The Great Alligator is one of the many animal-attack movies that followed the success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. Roger Ebert hated Alligator (1980), so I can only assume he would have also despised The Great Alligator. As the adage goes, one’s man’s trash is another man’s treasure. The movie is so bad it’s good. I mean, with dialogue such as, “It’s wonderful! Come on in, even if you shit on yourself no one’s going to see it in here!” you can gauge the caliber of this movie. I won’t go as far as to say The Great Alligator is as good as another Italian animal-attack movie Killer Crocodile, but it’s almost as fun.

The horror genre is constantly evolving. Every movie looks to up the level of carnage, the creativity of the kills, and create unexpected turns in its sinister storytelling. Animal attack movies are no different. Hence, movies such as Ghost and the Darkness and Piranha 2.

Some movies simply rely on adapting the unbelievably true stories such as The Ghost and the Darkness, in which two man-eating lions terrorizes the workers during the building of the Uganda-Mombasa Railway in East Africa in 1898. While others look to redesign, and weaponize nature’s killers as seem in Piranha II: The Spawning. James Cameron gave the notorious flesh-eating fish wings that allowed them to attack tourists on land.

The Great Alligator opens with photographer Daniel Nessel (played by Claudio Cassinelli) and model Sheena (Geneve Hutton) arriving to Paradise House – a resort in the remote orient having its grand opening. The hotel’s owner Joshua (Mel Ferrer) tasks Daniel and Sheena to market the beauty of the region and exotic wildlife the resort has to offer. Paradise House has even established a relationship with the native Kuma tribe – going as far as to employ them as well as their ceremonial dances for the guests’ entertainment. However, that peace is short lived when the tribe skips work believing they have angered their river god Kruna for helping the outsiders. When Sheena goes missing and her boat is found in shambles, Daniel, and Joshua’s assistant Alice Brandt (Barbara Bach) go in search of Sheena and answers, only to find a giant, voracious alligator stalking the riverbanks.

The plot of The Great Alligator takes a while to get where it’s going (about half its runtime). However, once the movie introduces Father Johnathan, it locks into the campiness you’d expect from a Jaws rip-off. For a movie where the antagonist is a giant reptile, I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of a plot point that involves the Kuma tribe that complicates the characters’ predicament.

The portrayal of the Kuma tribe is sure to be problematic by today’s standards, but the mystic element of their belief is an intriguing one. Especially after you see Father Johnathan believing in the river god Kruna when his original mission was to convert the Kuma tribe. The chef’s crocodile headdress and armor costume are quite elaborate, which makes the rest of the costumes look pathetic by comparison. Most of the other warriors wear a paper mask over their mouths with drawings of sharp teeth.

Speaking of low production value, the alligator attack underwater set pieces are cheaply crafted. We’re talking about a plastic crocodile colliding with either a toy river ferry or Hot Wheels cargo van. The low shot is meant to force perspective, but it also shows all the flaws. It’s laugh-out-loud hysterical. Similarly, when the resort burns down, the cheap miniature model is on full display as it’s engulfed by the (small) flames. That said, all these low-budget solutions add to the B-movie’s charm. Not to mention the movie’s upbeat, percussive theme that I’m sure was meant to be an attempt to recreate an iconic theme like Jaws.

The Great Alligator is thin on plot, characters, and an ending, but it’s all in the name of mind-numbing entertainment. What the movie does have in spades are it’s over the top extras, whether it’s their overly exaggerated dance moves or absurd lines of dialogue. One guest on the party boat is shown various wildlife on the riverbanks. He’s had too much to drink and fires his hunting rifle at a snake. The party doesn’t really die down as he announces to Joshua that he hates snakes. Rather than apologize, the man simply raises his glass of champagne and says cheers and goes back to the party. Who lets a guest bring a rifle onto a party boat much less serves alcohol to said guest after firing it? If that sounds like a good time, then you might be the target audience for The Great Alligator.

Rating: 3/5.

The Great Alligator is now available at Severin (on sale) on both Blu-ray and 2-Disc 4K UHD with exclusive slipcover.

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The writer of this piece is: Laurence Almalvez
Laurence tweets from @IL1511

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