acquired a one-sheet poster for The Howling, another Sayles script, but I had seen that a couple times before and I consider it to be the second-best werewolf movie of all time.)¹

Turns out Sayles is pretty good at screenwriting, because Alligator rules. It rules for several reasons.² But the main one, in my mind, is the legendary Robert Forster (R.I.P.).

You see, Forster plays your classic grizzled cop in Alligator. On a first impression, he’s everything you want in a police protagonist. Wikipedia’s plot summary calls him “world-weary,” and that pretty much fits. This is also around the time Forster was starting to go bald, which almost feels like a creative choice within the world of the film, though I’m sure it was just God’s Plan.

But Forster’s cop character has another essential ingredient: a checkered past. Man, I love a checkered past. In this case, Forster’s character botched a case in St. Louis and wound up getting his partner killed, so now he’s got this dubious reputation and nobody wants to be his partner.³ (Truth be told, I can’t blame them.)

This character building by Sayles is more essential than usual, though. Because Robert Forster isn’t hunting a man. He’s hunting an alligator.

Again, there are several reasons why this rules. As I’ve written about before, it’s fun to watch animal horror movies because you can pretty easily justify rooting for the animal. (Alligators are already very cool, but the alligator in Alligator elicits greater sympathy because it was flushed down into the sewers as a baby and then it mutated into a giant alligator, so it’s not its fault, as is the case with all animals, mutant or not.)⁴ Also, it’s very funny to me that this alligator is over 30 feet long and yet it’s very good at playing hide and seek with the Chicago Police Department.

All of those things are very fun. But the reason why Alligator really works is because Forster plays it straight. There’s no real intentional comedy here other than the occasional riff—we’re meant to take this reptile hunt seriously. That’s why the grizzled demeanor, the suspicious backstory, all of that stuff is essential. We buy in because they buy in. Sayles knew.⁵

I’m gonna go frame my posters now. Please don’t flush your live pets down the toilet. (Especially if they’re aquatic creatures.)

Alligator is available on Shudder and AMC+, and it’s available to rent elsewhere.

1. Along with Alligator and The Howling, I acquired posters for It’s Alive, Southern Comfort, When a Stranger Calls, and Vice Squad. There’s a decent chance I cover all of these films in the newsletter eventually.

2. I have to also mention that this film takes place in Chicago, one of my favorite American settings for a film.

3. Of course it was St. Louis. This is a Chicago movie after all.

4. I couldn’t help but think about Lionfish while watching this movie. I actually wrote about Lionfish years ago and how they’re an invasive species in the Gulf of Mexico because, same as here, people just got tired of them and dumped them.

5. The guy who started his career by writing about killer piranhas and a killer alligator and a werewolf wound up nominated for Best Screenplay at the Oscars. Twice.