The Alligator People (1959)
Review by Dindrane
Film:
DVD:

Written by Orville H. Hampton
Directed by Roy Del Ruth
Starring Beverly Garland, Bruce Bennett, Lon Chaney, George MacReady, Frieda Inescort, Richard Crane

Features:

• Original trailer
  

Released by: Fox
Region: 1
Rating: NR
Anamorphic: Yes

My Advice: Rent it, or buy it if you're a fan of B-horror

The Alligator People opens upon a sanitarium, where a neuropathologist is showing off one of his employees and hypnotism experiments, Jane, to a fellow doctor and old friend. It seems that, under hypnosis, Jane reveals that she has a secret--her name is not really Jane, but is Joyce Webster (Garland). She was married to a doctor (Crane) who abandoned her on their wedding night upon receiving a telegram that agitated him. Not to be denied, she tracked him down to his ancestral home in the Louisiana bayous. She learns that he had been experimenting with the regenerative properties of alligator serums that were starting to show some rather unusual side effects. She was determined to save him, but was her love enough?

Lon Chaney is always fantastic to watch, even when he's killing innocent alligators, and Richard Crane as the doomed Dr. Paul Webster is wonderful--campy and tragic all at once. Beverly Garland is no stranger to B-movie science-fiction either, and she knows her role here is to be beautiful, doomed, and heartrending. The alligators in the bayous are essentially actors here, as well, and they're marvelous at providing mood and the ambience of setting.

Don't expect modern splashy CGI graphics (as if the release date didn't already make that clear); the special effects are not bad, strictly on par with the late 1950s and 1960s. The emphasis here is on mood and the uses of black and white film in creating tension and a feeling of doom. Like any good Gothic, it hides much more than it shows, and modern horror writers could actually learn something about creating fear from these so-called "B" movies.

The video quality is quite good. Black and white film holds such fine detail that even now, nearly a half century later, it's in good shape. The widescreen edition allows things on the edges of the screen to be appreciated, and as with all horror films, the edges of the screen are where much of the action really happens. The sound is fairly good, but rather muted in places and during some speeches. I had some trouble with needing to ride the sound in some places. There are no special features on this, other than the original trailer.

Yes, the plot is predictable--one might say iconic--but cleverness isn't really why we watch old horror movies, now is it? We watch them to enjoy what our modern sensibilities refer to as "overacting," the "bad" special effects, the plots so familiar that they are old friends. We watch because whether we like it or not, such movies are fun, and they are that.

The Alligator People is a must for fans of 50s and 60s B-movie horror. It is the archetypical Gothic, complete with haunting mansion as a shadowy character of its own right. Mix that with the cobalt, gamma rays, and mad scientist lab, and you have a classic worthy of Roger Corman. If you like old horror and its accompanying pseudo-science, then you'll love this. If you find old horror rather cheesy and unenjoyable, then there's nothing here that will convince you, but give it a try--it's great when you're in the mood for a campy scare.

Incidentally, La Fourche (aka Lafourche) Parish actually exists; it's in the area of Thibodaux, Louisiana, back in the bayous and plantation country of southern Louisiana.