My Synopsis: Paul and Joyce are newlyweds on their honeymoon. Paul was a military man who has miraculously recovered from a horrible plane crash - almost every bone in his body was broken and he was horribly scarred. But now, you wouldn't even know he was in a crash! Then, Paul gets a mysterious telegram while on the train, and instantly abandons Joyce. What a dick! Joyce wants to figure out what's going on, and her detective work brings her to the Cypress Plantation - an address Paul gave as his home way back in college. They claim not to know any Paul - but it's clear something fishy is going on. And it turns out there's more danger in the Cypresses that gators and quicksand.
Elaborate Genre: Uh - monster? Romance? Mystery with a little mad science?
Overall: Not terribly exciting, but not a bad way to spend and hour and 14 minutes.
I don't want to get all spoilery about a 57 year old film, but here it goes: Paul's miraculous recovery was due to a highly experimental treatment, where a doctor shot him up with some hormone from a gator. Since reptiles can regenerate body parts, or something. (I didn't know that about gators, but whatever.) As you might expect, that treatment was not without it's side effects. ("May cause nausea, dry mouth, constipation, or turn you into an alligator.")
The Alligator People feels kind of slow because there isn't really a monster per se - even when Paul is starting to turn all scaly or whatever, he's not mad or violent or anything. He's mostly just really embarrassed and doesn't want to be seen by Joyce. So there isn't really an external threat for much of the film. Mostly it's just Paul and other patients being kind of depressed because of their condition.
But there's still a couple of good moments. Some of the patients being treated are dressed in these white robes with a blank, flat screen over their face and are being led around by medical staff. It's a genuinely creepy look, and one of those times where your imagination is far worse than anything that they could show on screen. And once you do see the alligator person - it's pretty awesome. SUPER cheesy, but awesome nonetheless.
I could have done without all of the live alligators being rassled and whatnot. I know at the time that was probably a pretty novel thing to see on screen, and almost certainly amounts to the biggest actual thrills in the film. But I just don't need to see real animals getting harassed just for the sake of a film. And there's one time when a gator gets run over by a truck, and it looks pretty damn real. Bummer. Oh, and there's also some pretty blatant racist stereotypes, courtesy of the not one, not two, but three black servants.
The most notable actor in the film is Lon Chaney Jr. playing Manon - a guy who helps out on the plantation who really hates gators. He lost his hand in a gator attack (hence the hook) and takes to just shooting them whenever he can. Real nice. Even though he doesn't have a ton to do, Chaney is fun to see and is the closest thing we have to a real Bad Guy in The Alligator People.
Which I guess is my biggest issue with the film. It's just not all that exciting without an actual bad guy. I expected a monster movie proper, and got kind of a sad tale of modern medicine gone awry. There is some fun Monster Madness at the end, but it still feels like it comes a little too late. But disappointment aside, The Alligator People is an okay watch. I assume the only people watching monster movies from the 50s at this point are old people or less old people who are into old movies. And we can handle a little boredom, right?
I would kind of recommend this film.
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