Newsletter 48: The Terror of “Alligator”

I’ve decided to start putting some of the best newsletter essays here on Medium, so more people can read them. You’re still better off just subscribing. This one’s from April 2017, about a prank my dad played on me when I was a kid involving the movie “Alligator.” I haven’t liked pranks or alligators since.

We were one of the first families back out in the country of Mattoon, Illinois to get a VCR. We didn’t have a movie library or anything, but my cousin Denny’s parents — my sister’s brother Ron — lived in down and had cable and HBO, so sometimes Dad would have Ron record movies on blank tapes he gave him. There are thus certain movies from that time, the early to mid-eighties, that I have seen hundreds of times, watched over and over while putting off chores during long, endless summers. Clue. Superman II. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Ghostbusters. But the first one I ever remember watching was, the one I’ll have nightmares about forever, was Alligator.

Alligator came out in 1980 and is generally well-regarded among fans of schlocky horror films, largely because it was written by John Sayles, of all people. (Lone Star remains one of my favorite movies of the ’90s; Sayles began his career working for Roger Corman and also wrote Piranha.) Reading reviews of the film now, apparently the film played as satire when it came out, but asking a seven-year-old to understand satire…