The following is an excerpt from the column Video
Lies, a regular feature in the 1990s ‘zine Kraken Farmer,
edited by Lucy Kurtz, available at Tower Records and Flyrabbit.
Alligator II:
The Mutation. Dir. Jon Hess. Perf. Joseph Bologna, Dee Wallace, and Richard
Lynch. Cannon, 1991. Video.
Swamp-rat
floats /on a human ribcage.
Red flashlight
floats / and a fisherman’s leg.
Breakfast with
a VHS tape on a timer. Cop Hodges dances with a food truck vendor. “Maybe it’s
machinery.”
TWO COPS:
Hodges, you can’t park here.
HODGES: Get it
washed. [Hands over his keys.]
TWO COPS:
Hodges!
See the serpent
woman walk, talk, “and crawl on her belly like a reptile”; see her meet
“...that ain’t no gator” but a Future Chemical gator—“You ever seen a nest this
big?”
A mutant
alligator eats who swims among the reeds in Regent Park. No, you may not
explode grenades beneath Lake Shore Drive. Remove the alligator =
gentrification = the loss of local color, i.e., The Crazy Boys. Send in the man
on stilts. Feed the alligator land developers.