October Horror Challenge 2022 #31: "Alligator II"

It took them eleven years to make this sequel to the original "Alligator" movie. In this second film in the series, a police detective teams up with a Cajun hunter to fight a mutated alligator that has taken up residence in the city's sewers. I hate it when that happens.

This movie pays lip service toward having an environmentalist message to it, since the mutant alligator grows to huge size after eating the experimental animals discarded by Future chemical corporation. Coming from the era where kids were fed on a steady diet of Captain Planet and the Planeteers (a hippie-dippy cartoon with "save the earth" environmentalist themes that ruled the early 90s) we were ripe for messages such as this in our movies. Of course, fed on a steady diet of toxic growth hormones and other tainted chemicals, the alligator grows to enormous proportions and decides to eat its way through the city. No one believes the sightings at first, just like in the first movie (have we learned anything in the ensuing 11 years since the first movie? No, the answer is no) so the alligator racks up an impressive body count before anyone decides to try and stop him. Look, I get that it's hard to believe that a giant mutant alligator is killing people in your city, but when you continue to refuse to believe it's happening until like 495876678484 people are dead, it starts to stretch credibility a little.

This movie feels more like a remake of the original than like a sequel. Remember the old chant "second verse, same as the first, only a little bit louder and a little bit worse"? That's this movie. It doesn't even wait to give us some exposition, the very first scene has the alligator chomping on some hapless victims who are unfortunate enough to be traipsing around its lair. Next we meet the cop who is going to be the main character of the movie. He is a lone wolf who doesn't like working with people and he doesn't have much of a likeable personality, yelling at and fighting with his boss who refuses to believe there's a threat and cancel the big prty that's going to take place at the town lake this weekend. Why do the mayors and cops in these movies always refuse to believe that something is wrong and refuse to close the beaches or cancel the big party or take ANY action until a ton of people are dead? The movie would be ten minutes long if everyone listened to the cop and his wife, who is an expert from the local university. By the time the Cajun hunter character shows up things have gotten way out of hand and all this mess could have been avoided if someone had listened to the experts. Jerks. This movie again isn't perfect, but it's not a bad little creature feature if that's what you're in the mood for.