GATOTBABY
When pretty college student Maggie Shanner receives and invitation to her great grand-father "Big Daddy" Wingfield's 104th birthday celebration, it's a chance for her to get out from under her mother's thumb for an entire week. Her over-protective mother, Catherine, wants her to dump her boyfriend and live at home until she meets Mr. Right and gets married... and stay away from her crazy great-grandfather. Big Daddy Wingfield is a patent medicine millionaire who lives alone on private island off the coast of Florida. No one has seen him for decades. Catherine hints that he's a recluse because of some strange dark incident in his past. A sinister family secret.
Maggie and her abrasive opportunist boyfriend Stanley join the other great grandchildren for a week on the private island paradise: failed ex-quarterback Brick and his trailer-trash wife Charlotte, plus aggressive lesbian poet Blanche. Why would Big Daddy invite only the great grand kids... unless he's thinking of revising his will to include some of them? All five begin plotting against each other to gain "first position" in Big Daddy's will, with Stanley pulling every dirty trick in the book to come out on top.
But once they arrive on the spooky private island, the fight to be included in the will becomes a fight for survival... because something lurks in the swamps surrounding Big Daddy's mansion. Something that feeds at night...
A frightening genetic mutation: half-man, half-alligator. A ferocious freak that hides in the tall grass, lurks in the shadows, and attacks when you least expect it. Tearing off limbs with its razor-sharp teeth. Chomping a human torso in half with its powerful jaws. The result of one of Big Daddy's experiments gone wrong?
With no way off the island, Maggie and the others must stay alive long enough to discover the family secret behind the half-man, half alligator freak. The secret to why Big Daddy may be 104 years old, but only looks 50. The secret to why Catherine waited until she was in her late 30s before giving birth to Maggie.
Because these five aren't in competition for a place in the will, Big Daddy is really trying to find the best experiment subject (with his DNA) so that he can create a new half-man, half-gator to regenerate internal organs so that he can stay forever young. He's found the fountain of youth in Florida... and it's gators! That creature who stalks the swamps at night, feeding on human flesh... is Maggie's half-brother!
GATORBABY is a tale that blends the terror of JAWS with the Southern Gothic sensibilities of CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF. One horror-filled week trapped on an island with a monster... and no way to escape it's powerful jaws.
Every family has its secrets, but this one has teeth!
GATORBABY a screenplay by William C. Martell
