Welcome to the 31 Days of Horror Redux, a month-long celebration of genre filmmaking. Last time around, I made the recommendations. This time, I will be watching 31 days of films that are completely new to me. I hope you will join me on this journey of discovery.
Day 5: Alligator, directed by Lewis Teague, and Humanoids from the Deep, directed by Barbara Peeters
There are two unwritten rules of form and taste in horror movies: You don’t kill kids, and you don’t kill dogs. Either risks alienating the audience and turning them against your film. As we know, however, the ‘80s were not exactly a bastion of form and taste. So of course, both of these creature features, both released in 1980, feature heaps of dead dogs and at least one dead kid.
In fact, the very first victim in Humanoids from the Deep is a child, and Alligator is premised on the effects of eating a mountain’s worth of furry friends. The other thing these two films have in common is the way they are so clearly cut from the Jaws cloth, though they take wildly divergent approaches to the basic idea. Alligator is much closer to Jaws in plot, while Humanoids from the Deep is much closer in structure, but the bones are there in both.
Teague’s film is about a city beset by a genetically modified alligator that stalks the sewers, an urban legend come to life. The Chief Brody of this film is Det. David Madison, played by a game Robert Forster, who has seen the creature, but because of a checkered past, no one believes him until it is too late. Michael V. Gazzo of The Godfather Part II fame plays the chief of police, and Robin Riker is the alligator expert and love interest.
The film is written by John Sayles, who may be the preeminent Jaws ripoff artist, which I say with affection. In addition to Alligator, Sayles also wrote the Roger Corman-produced 1978 Piranha, which is shamelessly, unabashedly Jaws in style, structure, and intent. More on Corman later. Sayles, who also wrote The Howling the year after this, would move on to prestige pictures later in his career, writing Ron Howard’s Apollo 13 and writing and directing my favorite baseball movie, Eight Men Out. I also have a ton of appreciation for Piranha. What I’m saying is Sayles is no slouch at the keyboard, and Alligator benefits immensely from his involvement.
By no means is Alligator a great film. The love story is shoehorned in and nonsensical. A lot of leg work is done to set up a plot about animal testing and growth hormones and corporate malfeasance, but none of it adds up to anything more than creating human villains we’re excited to see the alligator eat. Speaking of which, the movie’s greatest flaw is that it fails to learn the most important lesson from Jaws: the less we see the creature, the better.
Teague, who later directed the Stephen King adaptations Cujo and Cat’s Eye, does everything he can to put the alligator front and center as often as possible in the final two thirds of this movie. When the gator finally busts out of the sewer and onto the city streets, all is lost because the creature effect just isn’t that good. It’s so poor, in fact, that any time it kills someone, Teague plays the attack in a series of incomprehensible extreme closeups. Steven Spielberg left the camera on the surface and forced us to imagine the carnage below. Here, Teague would love to show us some carnage but is limited by budget.
Despite this, it’s still fun when the alligator attacks a wedding party, there is a lot of tension rung out of the idea of not being able to open a manhole cover, and the labyrinth of a sewer system is a wonderfully creepy setting for any horror sequence. Alligator is a good time and a fine addition to the post-Jaws creature feature canon.
So, what of the Corman-produced Humanoids from the Deep? Well, for starters, if I didn’t tell you Corman produced it, I think you could have guessed. The title, the poster, the creature effects, the gratuitous nudity – it all adds up to a New World Pictures production. I say that with no derision, only affection.
In this small seaside town, the locals are very excited to bring a new cannery to the area, while the scientists who work for the corporation promise advancements that will lead to bigger salmon in the surrounding waters. This will be accomplished by, you may have guessed, some fictional growth hormone, which has the side effect of producing super-intelligent, rapidly evolving fish people. These would be the titular humanoids from the deep.
Let’s pause and examine the connection here: two movies from the same year with vaguely similar plots set into motion largely by genetic testing, shady corporate machinations, and specifically growth hormones. Now, hormone additives in food have been around in the US since at least the 1950s, but one gets the impression that something must have been going in the news around this time that producers felt they could capitalize on. That’s what horror does best, right? It taps into the subconscious fears of the audience by making the figurative literal.
In this case, what we are literally dealing with is a horde of fish people who greatly resemble the Creature from the Black Lagoon, another obvious antecedent of this picture. Within the first 10 minutes (I checked the time stamp), these fish men have killed a child and a whole bunch of dogs. This leads to a misunderstanding in which a group of locals, led by Vic Morrow, accuse an indigenous man of killing the dogs. The indigenous man opposes the cannery, so they have other quarrels, as well.
I should note that Morrow appeared in just two more films after this before his tragic death in an accident on the set of Twilight Zone: The Movie.
The mutants eventually make their way onto the land and beginning killing the men and raping the women, which is less graphic than it sounds but more graphic than you might expect. It’s worth noting the scenes of nudity and violence toward women were insisted upon by Corman to ratchet up the exploitation bona fides of the movie, and they were filmed behind Peeters’ back and without telling most of the people involved in the picture. The first time many of them saw these scenes was at the premiere. Most were rightly angry.
Anyway, wouldn’t you know it: The fish people’s chosen day of insurrection just happens to coincide with the town festival. This means plenty of people in the streets and an opportunity for maximum carnage and mayhem. And, in fairness to Peeters, who tried to disown the film over her clash with Corman, this sequence is truly bonkers in the best way.
Let’s bring Alligator and Piranha back into the discussion here. All three of these films feature a climax in which the creature or creatures disrupt a major event. In Humanoids, it’s the town festival; in Alligator, it’s the wedding; and in Piranha, it’s the opening of a new lake resort. In many ways, this makes perfect structural sense. Save your big set piece action-horror sequence for the end.
This is what sets Jaws apart from so many of its imitators. For the entire film, all of the characters stress the importance of the Fourth of July, and the mayor’s only mission in life is to ensure the beaches are open on the Fourth. The beaches are open, and people die. In any other movie, this would be the climax, but remarkably, Jaws still has 40 minutes left, and they’re the best 40 minutes of the movie. It’s a classic case of “You sing the words but don’t know what they mean.” Jaws is about people. Its imitators are about scary creatures.
At the end of the day, Humanoids from the Deep is fine. It is certainly not the worst picture Corman ever produced. But, if you’re looking for your creature feature fix, Alligator is the superior film here. Of course, Jaws and even Piranha are superior to that, but go with what your heart tells you.
No comments:
Post a Comment