Eleven years after Joe Dante and John Sayles delivered one of the best giant critter movies ever, the not-as-good (but not bad!) sequel, Alligator 2: The Mutation shows up.
It lacks the satirical bite of its predecessor, but the plot is a carbon copy of Alligator, with a smattering of Jaws, once again pitting a wise-cracking cop against a reptilian nightmare lurking in the city sewer system.
Speaking of cities, A2 is filmed in Echo Park dressed up to look like a small town where everyone knows each other. Here, local Latino families are threatened by an evil developer (Steve Railsback) with a lot of toxic waste to unload.
David Hodges (Joseph Bologna) is the detective in charge of the mutilated bodies that start piling up, and he’s beset on all sides by difficult choices, not made any easier by the fact that his scientist wife Christine (Dee Wallace Stone) wants him to quit smoking for his birthday.
Taking another page from the original movie, Vinnie Brown (Railsback), the black-hearted villain of our story, hires comic-relief hunters, led by Hawk Hawkins (Richard Lynch, in a scene-chewing special) as a Cajun gator-getter flanked by a brood of gun-toting rednecks.
Good old Major Healy, Bill Daily, is on hand as the spineless mayor, and veteran faces like Wallace, Brock Peters, and Kane Hodder add some seasoning to the soup.
It’s a fun flick, but Alligator 2: The Mutation can’t duplicate the depth and daring of the first film, which is what happens when you replace director Joe Dante with Jon Hess, and screenwriter John Sayles with Curt Allen.
The practical effects depicting gore and gator mayhem aren’t nearly as good as the first movie, released a decade earlier. Fluctuating gator size doesn’t help. Come on people! Keep up with technology!
In the final reckoning, it checks a bunch of boxes, and you’ll have a decent time chuckling at all the ridiculous hair-dos and don’ts, and occasional cheese-metal anthems.
horrificflicks.com 