Zaat

An idiotic scientist decides to turn himself into a walking catfish monster. He also wants to create a new race of fellow walking catfish monsters. This is a horrible movie. It starts off with some laughable narration and an awful folk song. It only gets worse from there. That said, I was cracking up a lot throughout this thing. There's one golden moment shortly after the guy has changed into monster form. He's walking through a basement and clearly trips over something, perhaps the shitty monster costume itself. We're also privy to the long, drawn out process of him getting his machines, pulleys and other junk together for the mutation. This takes up about 20 minutes of screen time all by itself.

About halfway through the film, we get more awful singing from a bunch of hippies, followed by a march to the local jail. The so-called hero of the picture is a joke. He and his girlfriend also wear ridiculous red jumpsuits. They should have just stuck with the college guy and the sheriff, not that doing so would have saved the movie or anything. This is currently #10 on the IMDb bottom 100 list. There's no question that this is a bad movie, but I wouldn't rate it that low simply because of the amusement I got out of it.

Well, no, actually it's an abominable movie, but odd in an interesting way -- I suppose partly because of the filmmakers' ineptitude. If it's riffing off of Frankenstein, why does the catfish creature have to find attractive women to try and mutate into fish brides? Where does that beauty go once you've been mutated into a fish?

And how was I supposed to feel when he breaks into a pharmacy and starts knocking things over? Eerie screeching came over the soundtrack as though this were a moment suffused with inner psychological drama, but maybe the suit the guy had to wear fragmented his performance so much that this really didn't get communicated.

I think if I'd watched this without the puppets, I'd have permanently lost my mind. That's got to count for SOMETHING.

Even though I watch a lot of bad movies, it's been awhile since I've seen a plot that made less sense than the one found in Blood Waters of Dr. Z. For reasons known only to him, Dr. Kurt Leopold decides the planet would be a better place if fish were to take over. After a rather lengthy voice-over soliloquy on the subject, he dunks himself into a tank and comes out transformed into some sort of poorly designed would-be fish-creature. With his handy spray bottle filled with I'm not sure what, he sets out on his mission to lead the catfish in a takeover of the Earth. Before you can say "carp", Dr. Leopold's plan seems to be forgotten in favor of finding a mate he can transform into a would-be fish-creature. (Actually, I'm of the opinion that getting laid was Dr. Leopold's goal the whole time. Forget about the nonsense of a master race of fish.) As the bodies start to pile up, old fish-boy soon has some scientists and the local sheriff on his tail. Can they put a stop to Dr. Leopold and his plans for world domination?

Whether you call the movie Blood Waters of Dr. Z or Zaat or ZaAt or Attack of the Swamp Creatures, it really doesn't matter. Crap by any name is still crap. The movie is Grade A bottom-of-the-barrel film-making. As I pointed out, the plot is ridiculous. The technical aspects of the films like lighting, sound, special effects, editing, etc. are beyond bad. The direction is amateurish at best. And as for the acting, I'm not in the least surprised to discover that no one involved ever did anything other than appear in this monstrosity (okay, one guy does have one other credit, but that's it). Quite honestly, my rating of a 2/10 is incredibly generous. I'm sure there's a reason I didn't give Blood Waters of Dr. Z the dreaded 1/10, but sitting here 12 hours after watching the movie, I can't come up with a valid explanation.

One of the comments on IMDb bemoans the fact that the majority of people rating and reviewing Blood Waters of Dr. Z have only seen the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version (that's how I saw it also). The comment states that the real movie has 30 or so minutes edited out by the MST3K crew and the movie shouldn't be judged unless someone has seen the whole thing. Well why in God's name would I want to see 30 more minutes of this trash! The time I've already devoted to Blood Waters of Dr. Z is above and beyond what it deserves. Just be glad more people haven't seen that additional footage as I'm guessing the rating would be even lower if they had.

Mad scientist Dr. Kurt Leopold (Marshall Grauer) uses his special formula, Zaat, to turn himself into a walking catfish (although he looks more like a mutant seahorse to me). After polluting a local pond with Zaat, the lumbering catfish man takes revenge on those who scoffed at his work, and then goes about trying to create a catfish woman to be his mate.

The first fifteen minutes of low budget Floridian monster movie Zaat (AKA The Blood Waters of Dr.Z) are enough to sort the men from the boys: anyone not seriously dedicated to Z-grade trash will surely soon fall by the wayside at the sheer banality of the opening scenes -- underwater wildlife footage with a monotonous voice-over, and tedious shots of scientist Dr. Leopold as he goes about his work. At the quarter-of-an-hour mark, things momentarily pick up when Leopold turns into catfish man (the creature played by Wade Popwell) and goes on the prowl, but it's still far from great, any amusement to be had at the shoddiness of the monster costume quickly wearing off.

The rest of the film is mostly long, drawn out scenes of badly lit and very boring 'action' as the monster roams the countryside and town while the authorities investigate, but, every so often, director Don Barton throws in something so bizarre that one can't help but sit up and take notice. A prime example is the hippie musical interlude in which a group of long-haired layabouts sit and sway while a man sings and plays guitar. The town's sheriff arrives and taps his hand appreciatively, before leading the hippies on a Pied Piper style procession to the town jail, where he locks up the youngsters for their own safety. It's a really weird scene that has zero bearing on the plot -- the hippies are never heard of or seen again.

Another head-scratching moment comes when the creature gets a headache and needs some aspirin (at least I think that is what happens): breaking into a pharmacy, it knocks back some meds (getting a little woozy in the process) and then trashes the place. Again, just a really incongruous scene that serves no real purpose other than to pad out the runtime (not that the film needed padding out, the finished mess clocking in at an excruciating 100 minutes).

Other bits that are notable for their eccentricity include the monster taking time out to draw a picture of sexy blonde INPIT Agent Martha Walsh (Sanna Ringhaver) -- he's actually not a bad artist for a fish -- and an unconvincing shot of a supposedly giant catfish destroying a miniature matchstick model of a fence, the only remnant of a Kaiju-catfish sequence cut from the final film on account of it looking so crap.

To be honest, I probably would have rated Zaat a rather generous 3/10 for chucking in these truly weird moments amid the deathly dull stuff, but the film commits a crime against trash cinema that is unforgivable: sexy Agent Walsh is about to undress when she is interrupted, zipping up her red jumpsuit just as things were getting interesting, and then she takes a shower without any nudity. Just what kind of cheap, exploitative, Z-grade monster movie is this? I'm left no other choice than to deduct a couple of points.

Yes, I gave it a 2, dammit. The underwater photography is tolerable and there are a couple of suspenseful attacking moments. Basically, however, this movie rambles on pointlessly, much like the "walking catfish" mutant and the government agent who tracks him in the last third of the movie.

The first 20 minutes of the movie is in (hilarious) voiceover, and you begin to wonder if they lost the soundtrack ala Creeping Terror and Beast of Yuca Flats. Then the characters actually start speaking on-screen and you wish they had lost the soundtrack. The dialogue seems to bear no resemblance to the onscreen goings-on. I suppose it establishes some plot points and clarifies things for the audience, but there are so many ramblings and offshoots that you just kinda of give up and give in.

The "monster" looks like an early draft of a Silurian costume from Doctor Who, with a fur neckpiece (??). The skinny, balding bad guy is on-screen for only a few minutes before undergoing his transformation, but imprints himself indelibly in our minds thanks to his stripping down, his hamhanded maneuvering himself into the transformation tank, and his omniscient voiceover narration.

And the fish! What is it with the fish? The opening narration dwells on them (giving us a good impression of Jacques Costeau as a Nazi gone bad), and at least one murder scene decides to insert random shots of fish in-between cuts. There seems to be some kind of implied ecological nature-takes-vengeance message here somewhere, but like everything else, it is lost entirely in the rambling dialogue.

Basically, the movie is pretty much a waste of celluloid. A few good moments, as I've seen far worse underwater cinematography. Watch it if you dare.