A low-budget gem from the Golden Age of Exploitation, Alligator is yet another "homage" to Jaws (1975) that, just like the original Piranha(1978/trailer) — which also owes its inspiration to Spielberg’s shark film — comes from the prolific and creative pen of John Sayles. Sayles, prior to becoming the respected filmmaker of serious little people films like Lianna (1983/trailer) Passion Fish (1992/trailer) and Lone Star (1996/trailer), was the scribe behind such popular grindhouse films as the previously mentioned Piranha, the enjoyable The Lady in Red (1979/trailer), the hilariously bad Battle Beyond the Stars (1980/trailer) and the classic The Howling (1981/trailer). For Alligator, he was assisted by the lesser skills of Frank Ray Perilli, whose own pedigree of fine Golden Age of Drive-In Trash includes The Doberman Gang (1972/trailer), Mansion of the Doomed (1976/trailer) and Zolton: Hound of Dracula (1978/trailer). Aided by Lewis Teague, a director with a staid and comfortable hand for low budget actioners that followed his early exploitation years with a long career of bad television before falling off the face of the earth, the final product delivered is an entertaining, witty and quick crowd-pleaser. The basic premise is taken from the classic urban legend of alligators living in the sewers of NYC (see Scopes for more on the original legend) and augmented it in dimension by having the gator mutate to a monstrous size due to a steady diet of illegally dumped lab animals pumped full of growth hormone. Alligator begins with a short, wry interlude of a family watching a backwoods alligator show turns bloody when one gator chomps on a leg of a handler. Despite this short scene of carnage, young Marissa (Leslie Brown) convinces her parents to buy her a baby gator. A short time later, back in the big city, daddy flushes "Ramon" down the pot. Fast forward 12 years and we now meet Dt. David Madison (Robert Forster, looking good and able to laugh about his emerging male-pattern baldness, which he had done away with by the time Quentin Tarantino rejuvenated his unjustly dead career with Jackie Brown (1997/trailer)*). Not only are local pets disappearing with great regularity, but human body parts keep floating up in the local sewage treatment plant. Madison takes a tour of the sewers with a rookie with more balls than brains and becomes persona-non-grata when he comes up alone claiming that his partner has become alligator food — at least until the camera of the alligator’s next victim shows up, complete with close-ups the attacking alligatoridae. The hunt is on, but Ramon is a hard catch: instead of crawling into their hands, he breaks up through the mid-town sidewalk and, after chomping on a policeman, first disappears into what looks to be Westlake in MacArther Park (Los Angeles) and then takes refuge under the beach balls afloat in background pools. (Which leads up to one fab scene that totally disregards the mainstream Hollywood rule of not killing children.) Madison and his boss Chief Clark (Michael V. Gazzo) pull in the leading expert of the field Dr. Marisa Kendall — she obviously studied hard in the 12 years since her dad flushed Ramon — for assistance, but when Madison steps on a few toes too many while following up the growth-hormone angle, he gets pulled from the case and replaced by the great white hunter Col. Brock (played hilariously tongue-in-cheek by the legendary Henry Silva). Brock doesn't last long, so Madison and Marisa decide to take things in their own hands — but not before, in an act of sardonic poetic justice, Ramon crashes the garden wedding party of the industrialist behind the hormone-injected dogs and munches on everyone that deserves to be munched on... In the end the plot of Alligator, as a whole, offers nothing new and is extremely predictable, but the filmmakers themselves are fully aware of this and thus purposely inject the well-worn proceedings with enough verve and wit to make the old chestnuts both entertaining and enjoyable. Likewise, although the special effects were hardly even top of the line when the film was made, they do have something endearing about them. Oddly enough, it took 11 years before a sequel was regurgitated in 1991. Everything that can be praised in the first film is not to be found in Alligator II: The Mutation, a film that is as unmemorable as Alligator is not.
*Isn’t it about time Tarantino does the same with Bradford Dillman?
Of all the Peter Lorre/Sydney Greenstreet films, this is undoubtedly one of the worst, if not the worst of them all. But then, much like in the indefinitely better Casablanca (1942/trailer) and The Maltese Falcon (1941/trailer) — and unlike the later films Three Strangers(1946/trailer) and The Verdict(1946) — this film is much less a movie tailored towards the two character actors than it is simply another film in which they both appear. (In fact, Brenda Marshall, just a few years from more or less ending her career to become the volatile but beautiful appendage at the side of William Holden, is listed in the credits before both Greenstreet and Lorre. Odd, since her part is completely superfluous and she does little but stand around and look pretty.)
The true star of the film is George Raft, and like in most of his films he is hardly a magnetic personality and delivers a forgettable performance. Background to Danger could be taken as a good example of Raft’s legendary inability to choose decent scripts — amongst other classics he turned down were High Sierra (1941/trailer) and the previously mentioned The Maltese Falcon — but, in truth, he was embroiled in a fight with Warner’s at the time and was seldom offered the “good guy” roles he so wanted. This, his last film for the company before he bought himself out of the contract, was probably the best they wanted to offer him.
Director Raoul Walsch, an experienced man whose career went back to being an assistant director to D.W. Griffith in the racist masterpiece The Birth of A Nation (1915/trailer) and includes such classics as White Heat (1949/trailer), High Sierra and They Drive By Night (1940/trailer) does a fluid, competent directorial job, but excepting one exciting car chase, the movie remains a snooze.
Background to Danger is based on Eric Ambler’s novel Uncommon Danger, one of many novels by the author to be filmed — many of which became exciting and entertaining gems, including Jean Negulesco’s The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), Roy Ward Baker’s first film The October Man (1947), 1964’s Topkapi (trailer) and Journey Into Fear (1942), one of the many films developed by Orson Welles and then taken away and finished by someone else (in this case Norman Foster). Assumedly Ambler was capable of writing a good tale, but if there was good in his novel it didn’t carry over to the silver screen.
Theoretically Background to Danger is a spy thriller, but more than anything else it is simply a dud “evil-Nazis” flick. Set mostly in Turkey, the movie tells the tale of a variety of spies, both Russian and American, out to get a hold of some fake documents before the Nazis do that supposedly reveal Russia’s plans to invade "neutral" Turkey. Colonel Robinson (Sydney Greenstreet) wants the plans published so as to instigate an international scandal and gain popular support in Turkey for Germany’s marching into the land for its own protection. Ana Remzi Baronvitch (Osa Massen), the currier of the documents gives them to businessman Joe Barton (George Raft) on a train when she realises that she is being followed, but before he can return them she is killed and he is pegged as the murderer. Soon after it is revealed that Joe too is actually a spy, and after losing the documents he teams up with Hassan (Turhen Bey) to track them down again and stop their publication. Nikolai Zaleshoff (Lorre) and his sister Tamara (Marshall) keep popping up unexpectedly, but until Nikolai’s death Joe is doubtful of their integrity. Of course, all’s well that ends well and Joe not only succeeds at stopping Robinson but gets the girl as well. Hardly an exciting story, but that is still no excuse for how bad the movie is.
Plot holes abound, the acting is almost universally uninvolving and the story development idiotic. If Joe is a spy, why does he bother even to try to bring back the documents to Ana? If the documents are fake, why doesn’t Robinson simply cook up some new ones instead of spending so much energy to get the original fakes? Why is Ana killed in the first place? How can Joe jump from a train and run for miles and still have shiny shoes? And, most of all, who cares.
This film comes from Tourist Pictures. According to their website: "Food Fight is an abridged history of American-centric war, from World War II to present day, told through the foods of the countries in conflict. Watch as traditional comestibles slug it out for world domination in this chronologically re-enacted smorgasbord of aggression." The symbolic breakdown of the different foods can be found here. The filmmaker would like you to know that none of the "cast" went to waste: it was either consumed by the filmmaker or his dog after shooting. The software used was Photoshop and After Effects, and took 3 months to do. And, "Although it seems like stop motion, most of it was stop motion created within After Effects, using key-frame animation. [...] Basically [he is] moving the food around within the program, frame by frame, which is the same as traditional stop motion, only it's digital." That said, the film not only looks just like traditional stop motion animation, but like stop motion done well. The music, which is oddly infectious, fits the events perfectly. Tourist Pictures’ entertaining presentation of world aggression probably won’t improve your appetite, but Food Fight is a short but interesting and watchable visual treat from the title sequence of food grease slowly seeping through paper until its messy final.
(Trailer.) It’s the early 60s in Malibu, where some unknown serial killer has begun to kill people who are less than physically perfect, and the police haven't a clue who it could be. The first murder occurs at the local drive-in where the young Florence "Chicklet” Forrest (Lauren Ambrose) and her best gal pal Berdine Barnes (Kimberley Davies) seem to be the only ones actually watching the movie. The next day while at the beach the spunky young gal is impressed by a group of surfers — including one played by Nicholas Brendon, just prior to his joining the Buffy cast — and decides she, too, wants to surf. Soon, Florence becomes "Chicklet,” the first female surfer of the beach, getting private lessons from no other than the local surf legend Kanaka (ThomasGibson) himself. But one by one her friends and acquaintances are showing up dead — could she be the killer? She herself doesn’t know for sure, for she suffers schizophrenia and some other personality always seems to take over just when a murder occurs... Could it be that her sex pot, foul-mouthed alter ego Ann Bowman is offing those she doesn’t like? Or what about the street-wise Safeway cashier that also pops up on occasion?
Based on a play by Charles Busch (a male), who also plays the character Captain Monika Stark (a female, obviously), Psycho Beach Party is one fabulously funny and fun camp persiflage of dead teenager and surfer films such as Beach Blanket Bingo (1965/trailer) and Gidget (1959) that is nicely spiced with some fun jabs at bad 1950s SciFi flicks like Attack of the 50 Foot Woman (1958/trailer) and iced with some wonderful surf music and dance sequences. (The credit sequence alone is true eye-candy: the shimmering, shaking babe looks true to the generation, much more a (clothed) example of a prime Bunny Yeager model than today's anorexic.) In the original stage production Charles Busch actually played the part of the film’s lead character Florence "Chicklet” Forrest — imagine Gidget with split personalities — but by the time the film version got rolling he was too old for the part, so he wrote in the female Jack Web character so that he could still act in the project. In the film, Six Feet Under’s Lauren Ambrose truly excels as Chicklet, and going by the versatility, aplomb and tempo with which she deftly handles her part, that woman is one talented gal. But then, everyone in the film is excellent, ably assisted by some of the funniest dialogue and exchanges ever to grace a body count surfer film. OK, the dialog is often extremely juvenile — a typical line, for example, is that said by the Swedish exchange student Lars as he asks Mrs. Forrest to sew his pants: "I'm having trouble with my pants. Whenever I put my hand in the pocket, I feel a little prick." — but even when the dialog stoops low, the entire production and presentation manages to raise it from adolescent humor to true camp. In any event, anyone mildly versed in 60's surfer culture or bad 50's films will find Psycho Beach Party a blast. Well acted and well written, aside from the fab dialog the film also has some hilariously on-the-spot characterization and an excellent set, costume and production design. As a horror comedy, it is, of course, not for those “still walking the straight and narrow-minded” (to use a line said by The Great Kanak), but the rest of us will definitely enjoy it, for seldom has there been a body count film as refreshingly cute, lighthearted and amusing as Psycho Beach Party. (In all truth, however, as much as all the native English speakers that I know that have seen the film have loved it, all the non-native speakers I’ve watched it with have hated it.)
A low-budget gem from the Golden Age of Exploitation, Alligator is yet another "homage" to Jaws (1975) that, just like the original Piranha (1978/trailer) — which also owes its inspiration to Spielberg’s shark film — comes from the prolific and creative pen of John Sayles. Sayles, prior to becoming the respected filmmaker of serious little people films like Lianna (1983/trailer) Passion Fish (1992/trailer) and Lone Star (1996/trailer), was the scribe behind such popular grindhouse films as the previously mentioned Piranha, the enjoyable The Lady in Red (1979/trailer), the hilariously bad Battle Beyond the Stars (1980/trailer) and the classic The Howling (1981/trailer). For Alligator, he was assisted by the lesser skills of Frank Ray Perilli, whose own pedigree of fine Golden Age of Drive-In Trash includes The Doberman Gang (1972/trailer), Mansion of the Doomed (1976/trailer) and Zolton: Hound of Dracula (1978/trailer). 
Aided by Lewis Teague, a director with a staid and comfortable hand for low budget actioners that followed his early exploitation years with a long career of bad television before falling off the face of the earth, the final product delivered is an entertaining, witty and quick crowd-pleaser. The basic premise is taken from the classic urban legend of alligators living in the sewers of NYC (see Scopes for more on the original legend) and augmented it in dimension by having the gator mutate to a monstrous size due to a steady diet of illegally dumped lab animals pumped full of growth hormone.
Alligator begins with a short, wry interlude of a family watching a backwoods alligator show turns bloody when one gator chomps on a leg of a handler. Despite this short scene of carnage, young Marissa (Leslie Brown) convinces her parents to buy her a baby gator. A short time later, back in the big city, daddy flushes "Ramon" down the pot. Fast forward 12 years and we now meet Dt. David Madison (Robert Forster, looking good and able to laugh about his emerging male-pattern baldness, which he had done away with by the time Quentin Tarantino rejuvenated his unjustly dead career with Jackie Brown (1997/trailer)*). Not only are local pets disappearing with great regularity, but human body parts keep floating up in the local sewage treatment plant. Madison takes a tour of the sewers with a rookie with more balls than brains and becomes persona-non-grata when he comes up alone claiming that his partner has become alligator food — 
at least until the camera of the alligator’s next victim shows up, complete with close-ups the attacking alligatoridae. The hunt is on, but Ramon is a hard catch: instead of crawling into their hands, he breaks up through the mid-town sidewalk and, after chomping on a policeman, first disappears into what looks to be Westlake in MacArther Park (Los Angeles) and then takes refuge under the beach balls afloat in background pools. (Which leads up to one fab scene that totally disregards the mainstream Hollywood rule of not killing children.) Madison and his boss Chief Clark (Michael V. Gazzo) pull in the leading expert of the field Dr. Marisa Kendall — she obviously studied hard in the 12 years since her dad flushed Ramon — for assistance, but when Madison steps on a few toes too many while following up the growth-hormone angle, he gets pulled from the case and replaced by the great white hunter Col. Brock (played hilariously tongue-in-cheek by the legendary Henry Silva). 
Brock doesn't last long, so Madison and Marisa decide to take things in their own hands — but not before, in an act of sardonic poetic justice, Ramon crashes the garden wedding party of the industrialist behind the hormone-injected dogs and munches on everyone that deserves to be munched on...
Oddly enough, it took 11 years before a sequel was regurgitated in 1991. Everything that can be praised in the first film is not to be found in Alligator II: The Mutation, a film that is as unmemorable as Alligator is not.
