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Hey, you’ve got your ideas about what constitutes “a pet”, and I have mine…
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In which the fact that there are indeed alligators living in the sewers is the least of anyone’s problems…
[NB: Possibly NSFW – lots of blood and an imperfectly obscured boob.]
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Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!
#1 by Ken on November 21, 2015 - 9:27 am
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This must date from H.G. Wells’ Food of the Gods. It was also the “research” motive in Tarantula – although there it only worked on young animals, inducing acromegalia in older ones.
#2 by Random Deinonychus on November 21, 2015 - 11:51 am
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I can’t recall how many viewings it took me to realize that the reason the baby alligators looked so odd to me is because they’re actually caimans.
I can only assume this to be because of alligators being edangered at the time, but apparently that was no obstacle to obtaining an adult alligator for the film.
#3 by Random Deinonychus on November 21, 2015 - 12:16 pm
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Oh, and naturally I found Marisa instantly appealing–a herpetologist who keeps alligators and snakes as pets? How could I *not* love that?
Then again, I guess I’m dysfunctional…
#4 by Cullen Waters on November 21, 2015 - 1:08 pm
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God I love this movie. And the pool scene! Even as an adult I don’t enter a pool without checking first. Just to be safe.
#5 by Carter Voice on November 21, 2015 - 2:20 pm
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I had the pleasure of finally watching this movie a couple of weeks ago. I thought the plan of employing a Great White Hunter to track down the giant alligator was somewhat…unorthodox. Gotta hand it to the local authorities for at least trying to think outside the box, though.
On a separate topic, has Lyz heard the recent news about the Friday the 13th Franchise? I know she has a… ah long history with the franchise. There was a recent kickstarter campaign that raised about $800k to create a Friday the 13th video game.
They’ve gotten the cooperation of Sean S. Cunningham, Kane Hodder, and Tom Savini. The idea is that it will be a multiplayer game where one players controls Jason and the other six are camp counselors who either have to hide from Jason or fight him and try to escape from Camp Crystal Lake.
Their main website is here: http://f13game.com/
Here is a youtube video where they interview Kane Hodder and talk about the upcoming game while they play that dreadful Friday the 13th Nintendo game from the 80s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLnSnubBj9Y
So Lyz, on a scale of one to… THIRTEEN!!!! how excited are you about this development? Are you ready to make the leap from movie reviews to video game reviews?
#6 by The Rev. on November 21, 2015 - 5:23 pm
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Bizarrely enough, I was going to start with something related to Ft13 and Lyz’s reviews…
Anyway, as we had the honorary day last week, I watched the first three courtesy of one of my favorite Roku channels (Bizarre TV, for the curious). I don’t know if they had foreign prints or what, but some of the more notorious kills (in particular, Kevin Bacon’s and the bisection from the third) were longer and more graphic than I recalled. Maybe a Japanese print? Naturally, this led me to reread Lyz’s reviews of the entire series, and I thought I should bring to her attention the fact that the links for Jason Goes to Hell, as well as her series wrap-up and her compare/contrast with Ken on FvJ didn’t work for me. (Luckily the Internet Archive helped me out with those.)
On to the review, which was typically fine work. This movie is a favorite of mine; while I haven’t seen Primeval or Black Water — yes, shame on me, I know — I too would put this and Rogue far above the rest, especially the boring slog that is this movie’s sequel (although I have a fondness for Blood Tide that I can’t really explain or defend). I saw it young enough to really be disturbed by the pool scene, being of a similar age to the kids. As I got older I appreciated how heavy a thing it was to do something like that, and while it’s definitely a cruel scene…well, it’s a horror movie; shouldn’t it horrify?
I liked your explanation for being calm about the dog subplot; I was actually surprised by your relative silence on it up to that point. My favorite part, though, was near the end. I was scrolling slowly enough to see the exploding gator pic without seeing the caption, at which point I paused and said to myself, “Please be an inflammabilis joke, please be an inflammabilis joke,” before scrolling down…
Have I told you lately that I adore you?
#7 by The Rev. on November 21, 2015 - 5:28 pm
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And, in all that, I forgot to congratulate Lyz on slipping one by me; this one wasn’t on my list of possible candidates for the roundtable. Nicely done.
#8 by Random Deinonychus on November 21, 2015 - 5:28 pm
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Well, Black Water is decent enough but I find I struggle to remember it. Meanwhile, I found Primeval to be pretty awful–and rather tasteless, frankly.
#9 by RogerBW on November 22, 2015 - 4:49 am
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Interesting to see the urban legend actually fleshed out to make into a film, not to mention relocated. I wonder why they felt they needed to explain the giant size (as the legend didn’t), and add an actual villain; plenty of Jaws imitators didn’t bother. Maybe they were deliberately crossbreeding with the “environmental damage” strain?
If a woman falls for the idea that an unmarried woman is a failure, she’d better be tolerant of male nerdery. Beats a lot of the alternatives.
#10 by ronald on November 22, 2015 - 5:09 pm
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Should anything depicting even the fictional deaths of our fellow human beings really be labeled “fun”? Oh well.
Pharmaceutical companies are weird, aren’t they? They earn, like, billions of dollars a month, yet they so often refuse to conduct safety tests that would’ve “only” cost millions, i.e. but a fraction of a single billion. At least, that’s what films and television shows tell me, and if you can’t trust *them*, well…
Notice that Marisa was already interested in science before she either acquired or lost Ramon (in fact, it was while attending a science fair that she was deprived of Ramon, and what kind of message does that send? “Pursue science and you lose a loved one”? Ech.). Unlike so many film scientists, her course wasn’t set by any particular past event (unless she experienced it prior to the events of the film, of course), it was just there.
“a member of the public who comes in to confess to the killings”
…committed by an alligator. “Where’d you hide your eighty-or-more four-inch teeth, sir?”
I’m pretty sure that police departments actually have to deal with this sort of citizen quite often; when you think about it (“So don’t think about it.”), it’s a wonder that more of them haven’t shown up in, well, just about any genre of horror film that involves a police presence.
“This sequence acts as support for my theory – my experience– that women are infinitely more tolerant of male nerdery than is true the other way around.”
Actually, it’s been my experience that, on average, women are infinitely more tolerant of just about EVERYTHING than men are. In a world where men have vastly disproportionate power, they kind of have to be.
“her overpoweringly friendly and talkative mother, who…well, who hasn’t changed much since she took a much younger Marisa to a ’gator park in Florida, except perhaps to be…even more so”
Meaning that even MORE people don’t listen to her now? As you’ll recall, neither Marisa nor Mr. Kendall did…
#11 by ronald on November 23, 2015 - 2:23 pm
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Well, I waited twenty hours or so and no one made the 11th post, so I’ll go ahead and make two posts in a row. I know, tsk tsk to me, but.
So, why “Ramon”? What significance did that name have to little girls in 1968? I guess we’ll never know…
Incidentally, when a character is given a name and then, later, given an entirely different name, the simplest interpretation is that one is the first name and the other the last (or, if a last name has already been given, the middle). So the Alligator’s full name is “Ramon Alexander.” Or not. 😉
“one of the true landmarks of American cinema”
I hadn’t heard of this at all before (which should by no means be taken to indicate that it’s not common knowledge). On IMDB, neither “Alligator” nor “Them” nor “It’s Alive” offers this info under Trivia, so I couldn’t learn from there what other films the set had been on.
From IMDB “Alligator” Trivia: “The shot of the swat team emerging from the sewers looked so real that people actually thought they were terrorists”
In 1980? I wouldn’t have thought most Americans knew there WAS such a thing as terrorism in 1980. I certainly didn’t. At age 11.
Anyway, why SWAT? Shouldn’t this have been in the Department of Animal Control’s lap from the start? Yes, the brave and valiant DACs, their stories so often untold, who (I’m pretty sure) save far more animal lives than they take.
“insisting on a reward being offered”
Oh, yeah, THAT’LL simplify things. “‘Scuse me. You know those eight guys in the fantail launch out there? Well, none of ’em are gonna get out of the harbor alive…”
“two squads of police are ahead of them; having not, apparently, stopped to consider the fundamental unwisdom of hunting a forty-foot ’gator in a fifteen-foot boat. Well—they learn. They also learn not to remove the pin from a grenade prematurely.”
Now, see, I’ll bet the noble DACs wouldn’t have made basic mistakes like that…
#12 by ronald on November 25, 2015 - 9:26 am
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Well, darn, I killed another thread. Well, darn.
#13 by The Rev. on November 27, 2015 - 5:57 pm
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Welcome to the club! Glad I’m not the only one doing that anymore.
#14 by lyzard on November 28, 2015 - 2:54 am
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Just now you can have reviews or chit-chat, but not both.
{…catches breath…}
#15 by ronald on December 2, 2015 - 6:40 pm
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Well, I’d harbored hopes that you’d find a few of my comments of at least mild interest, so I’ll patiently await the chit-chat. Thanks. 😉
#16 by The Rev. on December 2, 2015 - 9:55 pm
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I suspected Lyz was working herself ragged when she remained uncharacteristically silent after the second review went live.
Yes, we can definitely wait for the chit-chat. Rest your weary bones, dear. 🙂
#17 by ronald on December 15, 2015 - 12:06 pm
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I guess there’ll be no chit-chat for this particular film. Shrug.