Alligator

Alligator is a 1980 American independent comedy horror film directed by Lewis Teague and written by John Sayles. It stars Robert Forster, Robin Riker and Michael V. Gazzo. It also includes an appearance by actress Sue Lyon in her last screen role. Set in Chicago, the film follows a police officer and a reptile expert who track an enormous, ravenous man-eating alligator flushed down the toilet years earlier, that is attacking residents after escaping from the city's sewers. The film received praise from critics for its intentional satirizing of genre clichés. A direct-to-video sequel was released in 1991, entitled Alligator II: The Mutation. Despite the title, Alligator II shared no characters or actors with the original. A tabletop game based on Alligator was distributed by the Ideal Toy Company in 1980. Plot In 1968, a teenage girl purchases a baby American alligator while on vacation with her family at a tourist trap in Florida. When the family returns home to Chicago, the girl's surly, animal-phobic father promptly flushes it down the toilet and into the city's sewers. The baby alligator survives by feeding on the discarded carcasses of animals used in illegal experimentation and dumped into the sewers. These animals had been used as test subjects for an experimental growth formula intended to increase agricultural livestock meat production. However, the project was abandoned because while the formula had the desired effect of making the animals larger than normal, it had the unwanted side effect of massively increasing the animals' metabolism, causing them to develop an insatiable appetite. During the 12 years spanning 1968 and 1980, the baby alligator bioaccumulates concentrated amounts of this formula from feeding on these carcasses, causing it to mutate and grow into a perpetually ravenous monster resembling a Deinosuchus-Purussaurus hybrid with an almost-impenetrable hide.