Gator is a 1976 action-comedy and a sequel to White Lightning. Burt Reynolds reprises his role as Bobby "Gator" McKlusky and takes over directorial duties.
Dunston County, Georgia is ruled over by the corrupt crime lord "Bama" McCall (Jerry Reed). As a result, FBI Agent Irving Greenfeld (Jack Weston) blackmails Gator - Bama's old friend - into going undercover to get evidence against him. Gator - with the aid of reporter Aggie Maybank (Lauren Hutton) - sets out to take Bama down.
Gator contains examples of:
- Badass Boast: Bones has one when he's asked why people call him Bones."Because I tell them too."
- Batman Gambit: McKlusky lures Bama to an isolated location by claiming he has some incriminating papers. He then rigs his hotel room to explode. This takes out The Dragon but not the Big Bad.
- Big Bad: Bama is a murderous crime lord who rules Dunston county with an iron fist.
- Bittersweet Ending: Bama is arrested and going to prison for a long time but Irving and Emmeline are dead and he Did Not Get the Girl.
- Boxed Crook: Once again, Gator is forced by the law to go against his fellow criminals.
- Crazy Cat Lady: Emmeline has two of them that she treats like her children. She dies because of this.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Emmeline suffers one when she runs in to rescue her cats and burns to death.
- Deep South: As with its prequel. Gator heavily relies on stereotypes about this. They take place in small towns ruled by Small-Town Tyrant types with swamps, car chases, moonshine, and Burt Reynolds.
- Did Not Get the Girl: McKlusky and Aggie are attracted to one another and hook up but she ends up taking a job with CBS in New York.
- Dirty Cop: Greenfeld is an "honest" cop, but uses unethical means to force McKlusky to cooperate with the FBI.
- The Dragon: Bama has a 7ft tall goon named Bones.
- Happy Ending Override: McKlusky ends up going back to prison for moonshining, his wife (implied to be Lou) leaves him, and he's still on the hook with the law.
- I Have Your Wife: McKlusky's father and daughter are threatened with jail time as well as foster care respectively when they can't catch him in Gator.
- Intrepid Reporter: Aggie is one of these, attempting to do a story on the poverty in Dunston County.
- Kick the Dog: Bama has a host of actions meant to remind audiences that he's an awful person.
- He burns down a Bikini Bar in his Establishing Character Moment.
- He sends McKlusky to collect from a beaten down black family.
- He runs a brothel that keeps drugged young women as Sex Slave servants.
- He murders Irving Greenfield and sets Emmeline's house on fire with her cats inside.
- Moral Myopia: Bama actually takes a moment to explain how he justifies drugging and enslaving women. McKlusky is having none of it.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Bama suggests that black people are unpredictable and have to handled carefully when extorting them. He's also extremely sexist.
- Prison Rape: McKlusky has an uncomfortable scene where one of the Big Bad's henchmen asks him about this while showing No Sense of Personal Space. McKlusky admits that there was quite a bit of that going on and he'd really like him to move away.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: What turns Gator against Bama is his drugging women to work in his brothel.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: In order to get in touch with Bama, McKlusky calls the Dunston police to patch him through.
- Sex Slave: What Bam does to women in Dunston county in order to populate his brothel.
- Small-Town Tyrant: "Bama" McCall is a local businessman who extorts everyone in Dunston county, particularly minorities.
- Technology Marches On: In-universe example. Bama has a huge cellphone in his car, which is a sign of his wealth in the 1970s.