Alligator (film) - Plot

Plot

A teenage girl purchases a baby American alligator while on vacation with her family at a tourist trap in Florida. After the family returns home to Chicago, the alligator, named Ramón by the girl, is promptly flushed down the family's toilet by her surly, animal-phobic father and ends up in the city's sewers. Twelve years go by, during which the alligator not only survives, but eventually feeds on covertly discarded pet corpses that are spiked with an experimental growth formula, causing him to grow into a 36-foot (11 m)-long behemoth with an almost impenetrable hide.

The alligator begins picking off humans in the sewer, and the resulting flow of body parts draws in world-weary police officer David Madison who, after a horribly botched case in St. Louis, has gained a reputation for being lethally unlucky for his assigned partners. As David works on this new case, his boss Chief Clark brings him into contact with reptile expert Marisa Kendall, the girl who bought the alligator years earlier. The two of them edge into a prickly romantic relationship, and during a visit to Marisa's house, David bonds with her motormouthed mother.

David's reputation as a partner-killer is "confirmed" when the gator snags the young cop who accompanies David into the sewer searching for clues. No one believes David's story, partly due to a lack of a body, and partly because of Slade, the influential local tycoon who sponsored the illegal growth experiments and therefore does not want the truth to come out. This changes when obnoxious tabloid reporter Thomas Kemp (ironically, one of the banes of David's existence) goes snooping in the sewers and supplies graphic and indisputable photographic evidence of the beast at the cost of his own life. The story quickly garners public attention, and a city-wide hunt for the monster is called for. An attempt by the police to flush out Ramón comes up empty, and David is put on suspension, but then the gator literally smashes his own way out of the sewers and comes to the surface, first killing another police officer, then a young boy who gets tossed into a swimming pool during a party.

The ensuing hunt turns into a media circus, including the hiring of pompous big-game hunter Colonel Brock to track the animal. Once again, the effort fails: Brock is killed, the police trip over each other in confusion and Ramón goes on a rampage through a high-society wedding party; among his victims are Slade and the mayor. With only Marisa to help him, David finally lures the alligator into a trap back in the sewers and destroys the beast with a massive charge of explosives, barely escaping with his own life. As the film ends with David and Marisa walking away after the explosion, a drain in the sewer spits out another baby alligator, carrying the promise that the cycle will be repeated all over again...