I vaguely remember watching this when I was a kid. I remember the kid on the diving board scene and the scene in the lab where the doctor explains that he cuts the dogs' larynxs' to keep them quiet, which I probably remember because of how creepy it is.
I thought it was decent and worth watching. One of the first appearances of Ramon did startle me a bit, which I liked.
They do a decent job with the effects, trying to keep the alligator onscreen as minimally as possible, which does work for the movie's atmosphere. I didn't think the live alligator segments walking through the miniatures were all that bad either.
Yes, the Alligator's name is Ramon, which makes this lead up part to the half-nakedness kind of funny too.
Or at least the movie heavily implies the alligator is the herpetologist's from when her parents flushed it down the toilet. My thought at that moment in the beginning of the movie is how even a baby gator would really clog up the plumbing. Not a particularly wise move on the part of the parents to rid themselves of their child's pet.
I did like their attempt to explain the alligator's size and aggressiveness. I even initially thought to myself how reptiles that large tend to get a fully belly and then just lie around and wonder how the movie would get around that inconvenience, especially with the herpetologist on board to make it all seem implausibly plausible. This alligator is constantly on the move because he has a high metabolism that makes him constantly hungry. At least that's what the lab guy says is the after effect of the one successful hormone they developed.
The part with Henry Silva is kind of silly, and pretty non-PC when he hires some help from the street. His whole character and his scenes seem pretty tacked on, but they are entertaining. The alligator thrashing Slade's limmo was pretty silly too, yet entertaining as the main bad guy gets his comeuppance.
For all the planning the cop and the herpetologist do, the ending feels poorly thought out. Ramon's just run down and eaten a pile of people, and yet the cop thinks getting the gator to chase him is a good idea?
Oh well, I liked the movie just the same.
