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!
