50 Years Later, This Is Still the Best of All the Jaws Ripoff Movies

The immediate success of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws resulted in a slew of terrible creature features that swam in its wake. For every Piranha that was released we got a Cruel Jaws, Grizzly, Orca, and The Last Shark. There have been other solid creature feature movies released throughout the decades since Jaws‘ 1975 debut that are a ton of fun, e.g. Anaconda, Deep Blue Sea, The Meg, but none of them are quite on the level of one particular “giant animal run amok” movie. It’s not Piranha that stands as the best Jaws ripoff, it’s Lewis Teague’s Alligator. That said, if Tremors can truly be considered one of these titles (which seems like a stretch), it would be just as worthy of the crown.

What binds Tremors and Alligator? Intelligence. The combination of a great screenplay and the sharp ability to tightrope walk across multiple genres seemingly with ease.

What Makes Alligator the Best Jaws ripoff?

The premise of an alligator growing to a gargantuan size (or even just regular full maturity) in a sewer is both an urban legend that is both absurd, and inherently silly, because it is so absurd. So how does Alligator make it work? From moment one it grounds itself in a sort of serious realism without ever delving into the self-serious nature that has plagued quite a few other creature features.

How the alligator gets into that sewer is important. The film opens by having a family of three go to an alligator farm. They see an alligator wrestling show that goes horribly wrong for the human combatant, yet the daughter still insists upon getting a little baby gator as a pet. The parents oblige and even buy her a tank for it until one day, apparently drunkenly, the father in a fit of rage flushes the little critter down the toilet. You already feel for not just the little girl but also the cute reptile because there’s at least the hint he and the girl have bonded.

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Before Alligator ultimately gets to its rampage scenes, more on that later, the film then shifts gears to following Detective David Madison. Like many other worn-down cinematic police detectives he’s on the verge of full-blown cynicism but, thanks to strong writing and a commanding performance by the late Robert Forster (Jackie Brown), he’s a character the audience genuinely enjoys spending time with and rooting for. The same goes for Robin Riker’s Dr. Marisa Kendall, who just so happens to be the girl from the opening sequence. Their relationship starts out believably combative and, when things turn warmer, that comes across as genuine as well.

Much of what makes Alligator work has nothing to do with the alligator itself, it has to do with Teague’s direction and, especially, John Sayles’ script. Teague went on to direct Cujo three years after Alligator and, in spite of its faults, it was one of the better Stephen King adaptations of the ’80s. As for Sayles, he already had great experience writing Jaws adjacent movies with Piranha, but here he shows an even stronger handling on how to turn likable characters into likable human beings.

After teaming up with Piranha director Joe Dante again on The Howling, Sayles ultimately made an even bigger name for himself as a director than as a screenwriter. And, impressively enough, his directorial filmography has only continued to show his grasp on the human condition, with his films almost always being met by high marks from critics including: The Brother from Another Planet, City of Hope, Eight Men Out, Passion Fish, Lone Star, Men with Guns, and Sunshine State. There are very few misses in his filmography.

But Alligator doesn’t short the audience on monster movie action, either. The well-paced attack sequences strewn throughout the movie wisely show the creature in increasing detail, not unlike in Jaws. And, also like Jaws, it’s a creature feature that’s unafraid to take serious risks, such as killing off a kid. That swimming pool sequence, where a few friends pushing a blindfolded child into a pool to his death (they don’t see the alligator) is both a gut-punch and a display of how the film can heighten tension in scenes via the build-up without ever making the scene itself feel overly elongated.

At the end of the day, though, this is a movie that has an alligator storm through the wedding reception hosted by a tycoon who sponsors illegal animal experimentation. That makes this horror movie worth watching. But so too does that very same scene’s display of just how selfish that tycoon is, even when it comes to his right-hand man as a 36-foot gator is stomping their way.

Alligator is streaming on Shudder, Prime Video, Peacock, and Tubi.