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The new episode of the Black Sheep video series looks back at the nature run amok sequel Alligator II: The Mutation
This episode of The Black Sheep was Written and Narrated by Andrew Hatfield, Edited by Brandon Nally, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
The creature feature just isn’t explored enough anymore. Jaws was a monster of a success story and ended up having three sequels on its own and had a slew of imitators. 1980 would give us, in my humble opinion, one of the better ones with Alligator starring Robert Forster. It was successful too, making 6 and a half million on a 1.5-million-dollar budget. I know that’s not crazy money, but it was a hit and had a fun pedigree with it that remains very popular today. Its one of the movies that keeps selling well with new and old fans and so it recently got put on 4K. There weren’t as many creature flicks through the rest of the decade but a resurgence happened at the tail end. 1989 alone gave us the twin films Leviathan and Deep Star Six. And then the ’80s turned to the ’90s and we were given Alligator 2: The Mutation (watch it HERE).
I’m not gonna try and sugar coat it guys. This is one of the weaker movies I’ve had to go back and give a fair shake to. That’s not to say its irredeemable by any means but its just not going to be for everybody. There are some really fun aspects to it which we will get to but it also has a lot holding it back. I think the big thing here is that if you grew up watching this on a Saturday at 3pm on UPN 13 or TBS or something then it’s going to hold a special place in your heart. If this wasn’t one of your movies as a kid then that’s fine. You just have to go in with slightly lowered expectations and an open mind. While the first movie is anchored by tough guy Robert Forster, written by Oscar nominated actor, writer, director John Sayles, and directed by Cujo and Cats Eye helmer Lewis Teague, part two has, well it has kind of the B squad.
While the first one was produced and distributed by an independent company called Group 1 Films, this was made by another company and distributed for a quick buck by New Line Cinema. The director was John Hess, who had a short career that also included directing the late ’80s Corey Haim horror Watchers. Writing duties fell to Curt Allen, who had also written, ironically, a different Robert Forster vehicle called Walking the Edge in 1985. Alligator 2 would be his final film and sadly, with the dialogue, I get it. It’s not completely his fault as the actors are either kinda goofy to begin with or deliver their given lines goofy and 9 times out of 10, it just doesn’t gel. This is supposed to be a killer alligator flick, not an action comedy.
The one exception to this is when the lines are said by the movie’s strange choice for a lead actor. Joseph Bologna had a hell of a career including getting an Oscar nod for adapted screenplay pretty early into his work. His homage to Sid Cesar in the wonderful Peter O’Toole comedy My Favorite Year is a standout in a film full of standout performances and I’ll never forgive myself if I don’t mention his role in Transylvania 6-5000. Any time you CAN bring up that movie you are legally obligated to. One thing that he wasn’t ever linked to was tough guy cops and so to see him here, especially at the end brandishing a rocket launcher, is a thing of beauty that also makes my brain hurt.
The rest of the cast reads more like what you would expect. One of the great ladies of genre, Dee Wallace plays his wife who is also a scientist who does sciency stuff. Her lab looks like something in a 1950s Ed Wood movie and is stupidly charming. The guy who causes all the pain in the movie by helping to bury toxic waste in the sewer and is also a shady land developer is played by Steve Railsback. Railsback was of course Charles Manson in Helter Skelter, the lead in another great Peter O’Toole movie The Stunt Man, and in one of my favorite Ozploitation flicks Turkey Shoot in addition to loads of other horror classics like Lifeforce and non-horror like, oh I don’t know, let’s say Nukie. Finally, we have Richard Lynch in Louisiana-face as the leader of a band of gator hunters that includes Kane Hodder who was actually a stuntman for the first Alligator movie. Lynch passed in 2012 but had a very memorable face and fun roles in a few later Rob Zombie movies but also tons of great TV roles in the ’70s and ’80s and one-offs like Invasion USA and the legally distinct non-copyright-infringing Freddy Krueger-like character in Bad Dreams from 1988.
The movie starts with some villainous jerks dumping toxic waste at the behest of a shady land developer, here played by Steve Railsback. Sometimes you get Chuds, sometimes you get Toxic Avengers, but here we get a mutated alligator. Two fishermen wander into the reeds and we have the classic monster kill where we don’t see the full creature, just the aftermath of blood and body parts. The first one takes place in Chicago, but this is some sort of LA suburb based on all the trees. But then again, that doesn’t stop horror movies from shooting in LA and claiming to be somewhere else. Detective David Hodges wakes up to an empty house but a birthday video from his wife and kid. His nickname is Solo Lobo which is never explained and his son never appears in the movie again either but this is just a set up to give him higher stakes against the threat.
The humor mostly falls flat here except when it comes to Bologna. The man has great silent humor era facial expressions and reactions while also being the only one here with any kind of delivery or timing. He starts investigating the missing brothers that we saw munched in the beginning and the coroner find some amino acids and compounds that they speak of like we are just supposed to know what they mean. He also mentions a few homeless people have gone missing and there is a direct passage between where the brothers went missing and the sewer where the homeless have vanished. Some more poking and prodding leads to the belief that this could be a crocodile or alligator. David’s wife Christine even believes there is precedent for this from New York apparently. They don’t mention the first movie’s incident in Chicago, so maybe they aren’t in the same universe.
To that end though, this movie feels almost like the movie that the characters in a different movie are watching or almost like Scream and Stab. A lot of this movie is a retread of the first one and this movie feels like that actually happened in universe and this is the movie they made to capitalize on the event. Solo Lobo runs his theory by the chief, played by Brock Peters, and then goes to see the mayor. The mayor looked really familiar and he is played by Bill Daily who did 131 episodes of I Dream Of Jeanie and 140 episodes of The Bob Newhart Show. He is, by far, the worst actor in this movie, which is a shame because he has a great comedy background but I suppose just wasn’t made to be serious. The Mayor is hanging out in the club owned by land developer and professional snake Vinnie Brown and it’s glorious. It’s a pro wrestling, fine dining, adult club and is amazing. The Mayor tries to arrest Hodges, which doesn’t make any sense, and he tricks the rookie cop into getting handcuffed in the bathroom. I know I said the Mayor is the worst actor here but I kindly rescind that statement. This guy is not great, he does have one of the greatest lines ever. “Well, didn’t anyone ever tell you you have a great backyard?”
Lobo runs into the local gang who also hate Vinnie but Hodges tries to tell them about the true danger out here. We see one of the homeless guys get eaten and another thrown around while the Mayor’s daughter avoids the advances of Vinnie. The chief gives Lobo a final chance and assigns him the rookie, who promptly goes to hook up with the Mayor’s daughter. Lobo shows up and breaks them up before taking him into the sewer to confirm the gator. He tells him to take a shower before heading to the sewer because, you know, he won’t need one after. Christine does more science and confirms it has to be a large gator. The Mayor and Vinnie Brown call in Hawk Hawkins and his crew of Cajun stereotypes to hunt the creature, but Hodges and Harmon have already run into it. They flee into the sewer and jump on the other side of a wall which, I shit you not, is the same side of the wall used as the other. It’s this type of low budget charm that really grew on me for this flick. Nothing works, including a grenade, and they barely escape.
The Hunters of course get slaughtered except for Richard Lynch and one other but they do confirm the toxic waste. The Chief and Lobo cancel the carnival, but Vinnie runs the chief off the road and kills him. The deaths aren’t particularly bloody but there’s a whole lot of them, something a movie like this needs. The carnival goes on as planned and the alligator attacks like you’d expect it to. It injures a few people and ends up killing Vinnie after he kills the Mayor for having a conscience about killing the Chief. Weird. Richard Lynch gets eaten, like you expected him to make it, and the new partner cops go after it in the sewer entrance. The alligator already had explosives inside of it so they are going to explode those explosives with more explosives. As you do. Harmon misses with his RPG, solidifying his status as worst cop on the force, but Lobo hits him right in the JAWS… see what I did there. He might as well say, “Smile, you son of a bitch,” but instead says, “Come to papa,” which tracks for this movie. They exit to the park with chants of Solo Lobo and we get a very ’90s credits song and quip by our hero.
Look, I absolutely hated this movie the first time I watched it, but it’s grown on me. It’s a great mix of cheesy and so bad its good that deserves a second chance. It’s free on YouTube for Pete’s sake and while that doesn’t exactly scream quality, its no cost to you to give it a chance. If you dig it, pick up the Scream Factory Blu-ray to keep the physical media train going. Its not as good as the first, but few sequels are. It’s a dumb, fun creature flick that they just don’t make anymore and deserves some love.
A couple of the previous episodes of The Black Sheep can be seen below. To see more, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
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