Review – The Alligator People

Movie scientists usually mean well, so it’s sad that their experiments always seem to end badly. A guy is in a terrible plane crash, and the only way to save his life is to give him a miracle drug based on reptilian DNA. So now he can grow body parts back like one of those lizards that can grow a new tail. Trouble is … well, you can imagine for yourself what the trouble is. When the side-effects disrupt the guy’s honeymoon, he flees to the bayou-based clinic full of patients who have suffered similar mishaps. His wife pursues, only to become entangled in plot twists that make the movie go on longer than it really needs to. The saddest part of the production is that the alligator people makeup works fairly well in an understated sort of way right up until the end, when for some reason the film-makers opt to take it completely over the top, a decision they didn’t have the effects budget to pull off. Otherwise this is yet another run-of-the-mill science-run-amuck piece from the 50s, inept but for the most part blandly inoffensive. Mildly amusing