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Monster #1 - The
Alligator People
United States, 1959
A 20th Century Fox Production
74 mins, black & white, 2.35 : 1 aspect ratio
(CinemaScope)
Director - Roy Del Ruth
Screenplay - Orville H. Hampton
Story - Charles O'Neal & Robert M. Fresco
Cinematographer - Karl Struss
Editor - Harry Gerstad
Music - Irvin Gertz
Beverly Garland, Bruce Bennett,
Lon Chaney Jr. (billed as Lon Chaney), George
Macready, Richard Crane, Douglas Kennedy, Frieda
Inescort
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The Alligator
People from the movie of the same name are the
first monsters on Denis Gifford's alphabetically
ordered list.
To my 13-year old self the image
of Richard Crane in the process of transformation
into an alligator wasn't one of my favourite
pictures in the book, but it did hold a certain
fascination - and if nothing else, it was the
entry point into the collection of Monsters
of the Movies.
The make-up provided by Ben Nye
and Dick Smith is well balanced and quite
effective for as long as the main male character
is in the transformation process. Once you get to
the fully developed "alligator people"
stage, however, the resulting gator head on a
human body is simply too stilted and unconvincing
(and therefore ultimately cheesy) to truly work.
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(Carousel Books / Transworld
Publishing)
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| Alligator People is a wonderful surprise and
even something of a little gem. In spite of its somewhat
unpromising title, it displays quite a bit of refinement
- the story, naturally, requires the usual suspension of
belief and basic knowledge of science, but it is nicely
presented in a framing story in which the female lead is
put under hypnosis and recounts the film's events as a
subconsciouly buried memory. |
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The bayous of Louisiana are
recreated well and set a convincing background
and atmosphere for the plot to unfold, and the
photography and production values throughout are
generally very high and lift this film clearly
above the usual B-Movie levels of the 1950s. The
acting, too, is to the point and works well, even
though female lead actor Beverly Garland famously
noted that "the hardest thing in that
movie was simply to keep a straight face."
(Warren, 2016)
Alligator People was developed as a
double-bill co-feature with the similarly themed Return
of the Fly and shot to a budget of $300,000.
It was first released in the US in July 1959.
The movie received rather upbeat reviews at
the time (Variety called it "a good
program horror film" and praised its
"good characterizations"), while film
historian Bill Warren in 2016 felt it was a
"decently crafted and intelligently made
program SF-horror film, sadly let down by
misconceived makeup and perfunctory ideas".
Leaving aside the truly ineffective
"gator head make-up", Alligator
People tells its story well and manages to
keep up viewers interest rather effortlessly for
its entire 74 minutes. It has aged rather well.
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| I watched this movie for the first time on 101 Films'
2017 Blu-ray release, the great picture quality of which
underscores the quality of the work originally put into
this movie. Extras are rather sparse, limited to a
reversible sleeve (one side featuring the original 1959
poster art, the other newly created imagery) and a
physical extra in the form of a poster repro. |
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Denis Gifford on The
Alligator People
in A Pictorial History of
Horror Movies (1973)
There is no specific reference by
Gifford to Alligator People in
his seminal reference book, and the film
is represented only by a still image
showing a fully transformed Alligator
Person with an actual gator head. Gifford
does however make a general comment
applicable to Alligator People:
"The German horror film had
been cursed by the Doppelgänger; the
American horror film was cursed by the
Double Bill. Every big picture had to
have a little picture in support. Every
'A' must have its 'B': it was a Hollywood
law as immutable as any of
Amun-Ra's."
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| Sources WARREN Bill (2016) Keep
Watching the Skies!: American Science Fiction Movies of
the Fifties, The 21st Century Edition, McFarland
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to main index page
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The illustrations presented here are
copyright material.
Their reproduction in this non-commercial review
and research context is considered to be fair use
as set out by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, 17
U.S.C. par. 107
and in accordance with the the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and
Artistic Works.
All images from Monsters
of the Movies (Carousel/Transworld) were
scanned from my personal copy purchased in 1977
All images of Blu-ray or DVD covers were scanned
from my personal copies
Page created 21
February 2023
Last updated 8 April 2023
(c)
2023
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