Alligator 2: The Mutation (1991)

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Excellent but underrated film

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

At the end of Alligator (1980) we see another gator flushed down the toilet and therefore a sequel is teased. 11yrs later the world got one and it's a bit of a mess.Essentially the same movie, just with a weaker cast and somehow someway worse creature effects! Another oversized gator appears to lay waste to the city and it takes one renegade maverick cop to take it on.This time it's been enhanced by chemical waste dumped into the sewers yet this doesn't seem to have changed the gator at all. If that is the excuse at to why it's so big then why does it appear smaller than the one in the first movie? Poor creature feature and a miserable excuse for a sequel.The Good: Not so much The Bad: Creature effects, how 11yrs later can they be worse? No consistency in gator size again Terrible endingThings I Learnt From This Movie:If a decade before a giant alligator had run rampant through a city and claimed several lives it wouldn't be a big deal and wouldn't have made the news at all Upon request police detectives can be issued explosives and heavy armaments

...but I'm not saying they'll be worth it.I had been on the lookout for ALLIGATOR II for some years now. I just had to see it. I mean, the first one is just so much fun - and really one of the few older killer-croc type of films done right - and this sequel carrying the MUTATION subtitle, plus starring both Steve Railsback and Richard Lynch, I mean... Can it honestly be that bad?Straight up, I can't really call it a bad movie. It's not badly put together, and further more, it has all the necessary elements to even make it a B-movie "in the tradition of JAWS" type of flick. We got a killer alligator loose in some city pond, eating people left and right who are unknowingly invading its territory (which extends to the sewers again). There's the protagonist detective (Joseph Bologna, a rather forgettable actor) running around, aware of the problem but believed by no-one. Dee Wallace (yipii!) plays his wife, and even with her supporting role she proves again that she's the best actress in the whole film. We have Railsback playing a greedy, corrupt man with power who plans a carnival near the pond which he refuses to cancel. And when he's informed of the alligator problem, he tries to deal with it in a hush-hush way, calling in Richard Lynch as a bounty hunter, together with Kane Hodder as his brother, no less. And finally, our killer alligator, who sadly enough doesn't look "mutated" at all, but at least it kind of looks the same as the one in the first film.So what went wrong with this film? All the ingredients really are present. The script even tries to inject some of the same type of black humor the first one had, so at least the filmmakers tried to make a sequel in the same spirit. It even has something that looks like a decent climax (involving the pond and a helicopter and all). But the problem is: None of it works. This film supposedly has everything, and even tries pretty hard, but it all just doesn't feel right. It just doesn't come together and click like the first film did. Hard to explain it, really. Plus, the alligator gets a fair amount of screen time, but it never does anything you want to see it do. People should be getting munched or at least ripped to shreds, but I can't recall any memorable death scenes. I remember Kane Hodder getting stuck in its mouth, but that's about it.When compared to the first ALLIGATOR from 1980, this sequel really is "subpar", for reasons I can't even pinpoint exactly. But as a stand-alone (as it has little ties with the first one, aside some minor bits of alligator footage being re-used) killer-alligator flick (from the 90's - and we all know what that means), it's just about moderately entertaining. Watch it if you can't resist it, just like I did. Otherwise, skip it and save yourself the inevitable disappointment.

This is not a sequel to the first movie. Well, only in name; but it has no character or storyline connections what so ever.An alligator is killing people and animals in a sewer and surrounding area. Up to the local police force to take him out. Sounds familiar? The story has a slightly more complicated touch this time. Some guy wants to open a theme park near the lake where the alligator was spotted. This means trouble. We soon find out that the guy isn't exactly playing his game by the book...Let's move to the alligator. It looks fake. I haven't seen that many crocodile (or in this case alligator) attack movies, but even I could see that it wasn't a real gator. No CGI either. In the first movie, it was somewhat menacing and threatening, but in this sequel it just doesn't scare enough.The attack scenes are still predictable. They removed the jaws-like tune from the prequel, making it even more dull.The acting is not bad nor good. It works for this type of film.What I don't understand is how the sewers sometimes look like a swamp. Lots of reed and stuff. It's confusing to say the least.Watch this only if you have got nothing better to do. And there is a LOT of stuff that's better then watching this piece of trash.You'd be better of watching the first Alligator again.In conclusion, I give this movie 4 out of 10 stars, and that's probably too nice of me.

The film begins with the local villain Vincent 'Vinnie' Brown (Steve Railsback) personally overseeing the illegal dumping of toxic waste into the city sewers that is produced by his company 'Future Chemicals'. The same night two men named Pedro (Ramon Estevez) and Victor (Thomas Rosales Jr.) are fishing in a river, next to a sewer outlet. Something watches them from afar, hidden among the reeds. They are attacked and pulled underwater, a severed leg slowly sinks to the bottom. The next morning the two men are reported missing, Detective David Hodges (Joseph Bologna) takes a special interest as he personally knows the family. Also that morning the severed leg is found where Pedro and Victor were last seen. Hodges thinks the two incidents may be connected. The local pathologist (Buckley Norris) suggests that the mans leg was severed by a large animal, and that traces of saliva were found on the bite marks on the leg. He says he has sent it over to the university so Christine Hodges (Dee Wallace-Stone), who just happens to be Hodges wife, by a complete coincidence of course you understand. While discussing the case over dinner that night Mr. and Mrs. Hodges jump to various implausible conclusions and decide that a giant alligator is running around the sewers. Chief Clarence Speed (Brock Peters) doesn't believe him, but says he can continue investigating the case and let him know what he comes up with. Inconviently, Brown is planning a carnival to promote his crooked beach-side property dealings that are currently in the balance. Hodges tries to talk with Brown and get him to cancel the carnival, Brown refuses and leans on the city's mayor, Anderson (Bill Daily) to have Hodges arrested and taken off the case. The alligator kills an old wino called Oatis, and his friend Henry (Carmen Filpi) barely manages to escape. But Henry does escape and reports it to the authorities, Hodges now has proof. Brown then calls in Hawk Hawkins (Richard Lynch) and his posse of men to track down the alligator and kill it. Meanwhile Hodges isn't going to give up that easily and along with a rookie cop named Rich Harmon (Woody brown), the mayor's rather attractive daughter Sheri Anderson (Holly Gagnier) and just so it's a family affair his wife Christine, sets about killing the mutated alligator themselves, and try to prevent a bloodbath at the carnival which just happens to be right next to a large lake.Directed by Jon Hess I absolutely hated this film. I challenge anyone to name anything good about this film. Hess fails to inject any humour, pace, momentum or excitement into the film. He directs it like a low-budget T.V. film, everything about this film says the filmmakers just didn't care about the finished product. The ending is awful, the alligator just walks through the carnival and people run away, and that's it until Hodges arrives. The script by Curt Allen is boring, slow, predictable and is full of padding that really didn't need to be there. It does however have a couple of mildly amusing lines of dialogue in it, like when the slimy Brown is talking to the mayor's pretty young daughter and says "your a child stick with me and I'll make you a woman", he knows how to charm the ladies! Henry lovingly reflects on his mates death by the alligator and says "Oatis was my friend, he didn't deserve to be a tooth pick!". Those are two of the better written scenes as well. I thought Micheal Douglas lookalike Bologna made for a reasonably likable hero, even if he was to old to be running around with a rocket launcher! Railsback reaches a career low here and is criminally underused throughout. The special effects are awful, the alligator itself isn't in the film that much and when you see how bad and unconvincing the puppet effects are you'll understand why, there's no blood, gore, violence, nudity or bad language either. Can someone tell me what the point of this film existing is? Words can barely describe how much I hate this film, Jon Hess and Curt Allen if your reading this you owe me 90 minutes of my life back! Avoid at all costs, and if you do decide to watch it just don't say you weren't warned!