Alligator
Alligator is a 1980 film from the USA, directed by Lewis Teague, running 87 minutes. reelscum files it under natural horror.
- Year
- 1980 · 1980s films
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 87 min
- Director
- Lewis Teague
- Updated
- 29 Oct 2026
- Obscurity
- known (21/100)
Defined in the glossary: Natural horror
Sayles again. A flushed pet in the sewers, and it knows how silly that is.
A flushed baby alligator grows to monstrous size in the sewers on a diet of discarded lab animals, and John Sayles's script knows exactly how silly that is and plays it for wit rather than shock. Robert Forster is the cop nobody believes, and the film has real affection for the formula it is riffing on.
Sayles slips in genuine class satire, the creature eats its way up the social ladder toward the rich who created it, and Lewis Teague directs the mayhem with a light touch. It is the smartest of the Jaws-on-land pictures after Piranha.
Funny, well made, and quietly pointed.
Trailer
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Legal options in USA
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