Weirdhouse Cinema: Zaat

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
And I'm Jill McCormick, and I regret to inform you
right at the start here that the Weird House Cinema
tour bus has broken down in Florida, so we are
still stuck in the Sunshine State.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
That's right. We're continuing our look at Florida movies from
the nineteen seventies, movies filmed in Florida, and certainly in
the case of today's film, and also nineteen seventy two's Frogs,
which we covered previously set in Florida as well. They
capture a certain Florida nis, both real and imagined. And
this week we're going to look at the Florida movie

(00:50):
par excellence, nineteen seventy one's zat You might know it
as the Blood Waters of Doctor Z. Some of you
might even know it as Hydra Sickly, as we'll get
into it had a number of various releases over the
years under different titles, but for the most part, the
one that's stuck is zat Z a a.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
T This movie has some thematic overlap with other movies
that we've looked at, including sort of like Nature strikes
Back movies, though this is not exactly Nature strikes Back.
This is more of a This is more of a
sort of cheap body horror, mad science movie with some
ecological themes to it, rather than just like animals attacking

(01:32):
for revenge on humankind.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah, it's I guess at heart, it's a creature feature,
but like like a lot of films that you encounter
like this certain like like the first big independent efforts
from from the filmmakers.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
It.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
It tries to do a lot of things, so it's
it's it's a creature feature, but it's also like a
science team adventure. It's also you know, it also tries
to be in the heat of the night a little bit.
It also has this Nature strikes Back element to it.
It's also a kind of a hippie folk musical, so

(02:09):
it kind of bats itself around a lot, and depending
on where you are in the film, you might get
something that is tonally different from another portion of the film.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
It also has a little bit of overlap with Boggy
Creek two and the legend continues. We can talk about
some of the similarities as we go on, but I
appreciated the similar pompous voiceover narration, though in this case
it is the voiceover of a of a crazed, spurned
scientist who wants revenge on the world, whereas in Boggie

(02:41):
Creek two it's just a kind of I don't know,
like the town smart guy who wants to show off
all his knowledge about the river.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
The voiceover narration in this is is sardonic to the max.
Like if you took Vincent Price's voice and you were
douced it overheat for a little bit until it was
it was just extra icky and gooky. That's what you'd
have in The Blood Waters of Doctor Z.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
The voiceover narration whar's joker makeup?

Speaker 4 (03:12):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Now, if you mentioned Boggy Creeker earlier. And I think
this is a good point to mention that this film
was riffed in a nineteen ninety nine episode of Mystery
Science Theater three thousand under the title the Bloodwaters of
Doctor Z. And if you're like me, that might be
where you discovered the film. And that's a great MST episode.

(03:35):
Don't want to take anything away from that, but as
I would watch and rewatch that episode, I found that,
like a lot of MST episodes that really called me,
there was something in the underlying film. There was an
awkwardness to it, a kind of loneliness to it, and
I've also grown to really appreciate the flora theness of
it as well. So for this episode of Weird House Cinema,

(03:57):
this was the first time I watched an unriffed version
of ZA, which rented from Atlanta's Videodrome Video rental store.
And you know, ultimately I encourage fans of the MST
episode to do the same because, like a lot of
MST films, it was really edited, really cut down for time,
and so there's there's a lot of stuff that you're

(04:18):
missing out on, some really wonky and at times grotesque
details and sometimes just ludicrous additions to the film.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
This is not of the attack of the Crab Monster's
School of Creature feature run time. You know, it's not
your sixty three minute abs. This one, I think is
oh god, it's actually getting close to two full hours,
isn't it.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, I think it's the it's one hundred minutes long,
it's a it's it's plus sized, this one. So you can.
You have to set us out a little bit of
time for it. And again, the pacing is is at
times kind of weird but also hypnotic quelutic at times.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Uh huh.

Speaker 2 (04:57):
Now we mentioned the MST episode. I think a lot
of people did discover it through that, but the film
has had a cult following outside of MST as well,
despite only having a limited release in Jacksonville, Florida and
New York's forty second Street back in nineteen seventy two.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
You had the version we watched. It begins with a
statement from the director where he's like people were coming
up to be in saying don don You've got to
release this movie.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yes, so yeah, I think people really wanted some sort
of a release for a long time, and luckily in
recent years it has been available. But yeah, this film,
like The Scorpion Fish and the Sargassum Fish, is it's
been patient. It knew that it would one day conquer

(05:46):
the universe. And it has its super fans, one of
which is the Atlanta artist and Jacksonville native our Land,
who I know we're both fans of. Have you seen
any of our Lands zat pieces, Joe, Oh.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
I don't know I've seen a lot of his stuff
around town, a lot of you know, restaurants and coffee
shops and stuff. We'll have our land pieces up on
the walls. I think some of his work also, though
I don't quite recall how, was featured in some adult
swim shows. I could be wrong about that, but no,
I don't know which the z That ones are. I know
his piece that's like the divers with the spear guns.
Is that z related?

Speaker 2 (06:22):
That one might not be. I mean, he's he works
Florida into a lot of his pieces, but he did.
He did create a number of art pieces that actually
feature Zat. He did a show as part of a
two thousand and nine screening of the film at the
Plaza here in Atlanta, and at least some of the
pieces I assume from that show were they used to

(06:42):
hang out over at Joe's Coffee in East Atlanta, and
I would go there and bring my laptop and work,
and I don't know, there may still be some pieces there.
I haven't been there in a spell, but there, you know,
images of Zad and he had some spin offs over
the years as well, like there was one that was
like a real estate that says Za did it again,

(07:03):
and then he recently did one at least online. That
was a satur Day thing.

Speaker 4 (07:09):
It was pretty amusing, very nice.

Speaker 2 (07:11):
But yeah, he's apparently a Zat megafan, and you know
a lot of people like him out there, you know
where you see this maybe when you were younger, and
something about about it sticks into your brain and you
can't quite get it out.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
All right, what's the elevator pitch?

Speaker 2 (07:26):
On this film, a lonely mad scientist in Florida hatches
a plan to raise an army of giant walking catfish
and avenge himself over his colleagues, and also conquer the planet,
perhaps the universe, and we're left to follow him and
see how it works out.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Let's hear that trailer.

Speaker 5 (07:45):
Audio and now coming to this theater. One of the
most incredible stories of modern time, Zat Invasion of the
Walking Catfish. A crazed scientist, doctor Leopald is convinced he

(08:11):
can turn humans into fish. He proves it by transforming
himself into a horrible, revengeful killer fish. Za tells it all.

(08:33):
You won't want to miss Zat Positively no one admitted
during the last fifteen minutes.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Okay, now, you would not have expected a movie like
this to have major folk music themes. And I don't
know if the trailer audio we just had the folk
music in it. If not, maybe we should insert a
clip right here, just because like you've got to have
this in your head to understand everything that comes after.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Oh yeah, I mean, we can go straight to the
music here if you like this. What we're about to
hear is is a bit from a song titled World
War two Boy, which is a very strange, strange title.
But this is from Barry Hodgen and Jamie Defrates. They
were the composers, and this is Jamie Defrates performing the

(09:32):
song give Us all Right. That's just a clip, but
this song is performed in its entirety at the top
of the film and it's and I actually love it.

(09:52):
I listened to this song quite a bit, especially in
the last couple of weeks leading up to this episode,
because you can you can find this on Spotify and
various other streaming places. If you just look up Zat
Songs or Jamie Defrats, you will find it. There's a
B side, and we'll get to the B side track
in a bit. But these tracks are featured in the
film in full no cuts.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Yeah, so it's almost it's almost a rock opera. I
mean not quite, only a couple of songs in the movie,
but like it has musical numbers.

Speaker 2 (10:22):
Yeah, And I have to say, I mean we'll get
into this a little bit when we start rolling through
the plot. But yeah, the music. Music always elevates the film.
If you have quality music, it can really create dimensions
that would not be there otherwise. And I legitimately think
that the music and Za, both the folk music and
some of the other music will get to does a

(10:43):
great job of that. Like it takes this this sort
of awkward, fumbling creature feature and elevates it to this
level where it does legitimately get caught up in your brain.

Speaker 3 (10:57):
Do you ever hear that story? It was by somebody
who worked on Halloween with John Carpenter. It might have
been Donald Pleasance who told the story about going to
see a preview screening of the movie where the music
had not been added in yet and thinking like, oh no,
what a disaster, like I'm so embarrassed, and then seeing
another cut later when the music had been finished and

(11:19):
added in, and suddenly everybody thinks this is a horror masterpiece.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it really does. It can really
elevate things to new levels. Though shocking that Donald Pleasance
would find embarrassment in a film at that stage of
his career, because it's not like this would have been
the first the first bad movie he was in.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
This come before or after Puma Man.

Speaker 4 (11:43):
Oh, I don't recall.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Oh, but either way, there were definitely some Puma Man's
in there before Halloween. All right, Well, we'll come back
to more about the music in a bit, but let's
start with the screenwriter, or one of the screenwriters and
the director, Don bart who lived nineteen thirty through twenty thirteen,
so he was very much alive to see the renaissance

(12:07):
of ZA, the resurgence of ZA, and in fact, the
disc that we watched featured introductory commentary by Don Barton
thanking everyone for their support of the creature.

Speaker 5 (12:19):
Here.

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Yeah, yeah, he shows up right at the top of
the film. And I should point out this disc it
like it's one of those that doesn't even have a
menu in it. You just put it in and it
just plays. The only option is play. But it starts
with him talking and Don Barton says in nineteen seventy one,
my film production company in Jacksonville, Florida, decided that the

(12:40):
time was right to make a feature film, meaning this
was his first feature film. He'd only done one other
movie before this, which we'll talk about in the second
which was a short film. But he says he sat
down with his staff to discuss ideas quote, and we
decided that our first motion picture should be a creature feature.
So this turned in to an idea I think talking

(13:01):
with some writers and associates of his about a man
catfish creature that terrorizes a small town in his quest
for revenge. And then Don Barton says that the initial
theatrical release was very promising. He doesn't elaborate on what
exactly that means, but he says that due to unspecified mishaps,

(13:22):
the film had been unavailable for like thirty years at
the time that it was re released. Though I wonder,
I mean, there must have been some way people got it,
because they must have gotten a tape of it for
Mystery science theater. I'm not sure what.

Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, though I think even that there were some issues
if I am to understand correctly, like there was there
was a situation where a Sci Fi Channel I think
at the time aired it, and then Barton's people got
in touch with them and there was some back and
forth about like the rights, but it eventually got worked out.

Speaker 3 (13:50):
Okay, that makes sense. But man, when I was watching
this preamble by Don Barton at the beginning of the movie,
I kept thinking, who does this guy remind me of
his Something about his voice and the way he talks,
And then I realized, he reminds me of the TV
news host Bill Moyers, who used to do like I

(14:10):
think he worked for uh, he did his specials for PBS,
and then I think he worked for CBS for a while.
But so like I got that feeling like, oh no,
this is like Bill Moyer's introducing a PBS special on
ZA that's going to feature interviews with Joseph Campbell.

Speaker 4 (14:29):
Yeah, it does have that kind of vibe.

Speaker 2 (14:31):
Now, Yeah, we mentioned Jacksonville already and we will mention
Jacksonville some more. Bart Barton was Jacksonville based. He was
a producer and director. This was his second and last
directorial credit, following nineteen sixty nine's They're Out to Get You.
But he was apparently involved throughout his life in the
Florida film industry, having co founded the Florida Motion Picture

(14:52):
and Television Production Association, and he also produced documentaries, training films,
TV commercials, et cetera.

Speaker 3 (15:00):
And this is actually more the genre that They're out
to Get You was, so they're out to get you.
I was really looking for an online copy of it
and I couldn't find anything. But if somebody out there
has better sleuthing capabilities, please send this our way. This
is not an entertainment film. They're out to Get You
from nineteen sixty nine is an educational short that I

(15:20):
think was supposed to be shown to retail employees. So
it's like one of those harassment or ethics training video
workplace videos they show you on the first day at
a new job, except it is about shoplifting, and the
plot of it is that there's this young criminal, or
at least this is the alleged plot. I had to
find a summary. Somebody wrote online there's a young criminal

(15:43):
named Tony Alto who steals cars for a living, and
he gets caught and sent to prison, and in prison,
his cellmate turns out to be this I don't know,
this smooth guy who's going to tell him no no,
no stealing cars. You're doing it all wrong. Here's what's
up shoplifting, and he explains to him why shoplifting is
a much better way to make a living by stealing.

(16:07):
And so as you go through the narrative, I think
it shows the tricks that shoplifters could be using in
your store, or your store or yours.

Speaker 2 (16:18):
So it also sounds like it's just in general, a
shoplifting training video. Yes, for either side of the equation.

Speaker 3 (16:24):
Well, it's kind of like how Dare was supposed to
scare kids away from doing drugs, but instead it was
just kind of like, here are all the different kinds
of drugs you could do.

Speaker 2 (16:34):
All right, Well, let's talk very briefly about the additional
story credits ron Kivitt and Arnold Stevens and also Lee
O LaRue. Not much to report here, though. Ron Kivitt
was apparently an investigator on History Channels ancient aliens at
one point. So what was he investigating aliens? I guess

(16:55):
or pyramids? You know, one of the two. Probably that's
the main creative force behind the picture that we're going
to discuss here. At the top, it's time to get
into the cast and the film is initially concerned with
only one human being and devotes a good twenty something
minutes to just him, and that is our signature character,

(17:19):
our main character, doctor Kurt Leopold, played by Marshall Grower.
Now this is his one and only film role, and
for a long time I assumed that he only did
the physical performance that we're seeing. Marshall Grower and somebody
else is providing that just overly sardonic voiceover that we
were talking about that again is just like Vincent Price

(17:41):
turned up to eleven Vincent Price without any humanity left
in it at all, you know, the voice of just
an overacting demon. But he apparently did the narration as well.
Leopold the character, the human character never speaks camera, not

(18:02):
a single time, but we have just this voiceover at
length describing what he's planning to do, what he's doing,
what you know, his ultimate aspirations are. It's a lot
of fun. But I would say Marshall Grower is just
delightful in this film because the voiceover is just so rich,

(18:23):
it's just so overdone. And then physically he has this
weird combo of sinister awkwardness and this kind of outsider sadness,
which when you throw in the sort of film quality
of Zat, it feels like you're watching a window into
someone's personal hell.

Speaker 3 (18:41):
You know, doctor Leopold is a human with the personality
of a car that's having maintenance problems. He's having trouble accelerating,
he's releasing dark, foul smelling exhaust like he needs to
get his catalytic converter replaced. But also the thing that
I realized about him, there's a scene early in the

(19:01):
film where he's walking along a beach, but he's not
dressed for the beach. He's wearing long slacks and a
shirt tucked in, and his head's hanging down in this
kind of like sad like puppy dog way, except he's
he's a little he's more drab than a puppy dog.
And you know, there's this acoustic guitar strumming in the background,

(19:22):
and he's just this beacon of shabbiness. In some shots
he's giving off strong Harry Dean Stanton fumes.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good comparison that kind
of drawn Haggard appearance.

Speaker 3 (19:37):
Yeah, but on the other hand, he has a haircut
that doesn't quite match because I don't know how to
describe as his haircut. It's very strange. It's kind of
messy and moppy in the front, but also to make
it weirder. So it's a haircut that I think I've
basically only seen on women before. It's a cut style
that kind of puffy up in the back and raises

(20:00):
up toward the back or the crown of the head,
and then goes flat down toward the front. Do you
know what I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
I'm having a hard time picturing his hair in my head.
All I picture is that face and then later that bod.

Speaker 4 (20:17):
Which we'll get too.

Speaker 3 (20:19):
Well. Anyway, he's a profound screen presence.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
IMDb does not list birth and death dates for Grower,
but I was looking around and I think I found
him as being listed. Is buried in a cemetery in Jacksonville,
and he lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety one.
And if I have the right guy here, and I'm
I'm pretty sure I do, he was pretty active in
the Jacksonville theater so and I would not be surprised

(20:46):
if that's where Ultimately a number of these actors come from.
Actors that in many cases have no other movie credits
listed to them.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
Thinking about this guy being active in Jacksonville theater got
me off on a tangent that I actually think about
a good when we're watching these B movies, especially locally
produced B movies, movies that are, you know, not a
product of la but you know, come out of Florida
or somewhere else in the country. And it got me
thinking about how acting talent translates across from stage to

(21:17):
screen and the disconnect that can occur when somebody spans
these two worlds. Because I was thinking about a story
where a longtime close friend of mine, he used to
do some local theater directing in Tennessee, and he was
at one point directing. This was years ago, but at
one point he was directing an adaptation of a Tennessee
Williams play, I think, and he ended up working with

(21:39):
this actor, who, according to him, was just magical on stage,
you know, one of the best actors he had ever
worked with, and was spellbinding. But we found out this
guy had also been in a few movies and I
don't recall the exact titles, but they were just like
Z grade horror movies, you know, Chupacabra Rampage nine or
something like that, And so we watched these and this

(22:03):
amazing local theater actor was, you know, just not especially
impressive in a direct video horror context. And I remember
having a kind of revelation at that point that like, oh,
you know, stage talent and screen talent are not always interchangeable,
and context really matters. Like somebody who can be a
very good actor when they've got good material to work with,

(22:25):
Like a lot of the people who do these Z
grade horror movies are probably a lot of times doing
Shakespeare or something, you know, in local theater, or they're
or they're they're doing Tennessee Williams plays or something like that.
But then when you put them in in a catfish
monster movie, the whatever talents they've developed for those other
acting contexts just don't really translate. But there's a good

(22:49):
chance in any given B movie that there are plenty
of members of the cast who are no names in
the film world, but they're like the best actor in
their local theater group and their use to doing Shakespeare
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Yeah, I mean, I guess there are so many different
ways you can cut it. I mean, on one hand,
it's the difference between the stage and being told by
a director, Yeah, we're filming this next scene in the
basement of this building. Or just walk on the beach
for a little bit. Yeah, now, I don't know what
your motivation is, just you know, just just walk on
the beach and we'll fill you in a bit. We're

(23:23):
still writing that part, you know, stuff like you can
imagine the distance between the two projects. On top of
just how you know, colossal and undertaking any level of
film is not to take anything away from a stage production,
which of course is also a colossal undertaking in so
many regards. But but yeah, yeah, the tools that aide

(23:45):
you in one dimension might not aide you as well
without some tinkering in the other.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
Yeah, certainly true. But I mean, just I think it's
important that people should always keep in mind if you
are a fan of z grade horror movies and the
kind of stuff we talk about on this show, should
always remember that whenever you're watching one of these films,
there's a good chance that the actor who is completely
failing in front of you right now is actually great
in some other context.

Speaker 2 (24:13):
Yeah, Now, Leopold will eventually turn into a monster and
will detail that at length. But when he is a monster,
he is played by someone else. The monster is played
by Wade Popwell, who lived nineteen forty eight through two
thousand and six. This was his only film role, and
he apparently answered a newspaper call for tall actors who
were also experienced scuba divers.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Oh yeah, this was a funny thing I read as
one of the mini trivia facts claimed about this movie.
I guess I'll cite several of these throughout the episode.
There are a number of interesting facts that are claimed
on the IMDb page for this movie that are unsourced,
so I can't verify them, but at least the claim
is that he was recruited through a newspaper ad. Like

(24:55):
you say, it was basically like, we need a really
tall person who's going to play monster, and they got
like tons of responses, like people were Florida was into this.

Speaker 2 (25:07):
All right. The next acting credit to highlight here, Gerald
Cruz played marine biologist Rex. He doesn't have a last
name as far as I know. This was his only
film role, which ultimately surprised me because I thought he
had a nice screen presence in this as the African
American Marine biologist who is the first to realize that
something is wrong.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
Yeah, this movie does something that a lot of these
creature feature nature strikes back type movies do, which is
there's somebody who's like the voice of reason, you know,
the cooler head who's putting together the evidence while everybody
else around them is just sort of like reacting erratically
and emotionally. And he plays the cool head in this movie,
like he's the person who's out there saying like, oh,

(25:49):
there's pollution in the water, and oh, here's this report
of a catfish and this wound on the victim looks
like a giant catfish claw mark. I think he at
one point concludes, I'm not sure that lines up with reality,
but like that's the role he plays in the movie,
and he's set opposite. For example, this sort of like
redneck sheriff who's always got a piece of straw hanging
out of his mouth or I guess a piece of hay,

(26:11):
and he's always like, well, I don't believe in monsters.

Speaker 4 (26:14):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
And that is Sheriff lou Krantz played by Paul Galloway
who lived nineteen twenty three through twenty fifteen. Like everybody
in this wasn't in tremendous much else. But he played
garage man, which I assume is a bit part in
the in JD's Revenge from nineteen seventy six in New
Orleans crime drama starring Glenn Turman and Lewis Gossip Junior.

(26:39):
In this film, however, yeah, he plays the small town
sheriff who is lazy and largely incompetent. Yeah, but in
the later portions of the film shows a little bit
of hustle, but not quite enough.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
He's one of those characters who is not the antagonist
of the film. He's not a bad guy, but he's
just sort of a he's a roadblock. He's just sort
of getting in the way of what needs to happen happening.

Speaker 5 (27:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
Now, another thing I should point out is that this
is one of those movies where you see a few
repeats during the credits. For example, Paul Galloway here, who
plays the sheriff, he was in the cast, but he
was also a unit manager. And then I saw in
the credits that Ron Kivett, who was one of the
writers of the film, was also the technical director and
did some of the costuming, And I think there were

(27:27):
a few others like this, so it's not all the
way to Neil Breen or Coleman Francis Tire where the
directors also getting credits for catering and event security and stuff.
But there is some repetition going on, all right.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
A couple of other actors that we'll mention. Sannah Ringhaer
plays Agent Martha Walsh. Dave Dickerson plays Agent Walker Stevens.
Both of these actors these were their only film roles,
but these two will come back to them. There are
Moulder and Scully and that they work for a shadowy
organization known as in Pit.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah, they get called in by Rex, the marine biologist.
I could not have told you these characters' names for me.
They were just Inpit Agent one and Inpit Agent two.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
Now another character that the character's barely worth mentioning him.
There's a deputy sheriff in this, but it's played by
an actor by the name of Rich Valerie, who lived
fifty two through twenty eighteen. Was only in eight films,
but they included small roles in Jaws three, The Road
to Welville, and Knight of the Hunter.

Speaker 3 (28:34):
Well, he was in Knight of the Hunter.

Speaker 2 (28:36):
Wait that Night of the Hunter Joe, the nineteen ninety
one made for tv Knight of the Hunter starring Richard
Chamberlain and featuring Burgess Meredith and Ray McKinnon in a
small role.

Speaker 3 (28:49):
Okay, that would make sense. Now for him to have
been in the original Night of the Hunter, he would
have to have been I guess three years old when
he starred in it. The original Night of the Hunter
is a scary movie, man, talk about spellbinding actors. That
that is one of the all time greats for me
in terms of a screen presence that you cannot take
your eyes off of. Robert Mitcham in that movie is

(29:11):
scary as hell.

Speaker 2 (29:13):
Yeah, But what if we remade it in the early
nineties with Richard Chamberlain in the role? Okay, that's supposedly awful. Okay,
Now that's enough with the cast. That's enough with the
humans and the monsters. We need to talk just a
little bit about the music and then the next few
people of note are responsible for the music of that.

(29:34):
And the music of that is pretty great, even if
it's a bit all over the place as well, which
is kind of suitable. It encompasses more traditional late sixties
early seventies film score work, which some of that I
suspect is stock music, but then it also has like

(29:55):
folk rock, it has ambient synth in there. Yeah, there's
some uncredited stock music in there, per IMDb by Trevor Duncan.
So it's kind of all over the place, but there's
some some really interesting stuff in there.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
I was not really won over by the electronic music
in this one, which mostly just took the form of
like kind of painful, high pitch noises and screeching.

Speaker 2 (30:19):
Oh really, I I ultimately really liked that, That's what
I recall. Yeah, well, it is like that. It is
kind of noisy at times. It kind of gets into
that Doctor X territory where you know we discussed in
that film there are these these these scenes that have
ambient mad science noises in the background. It sounds a
lot like it is some manner of like modern post

(30:42):
industrial electronic score, and so Za definitely has that vibe
going on. But I actually really liked it. It's in
my opinion, I thought it was pretty effective. It's cynthy
kind of noise ambient and the electronic music like this
in the film, and I suspect some of the background.
Electronic Weirdness is the work of Jack Tamil, a Floridian

(31:05):
synth musician, and if you look him up on Spotify
and other digital platforms like that, you'll find some rather
haunting nature ambient recordings that he's done, such as Voices
of the Everglades of Everglades State Park and Gator Bellows
in the Everglades, both the collaborations.

Speaker 4 (31:23):
With James T.

Speaker 3 (31:24):
Miller.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
Okay, but he also put out some excellent space music
in the nineteen eighties and nineties, including The Referee Has
Vanished from nineteen eighty six, Meditative Massage from nineteen ninety two,
Cynthist I think it is from nineteen eighty two, and.

Speaker 3 (31:41):
Then well that's a religious affiliation. Honestly, I am a synthist.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
And then there's a nineteen eighty album he put out
titled Electroacoustic like Electro Slash Acoustic, which was released on
Spectrum Records. I couldn't find any of these available in
the normal places online, but I did find a YouTube
upload that consists of Electroacoustic The Referee Has Vanished and
sounds from Zat's audio, and you can also looks like

(32:09):
you can still pick up electroacoustic used on vinyl. I
was listening to it. It's pretty good. I enjoyed it.
Also not surprising the number one YouTube comment on that
track that I mentioned. It's our land chiming in and
saying yeah, thank you for putting this.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
Comment with his real name. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
If you know another Jack Tamil track you can look
up on band camp. There's a comp titled Escape from
the Cage Volume two Into the Underworld, originally released by
Oracle Music in nineteen ninety. If you look that up,
he has a track on there. It's called Imber Days,
and I thought it was rather nice. Anyway, that's Jack Tamil.

(32:56):
That's the electro you know, synth noise background that you hear.
But again, uh, the the folk music that comes to
us from Barry Hodgen and Jamie Defrates and and their
story is kind of interesting as well. According to the
blog Bill Ectric's Place, Bill is an ocala based writer

(33:17):
and blogger in Florida. Defrates lived in Jacksonville at the time,
and he was a traveling musician, having supposedly opened for
the likes of Willie Nelson, janis Ian Little River Band,
you Know, et c. Various people that were making the
rounds in those days. And he ran a recording studio
in Jacksonville and is still active.

Speaker 4 (33:37):
I looked him up.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
He has or had a website. Some of these guys,
their websites kind of come in and out. But yeah,
Jamie defrates. You can look him up on on Spotify
and you can find the music from ZA. It's pretty,
it's pretty nice.

Speaker 3 (33:52):
Interesting. Well, Rob, I regret having having yucked your your
your delicious synth music, or maybe I should give it
another shot. I just recall when I was watching it,
there was frequently like a just a high pitched noise
that was starting to kind of make me feel a
little woozy.

Speaker 2 (34:10):
Well, but then again, you have to remember, like that's
kind of what the music is supposed to do in
a film like this. It's to build that sense of
unease and an alienation and Floridian weirdness.

Speaker 3 (34:22):
Well, I'm there, Seth.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Give us just a little taste of some of that
Jack Tamil music before we move on to the plot.

(34:45):
All right, Joe, let's get into the plot of this baby.

Speaker 3 (34:47):
Yes, let us tell the story of a man who
dreamed he was a catfish or was he a catfish
dreaming he was a man.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
A true tale of metamorphosis of mythic proportions.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Absolutely so the movie starts, of course, the version we
watched has that great intro from Don Barton again with
the Bill Moyer's energy for me. But then it gets
right into the film with stock footage. I doubt this
was shot for the film. It looks like something from
a nature documentary where it's showing off sargassum seaweed as

(35:18):
we have just discussed on the core episode from yesterday,
and a real nice prickly looking fish, and we get
voiceover that at first I thought was a poem. It
really sounded like he was reciting a poem because he says,
sargassum the weed of deceit, sargassum fish, mighty hunter of

(35:39):
the deep. Okay, so that's almost like a close and
near rhyme there, so you think he's developing a poem.
But then the stuff he starts saying after that doesn't
really fit. He starts saying, what an inspiration you have
been in my plot, your life of hiding, waiting, stalking
your prey at just the right moment attack, I love you?

Speaker 4 (36:01):
What are you?

Speaker 2 (36:01):
The poetry police, Joe, you're saying this isn't poetry.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
Oh, I don't know. I mean what I was trying
to figure out was whether the movie thought it was
a poem or right, I was just talking. I mean, yeah, anything,
anything's a poem.

Speaker 4 (36:15):
If you say it is, it is.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
It is such a startling start to this picture, because
again it's clearly stock footage, and the voiceover is just amazing.
And I do love the idea of somebody on early
nineteen seventies forty second Street in New York City walking
into this picture, you know, thinking they're getting some sort
of a sleazy monster movie, and they're hit with documentary

(36:38):
footage right off.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
The bat, and just the guy who sounds kind of
like Vincent Price telling this fish that he loves it.

Speaker 2 (36:46):
Yes, I love you, and then he goes on to
admire various other species for minutes at a time. You know,
the shark, I admire you. Soon I'll swim with you.
They'll be afraid.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Yeah, very good. And the scorpion fish an objectively ugly,
beautiful fish, like a fish that is beautiful in how
ugly it is. And he's like, you are gorgeous. They
think I'm insane, they're the ones who are insane.

Speaker 4 (37:15):
Yeah, it's pretty tremendous.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
Another thing that's cool, though, is that actually the stock
footage they select, I don't know what it's originally from,
but whatever nature documentary it is, they got some cool
footage because monster Science moment. Here, they catch a sargassum
fish eating another fish whole, like just spreading its mouth
wide and clamping down over this fish's body, and the

(37:38):
fish that it eats is almost as big as the
sargassm fish itself.

Speaker 2 (37:44):
This reminds me that in the actual science episode we
recorded yesterday about this organism, I neglected to mention that apparently,
sometimes when it eats another fish, since you can actually
see the prey inside of it through its am I
translucent skin.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
Oh yeah, so yeah, I've seen that.

Speaker 4 (38:03):
Yeah, so that's so wonderful.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
I love it. I don't want to be it like
doctor Leopold here, but I do like it a lot.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
Oh. I don't know if we mentioned that's how he
follows up. So he's looking at the sargasm fish and
he's saying I love you, but then he says, I
hope I'll be a good imitator.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
Yes, Basically he begins to lay this out through you know,
ultimately like twenty minutes of narration, that he is going
to draw inspiration perhaps behavioral, but also genetic inspiration from
these organisms as part of his master plan.

Speaker 3 (38:40):
I think you already mentioned this, but we should stress
it's like twenty three minutes into this movie before you
see a human being who is not a mad scientist.
Right up until up until then, it is exclusively doctor
Leopold looking like Harry Dean Stanton, shuffling around on the
beach and through the ruins of a marine and like

(39:02):
stock footage of animals from the sea, and then a
monster just sort of rambling around.

Speaker 4 (39:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (39:08):
Most films, you know, they'd probably start off with like
a teenage couple meeting they're relatable, and then they're killed
by a monster or something like that. Not this film. No,
it's just it's doctor Leopold and stock footage of fish
from the get go.

Speaker 3 (39:22):
We do get a teenage couple fooling around. Later in
the movie, when the monster is on a rampage, there's
this this young couple that are like on a porch
swing and they're making out and the guy's like, I
don't believe in monsters. And then, of course it's a good.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Hour and a half into the picture you get what
is probably an opening segment in most films.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Yeah, but yeah, how to describe that there is a
powerful emotional resonance to the opening of this film when
you first see doctor Leopold wandering around. I mean, I
guess we've already tried to describe it nine different ways.
But yeah, it's it's Harry Dean stanton Ish, it's it's shabby,
it's drab, it's it's lonely. He is failing, and he

(40:04):
is going to do science to fix it. Oh and
of course we should mention that while we see him
wandering on the beach, this is when the World War
two Boy song is playing. And one of the lines
in the song that is just a kiss on the
top of the head from the Sun God. It's the
part where he says Sachet, sachet through the sargasm.

Speaker 2 (40:23):
Yes, I could go on and on about just how
wonderful that song is, because the lyrics at once, the
lyrics sound like lyrics that were composed after half watching
part of the film, you know, just sort of like
trying to loosely figure out what the plot is like
it refers to your your calendar research, which seems like

(40:43):
a strange description of what appears to be going on
in the in the motion picture. But also it ultimately,
like I don't know, it ends up giving Leopold more
depth because he's talking about you know, you know about
you know, how he's wanting to change himself outside you
change yourself to be inside what you already see you know,

(41:03):
which I guess is kind of.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
Like you know, which is a catfish.

Speaker 2 (41:07):
Yeah, he's already a giant catfish.

Speaker 4 (41:09):
I don't know.

Speaker 2 (41:09):
It ends up working for some weird reason. It just
works very well.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
The true catfish was inside you all along.

Speaker 4 (41:16):
Yeah. Uh no.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
So I've got a question about how a filming location
here matches up with reality. I don't know if you
have any insight on this, but I'm wondering. So, after
we see Harry Dean Stanton here wandering through this desolate
beach landscape while the World War two boy plays, he
wanders into a place that looks to me like the
ruins of an off brand sea world, like if a

(41:42):
marine world type attraction was abandoned for years and just
you know, things collected all over it. As the seasons
came and went, that's what we'd be seeing that he
walks through. I know that part of this movie was
filmed at Marine Land of Florida, but from what I
can tell, I think it was actually in operation at
this time, not like an abandoned ruin. So I'm not

(42:03):
sure exactly what we're seeing.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Yeah, Like there's a scene where he's walking around or
through what looks like what's previously a tank of some
sort and now it's just empty and as leaves and
clutter in it. I guess my thinking is twofold on this.
First of all, just because Marine World was up and
running didn't mean there were parts of it that maybe
had fallen into disuse or weren't being used, you know,

(42:25):
the outskirts of the facility, that sort of thing. Like
I think if you go to any play, you go
to your local zoo or botanical garden, there's going to
be a part of the property where you could probably
film a scene for a monster movie, you know. Yeah,
on the other hand.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
It could just be off season. I mean, maybe it
looks that bad just as the winter.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
Well that's the other thing, Like we have to remember
that Florida is Florida, and it is a jungle, so
you know, we're talking about just like a few months
without anybody paying attention to the maintenance of a place,
and it'll look like absolute ruin, you know, which I
think is one of the appeals of certain Florida movies
as well, the Florida Ruins.

Speaker 3 (43:04):
Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna guess that this is actually
part of Marine Land, Florida, which is a place that
is operated off and on and I think was also
a filming location for Revenge of the Creature, a very strange,
a very strange Florida movie. Indeed.

Speaker 2 (43:21):
Yeah, probably the best Creature from the Black Lagoon movie,
if one can say such a thing about Creature from
the Black Lagoon.

Speaker 3 (43:29):
It's the sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon, and
I think it's the one where the creators have realized that, like, oh,
in the original Creature, the humans were definitely the bad guys, right, Like,
the creature didn't do anything, it was just living in
its own place, and then humans showed up and they
were like, let's shoot at it. And we're supposed to
think that the humans are good for just going to

(43:50):
a place where a monster lives and killing it.

Speaker 4 (43:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:53):
Yeah, I mean the Creature was the character that we
we all relate to and associate with, and I think
a certain similar thing is going on in this film
as well. I mean the creature from the Black Lagoon,
or that they are both literally fish out of water.
You know, they're they're they're they're they're literally outsiders, and
you know that's that's the sort of thing you often

(44:16):
relate to in a film like this.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Though, I will say I will make a strong distinction,
which is that I fully side with the creature because
he's just hanging out in his place and they come
there and start attacking him. Right, that is the aggressor
that that is trying to work out scores in a
way that is not productive. He could have, like, if
he was mad at his former coworkers, coworkers, he could
have written them a letter saying like, here's what I

(44:40):
think are our unresolved issues. Instead, he's like, no, I'll
turn myself into a catfish critter and and come to
your house and kill you.

Speaker 5 (44:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (44:47):
He's very clear on this. It's not just I want
to restore ecological balance, No, No, he wants to basically
all but wipe out the human race, hunt the remaining
humans for sport, and to proclaim himself ruler of not
merely the Earth, but the universe. So he has some
grandiose plans here.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
Doctor Leopold, you are asking for more than as your do. Yes,
But of course, so we see doctor Leopold still in
human form at the beginning. He goes back to his lab,
which I think are probably some some places at Marine
Land of Florida. I'm not sure, but there are places
with like hooses attached to the ceiling and stuff like
that kind of equipment that you would imagine might be

(45:29):
in an actual marine biology lab or I don't know,
an animal marine veterinary clinic or something.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
Yeah, And I think they cobble together a lot of
stuff too, like there's a black light, some black light
stuff back not black light darkroom equipment in the back,
and went at one point, you know, so clearly you know,
they took some initial clutter, they filled it up with
some other technological stuff, but it ends up looking good.
I felt like it. I feel like this is an

(45:57):
adequately lonesome and mad scigence.

Speaker 3 (46:00):
And see layer, Yes it is. It is very dingy.
It is very damp. It is very dank. It is
a it doesn't look like a place you'd want to sleep.
And of course we get some classic mad scientist dialogue
while he's fiddling around with his equipment. He he says,
the formula. They all laughed at my little gym zat

(46:20):
and we find out that Z is a. It's like
a formula. It's like Z sub a A sub t.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
I think, yes, yeah, I believe so.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Okay, So it's like a. It's a. It's a mathematical
or chemical formula of some kind. But he tells the
through the voiceover. He says, it's very powerful. They'll have
fish the size they've never seen before, walking fish who
like human flesh.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
So he wanders around the labs a lot. He stops
to tickle an octopus, which I liked. He just reaches
into the tank and kind of like touches it a
little bit, and then he starts doing voiceover about this
one species of catfish, the walking catfish, which according to
this is another one of those claims that was listed
on IMDb unsourced. But according to the claims of the Kivott,

(47:12):
one of the writers, he got the idea for this
movie by reading an article about this species of catfish,
the so called walking catfish, or Clarius betracus. But anyway,
this voiceover about the catfish, I wondered if this was
actually written for the film, because it sounds like he
is reading from an encyclopedia or a field guide entry,

(47:35):
and I was wondering if somebody could find the text.
But I was googling sections of what he says in quotes,
and I came up with nothing. But I wonder maybe
I'm just not looking for it quite the right way.
But then he goes on, I rant about how there's
a problem with the walking catfish, which is that it
is too small, and he tells it that you are
not ready to battle humans. But then he says, soon

(47:57):
the whole world will know and respect us. And so
I'm a little confused about his plan because he's he's
going on about how all the humans will be killed,
but then he also says that they will finally respect him.
So I don't know, Maybe it's that they'll respect him
before they are killed.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
Yeah, I guess at the very least. But also, you know,
he does allude to the fact later on that some
humans will be alive, possibly so maybe those are the
ones who will respect him.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
All right, Well, no more screwing around. It's just time
to inject myself with the giant needle. And that's what
he does. He grabs this needle that is huge. It's
like a you know, it's like a feather duster sized handle,
you know, So it looks like it was designed for
saltwater crocodiles, and it's full of some kind of green
gatorade looking liquid and he just jams it straight into
his arm.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
But that's just phase one of the transformation. First is
the injection.

Speaker 4 (48:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
Next comes the kind of a baptism.

Speaker 5 (48:51):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:51):
He's got to get into a tank. So he gets undressed.
He's wearing these huge blue box or shorts with his
butt kind of hanging out and that's funny. And then
there's this pool of water, and I think there is
some blood mixed in with the water. And then there
are these Geiger counter sound effects in the background. So
I think, suppose something is supposed to be radioactive this

(49:12):
pool of water may be it could be that it's
supposed to be heavy water. Because later on some characters
talk about how his laboratory, doctor Leopold's laboratory used to
do heavy water experiments.

Speaker 2 (49:25):
Ties right into previous episodes of Stuff to Bout Your Mind.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, I mean, as we discussed in that episode, as
soon as you get into a pool of heavy water,
you turn into a catfish creature. So the science checks out.
But then he gets himself into this kind of winch
gurny thing. I don't know how best to explain this.
It's like it looks like a device that would be
used for airlifting comatose dolphins.

Speaker 2 (49:49):
Yeah. Yeah, it's fittingly awkward and ritualistic. It's an unsettling
scene because he doesn't just climb in. Yeah, he lowers
himself into.

Speaker 4 (49:59):
It this thing.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
Yeah, so he gets in the gurney, he lowers himself
into the water with a rope, and then we get
electronic beeps and Geiger counter clicks and then finally he
emerges and he is the creature, and then we will
never want We will never again the rest of the movie.
See the actor who plays Leopold, he's just gone.

Speaker 2 (50:19):
That's right. All we have is this this fabulous monster.

Speaker 3 (50:23):
So it's not like a ware catfish movie where he's
changing back and forth. He's just he's just this creature permanently.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Yeah, And I think this is one of the things
I always that always capture my imagination imagination about the
film is that instantly we look at this and we're like, oh, sweetie,
you have you have really done it?

Speaker 4 (50:41):
Now?

Speaker 2 (50:42):
This is this is not good. But he has different
thoughts about it.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
Oh yeah, So as soon as he gets out of
the water, he looks at himself in a mirror and
he you think for a second he's upset, but but no,
he turns it around. He says nothing at all like
a catfish, but it's utiful. And what is he talking about? Well,
I would say that he looks like a cross between
Greedo and Alf, except he's got a sort of like

(51:10):
dirtier texture than either one of them. So it's like
if you cross Greedo and Alf, but then have that
creature fall into a puddle of mud and dead leaves
that get stuck to him. And then he's also got
green fur around certain parts of his upper body. I
think it's the parts where the sort of shirt part

(51:30):
of his suit comes together, because it's similar to the
white fluffy parts of a Sanda suit.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
Yeah, he looks a little bit like the Grinch at times,
you know, and he has kind of like Grinch physique.

Speaker 3 (51:41):
Yes, he does. That's a very good comparison. I didn't
think of that. Some parts of his body have a
kind of peter pan garment shingled leaf texture, or maybe
the Green Giant has some clothes that look like this,
the shins in particular. But also he has a snout
that ends in a leech mouth. Well, it's kind of
like a leech mouth. It's like a red circle with

(52:04):
teeth in the middle, but they're not those circular leech
like teeth. They're more just kind of like a dog's
teeth with canines.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
It is not even remotely articulated though.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
Like no no, no, painted on teeth basically, and according
to the writer Ron Kivett, this is another one of
those IMDb trivias. The monster has this mouth that looks
kind of like a leech's mouth because in an earlier
version of the script, he was supposed to suck blood
out of his victim, so he was going to be
a vampire catfish monster. But I think they scrapped the

(52:37):
sucking blood, but the costume was already made, I suppose. Okay,
so he's transformed and then we get to a part
that a legitimate laugh out loud part of the movie,
which is when he goes to his big to do
list on the wall. He's got this wall, it's like
this giant disc shaped wall calendar that he's got his

(52:59):
upcoming tasks written on. And we see him go up
to the cell on this calendar labeled self transformation and
he crosses it off, like oh, there's one thing off
my to do list. And then the next item on
the list is another instance of the word transformation, but
it is next to a drawing of the outline of

(53:20):
the state of Florida, and this drawing is labeled fla period,
which is the correct AP styling of abbreviation of Florida.
Which makes me think we may have a journalist decorating
this set, because I don't know if you remember, I
mean that we used to have to know AP style
when we were writing for How Stuff Works.

Speaker 2 (53:40):
And yeah, yeah, I still, I mean it's hard to shake.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
Yeah, everybody just uses the postal abbreviations now, or maybe
they didn't have the postal abbreviations in nineteen seventy one.
I don't actually know.

Speaker 2 (53:51):
We at any rate, this is the calendar research that
Jamie defraits was referring to. Yes, And I don't know, Joe.
I think this is just how you had to do
things before modern project management software, right, have to keep track.

Speaker 4 (54:03):
You just had to have a.

Speaker 2 (54:04):
Giant circular calendar chart on the wall taking up enormous
real estate in your mad science layer.

Speaker 4 (54:13):
Yeah, and you had to.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
Draw pictures of the state that you're going to transform.
So he draws Florida transformation. I guess of Florida. Another
hilarious thing about this is that next to the drawing
of Florida, there's a label of the ocean, and it's
just labeled Atlantic Ocean. But like, who was going to
be confused? Wasn't he just making this for himself?

Speaker 2 (54:35):
Well maybe he wasn't sure. You know, after the transformation,
you know, his brain might be a little foggy.

Speaker 3 (54:41):
He needs lots of visual that's a good point. Yeah,
Like he couldn't predict his future mental state, so he's like,
maybe I will be confused and I will need to
relearn geography.

Speaker 2 (54:51):
At any rate. It looks, it looks weird, and I
like it. I actually made a Christmas tree ornament based
on it. At one point.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
Oh, that's good. So the Leopold catfish monster goes out
on the town. He goes out equipped with a spray
bottle and just starts spraying nature, I think with the
ZAT formula. So the sprays snakes and frogs, and he
sprays reads. At the water's edge. He goes swimming and
then uses the spray bottle underwater to spray an octopus

(55:20):
and a crab. You see him literally with the spray
bottle like under the water, squeezing it.

Speaker 2 (55:24):
And now, yeah, so we have some underwater photography going
on in this sequence and then in some sequences to come.
And I don't know if you noticed, Joe, but we
have some very clear underwater sequences here, and I believe
that's because they were filming in the various springs of Florida,
which even today they're not as clear as they used

(55:44):
to be due to environmental reasons and runoff and so forth,
which is depressing, but even now, very clear waters and
back in seventy one, yeah, perfect place to shoot your
monster movie, even if you were doing so on a budget.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Oh okay, yeah, I should have noted that they really
did not look like the cloudy, stagnant pond water I
would imagine in most of North Florida.

Speaker 4 (56:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
So, yeah, we are twenty three minutes into the film
before we finally introduced non leopold humans and actual dialogue
one keric human character talking to another human character.

Speaker 3 (56:26):
Unbelievable. So here we.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Introduce the sheriff and Rex, the marine biologist. And if
it's not clear at this point, it becomes clear that
they were sort of going for in the heat of
the night thing here. This is based on a novel.
Nineteen sixty seven movie directed by Norman Jewison. I saw
a small town southern sheriff played by Rod Steiger teaming
up with an African American homicide detective from up north

(56:51):
played by Sidney Poitier. And yeah, that is nowhere near
in the Heat of the Night in terms of serious
drama and cultural commentary. But it seems to be like
that's what they were going for here. They were thinking, Hey,
what if it was like in the Heat of the night,
except there was also a giant catfish.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
Yeah, this is something we've seen in a number of
these other ecological monster movies from the seventies. They also
seem to try to inject some social commentary in there.
It's often kind of light and not super deep. But yeah,
I think that is probably what they're attempting. Is Rex
the marine biologist also supposed to be from out of town.
I don't recall if that was the case, but.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
I don't remember if it's expressly stated, but it feels
implied that he's not from around here.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there's a general suggestion that
there's this rigid, parochial, local white conservative infrastructure that does
not process the introduction of knowledge about pollution causing monster attacks,
being it does not incorporate that information well, and it

(57:57):
sort of requires the expertise of somebody who provides a
different perspective. And so it's got in this case, an
African American scientist who may or may not be from
out of town, but at least has reacted to that way.
And of course, as we said earlier, the redneck sheriff
and this is literally chewing on a hay stalk when
we first meet him, and generally seems to be derisive

(58:20):
of the concept of science and expertise.

Speaker 2 (58:22):
Yeah yeah, he's kind of a Floridian wigum from the Simpsons.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
Yeah yeah. In fact, the sheriff there are a lot
of people in this movie that the sheriff shows he
does not respect, and that includes hippies, the press. At
one point we have a reporter who's trying to cover
the issue, but the Sheriff's just like somebody ought to
smash you flat. And then of course he's not fond
of out of towners scientists. I think he represents southern

(58:53):
cultural rigidity.

Speaker 2 (58:55):
But that's enough human stuff. Then we come back to
Leopold once more.

Speaker 3 (58:59):
That's right, Leopold. He comes back to the lab after
he's been out there spraying stuff, and he goes up
to another thing on his big wall calendar and he says,
mats in your days are numbered again. I think this
is voiceover, and we have no idea who Matson is.
But I think the point is he's got a grudge
against some scientists who he worked with who told him

(59:20):
that his theories were too extreme. I think this other
scientist told him he was taking it too personal and
he didn't like that. So he's going to get his revenge.

Speaker 2 (59:29):
Yeah, and this is where you begin to I mean,
it's already been an awkward transformation. We've watched him move
around za the month. I mean its name's not Zat
sometimes I think of him as that, though again Za
refers to the chemical, not the monster. The monsters just Leopold, Yeah,
the giant fish. But he moves around so awkwardly, certainly
on land. It's really hard for me to buy that

(59:50):
this is better than your human form. And in the water, Okay,
I guess he's marginally better in the water than a
human would be, but it's already I mean to going
kind of rocky. And then he's like, you know what,
I also, revenge is part of my plan. And then
it's like, so he's not only going to attempt to
unbalance the ecosystem and bring upon a new age of fish,

(01:00:12):
he also has some petty revenge agendas in there. He
also needs to commit murder crimes.

Speaker 3 (01:00:16):
Oh, he's got several. He gets sidetracked on a lot
of stuff. So, yeah, he's got revenge murders. And then
at some at some point later on, I think he
becomes lonely and he wants he wants a fish wife.

Speaker 2 (01:00:26):
Yeah, he goes the classic of Frankenstein's monster route, and yeah,
he wants a companion. And so that's addition, you know,
it's just the budget on this plan is just getting
blown out of proportion, right.

Speaker 3 (01:00:37):
He decides he needs to at the last minute add
in a bride of catfish action item, and that that's
how things really go off the rails. But so at
first we just see him creeping around on various people.
He creeps on Rex, the marine biologist, while Rex is
out taking samples of nature. He creeps on a woman
who's painting beside the lake. He creeps on a family

(01:01:00):
while they're fishing, and then he ambushes them, sort of
flips over their boat, and I think kills the dude.
And I think the dude who was fishing was one
of the scientists who doubted him.

Speaker 2 (01:01:11):
Yeah, yeah, that seems to be the case. One of
the problems is that we get less and less narration
from Leopold as we go, Yes, And I don't know
if that's by design, like he's becoming less and less
human so there's less of that voice in there, or
if they just ran out of time. I don't know,
But we're increasingly on our own to figure out what
he's doing and why he's doing and even if he's

(01:01:32):
doing something successful.

Speaker 3 (01:01:34):
Yeah, and so at some point Leopold attacks another one
of the scientists who doubted him. But he attacks him
in his house, not in the water. And I was
just noticing at this point, like, wait, a minute, does
Leopold even really have any catfish powers? I mean, I
guess you were sort of alluding to that a minute ago,
but like, this murder could have just been done by

(01:01:54):
a big human. He just attacks a guy in his
house and chokes him.

Speaker 2 (01:01:58):
I think, Yeah, the only possible answer I can think
of there is that human Leopold does look kind of
shambly and puny. I'm not sure if he could have
pulled this off, So I guess arguably monster form is better, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
But also at some point here evidence starts mounting that
something weird is going on with pollution in the water,
and the Leopold attacks, and Rex is on the case.
Rex starts putting the pieces together. One point, he's out
collecting data with a net and Leopold is swimming in
the water underneath his boat, and he tears up the net,
and Leopold's like, nets are harmful to fish, We will

(01:02:36):
use them for humans if any survive.

Speaker 2 (01:02:40):
Yeah, it's like, let's not get ahead of ourselves, Leopold.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
Yeah, but Rex ends up summoning these people we talked
about before, the INPIT agents. In PIT I think is
an acronym. I don't know what it stands for. I
tried to look it up, and there is something called INPIT,
but I don't think it is what is being referenced here,
So I really don't know what it is. What would

(01:03:03):
you say, is the deal.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
With them international Nature Police Information Technologies?

Speaker 4 (01:03:09):
I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
I guess they're kind of like they feel like they've
arrived from a TV show, Like there's a TV show
where they investigate strange nature happenings. They have their own van,
they have jumpsuits.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
By god, it's like the A team is here.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
Yeah, they're the professionals. They're here to get stuff done.
But it does feel like they're coming from an entirely
different television show. And indeed they may feel like this
if you're watching it unriffed for the first time, because
a lot of the end pit stuff was cut from
the Blood Waters of Doctor Z edition on MST three.

Speaker 3 (01:03:44):
Kh Okay. Now, yeah, they arrive in this big camper
like RV basically, and they are dressed in these red
uniform jumpsuits, so they look kind of like they stepped
out of Flash Gordon or something. Yeah, and they compare
notes with Rex and they talk about all the pollution
he's found and how this might be affecting the mutant

(01:04:04):
marine life attacks, and so they start putting the pieces
together along with Rex. Now we mentioned that unfortunately Leopold
gets distracted from his transform everybody into fish. Well, I
don't know if that's what he's ultimately, whatever it is
he's doing, he gets distracted by deciding that he must
make a bride of catfish. So he goes back to

(01:04:26):
the lady who's painting by the lake, who's still there
it seems like maybe days later, and he kidnaps her
and takes her back to the lab to turn her
into bride of catfish. And it doesn't work.

Speaker 2 (01:04:38):
Yeah, it is a lonesome and disastrous episode in the
Ascent of Doctor Leopold here where yeah, she dies half
transform still in the baptism cage thing. And then afterwards
he has to get rid of her body. And this
is another this is another sequence that was cut from

(01:04:58):
the MST version. What does he do to get rid
of her body? Does he feater to fishes or anything
like that?

Speaker 4 (01:05:03):
Nope.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
He dissolves her in a big old vat of Hollywood.

Speaker 3 (01:05:07):
Acid, our old friend.

Speaker 2 (01:05:09):
Yeah, it's a great sequence. All while we have some
like weird you know, the weird Tamil electronic music going
on in the background.

Speaker 3 (01:05:15):
And we see him test the acid on a fish.
He dips the fish in the acid and it eats
away half of it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:21):
This film is not concerned with wasting anybody's time. We're
gonna do some an acid scene and we're going to
spend about fifteen minutes doing it.

Speaker 3 (01:05:30):
We've got to make sure that our catfish monster is
doing quality assurance on his acid. Yeah. So we see
Rex in the inpit agents set up traps for the monster.
I guess at this point they suspect there's a giant
catfish monster somehow, and they set up traps and then
they chill in a camper. And this part also reminded
me of Boggy Creek too. And the legend continues where

(01:05:51):
they will set up traps in the woods and then
chill in an RV. But eventually the catfish monster attacks
them and they somehow scare it away I think with
a camera flash, and they end up getting photos of
it and.

Speaker 2 (01:06:04):
It's a really good photo. If this is another place,
where is that? I mean, doctor Leopold is just really
messing up, like, oh my goodness, now you're you've come
been completely photographed and it's crystal clear.

Speaker 4 (01:06:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
Yeah, So they get perfectly good photos of him. And
there's one part somewhere in here where Leopold is I think,
sad and defeated. And he goes back to his lab
and you see that he is sad. I think about
the fact that he failed to successfully turn the woman
he kidnapped into into bride of Catfish, and so he
starts drawing her. But the picture he draws of her

(01:06:38):
does not look like the woman that he kidnapped. It
looks like Elvira. Maybe he was supposed to be drawing
somebody else, and did he have like a long lost love?
Is that implied in the movie.

Speaker 2 (01:06:48):
I don't think that's even implied, Okay, but you know,
we're left to figure out a lot of this on
our own, So maybe it is. Or maybe he just
was like, this is my this was my one shot
at romantic happiness, and the kidnapping and forced transformation did
not work, So I've got to do this alone.

Speaker 3 (01:07:04):
Maybe it was Elvira, or I guess at this time,
maybe it was Vampira. He was like, oh, Vampira, Yes
she could have she could have been my companion in
the fish world.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
But alas, at any rate, the main experiment continues.

Speaker 3 (01:07:19):
Right, so Rex and the inpit agents they end up
making the connection to Leopold. One of the inpit agents,
I guess agent Walls. She figures out that Leopold was
working on a lab that was conducting secret experiments with
heavy water, and he is attacking his former co workers

(01:07:39):
from the lab he worked at, and so they asked
the sheriff to check on those researchers. And then then
so I guess they're doing that. But then we spend
a long time with the monster going out for a walk,
just wandering around the streets at night. His posture as
he walks, You've mentioned that his posture is awkward, and

(01:08:00):
it's amusing in a way that it's difficult to describe.
He's kind of like a drunk guy trying to walk
through the sand and flip flops, you know, or it's
like hard to get solid footing and you got things
coming off your feet. So it's that kind of walk
But another thing about this movie is that it does
not follow the Jaws rule, you know, the rule that

(01:08:21):
you should not show too much of your monster until
the final act. This movie, the monster is on screen
constantly full view, bright lights. You see the whole thing
for minutes at a time. It's just alf Grido front
and center, wandering through the empty streets at night. You
see him break into a drug store to get some

(01:08:42):
kind of medicine. He smashes a bunch of stuff, I think.

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
Because yeah, that's because he's yeah, well he's He becomes
injured at one point. So so not only does the
experiment seem to be failing, he becomes perhaps mortally wounded
or at least like heavily wounded to where he's having
to break into a pharmacy and wreck the play and
steal some drugs and so like, the whole plan seems
to just be going completely off the rails at this point.

(01:09:07):
Now one of my favorite scenes, and this one I
laughed out loud at this one. This is a scene
that was cut from the MST treatment of the film,
and it's ultimately a lost because it's hilarious. There would
have probably been a lot of fun riffing on this one,
but it's what I think of as the hippie parade.
So the sheriff here, he goes to check on folks
in town and finds the youth enjoying a little folk

(01:09:31):
music clearly in like some sort of abandoned building, and
they're hanging out with none other than the the actual
real life Jamie Defrates, who is performing a song the
B side to World War Two boy Running Don't Make
You Free. And so anyway, the sheriff, you know, he
comes under in the midst of this. He sets down
and he listens for a spell, you know, perhaps proving

(01:09:53):
that he can hang you know, and.

Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
He's like he's enjoying the music.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Yeah, it looks like he's enjoying. It's like, yeah, this
is good. I can I'm see and I to eye
with the young folk now.

Speaker 3 (01:10:02):
But quickly. Another thing that made me laugh in the
scene is that for just a moment, Leopold arrives and
is watching through the window the monster and he's also
ambiguously kind of grooving, but then he just moves on.

Speaker 2 (01:10:15):
It's almost like it was meant to be a music
video for this song, you know. Yeah, because again these
songs are featured in their entirety, nothing is cut. So
the sheriff, you know, he enjoys it for a bit,
but he's there with a purpose. He has to he
has to protect these hippies. So the sheriff, uh you know,
gets up and leads the hippies all mid song on

(01:10:36):
a police escorted parade through town with with the with
Jamie de Frate's playing the guitar the whole time and singing.
And then so they have this procession through the small
Florida town and then right into the sheriff's office and
then right into a jail cell. And it's then explained
that this is to keep them safe and that the

(01:10:58):
hippies seem okay with it, but it's not clear for
a moment, and I found it kind of perversely humorous.

Speaker 4 (01:11:03):
It's like.

Speaker 2 (01:11:05):
The old sheriff. You think he's, you know, see an
eyed eye with the young folk and he's looking after them.
Now he's just arresting all of them, so.

Speaker 3 (01:11:13):
They don't seem bothered by it. Like they all just
go into the jail cell and they're just like cool.

Speaker 2 (01:11:17):
Man, yeah, yeah, pretty much, and they're locked up and
you never see them in the film again.

Speaker 3 (01:11:22):
Yeah, so a lot of the rest of the movie
is just Leopold stalking around looking at things and menacing people,
and then Rex and the Inpit agents trying to track
him down. They're on his trail at this point and
they're trying to find him, but at one point Leopold.
A lot of what Leopold does is like look through

(01:11:42):
the windows at people and spy on them, And at
one point he observes the two in Pit agents kissing.
He spies on them through a window, and I guess
he gets jealous, so he decides at this point to
kidnap Agent Walsh, one of the two in Pit agents,
and create another of Catfish Bride of Catfish two point zero.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
Right, So again really veering off schedule here with the
whole plan because he's again heavily injured at this point,
having to self medicate with stolen pharmacy drugs. But then
he's like, I'm gonna try it again. I'm going to
try and transform this woman who is hunting me into
my bride.

Speaker 3 (01:12:21):
Yes, So he kidnaps her from her house, takes her
back to the lab, and then Rex Walker and the cops.
Walker is the other Inpit agent. They figure out what's
going on and they're chasing the monster down that they
split up to chase him and the other in Pit
agent Walker uses this hilarious looking amphibious vehicle that looks

(01:12:41):
kind of like a power wheel. It's very small.

Speaker 2 (01:12:44):
It's very cool, I assume from the non existent in
Pit television series that I'm imagining in my head.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
Yeah, and coming up as a scene where you see
this Inpit agent sort of wading through a swamp and
he gets bitten by a snake. And this is another
one of those IMDb trivia claims. It claims is that
the snake bite was not scripted. It was just something
The guy actually got bitten by a snake while they
were filming the scene and they just left it in
the movie. Well, I don't know, I feel doubtful, but

(01:13:12):
it looks kind of real.

Speaker 2 (01:13:13):
It looks it looks realistic. But I also really like
the way it plays into the ending of the picture.
So yeah, for a bit here we have this kind
of double chase where where one agent is trying to
chase down the monster and then we have Rex, the
marine biologists and the sheriff. They are going to check

(01:13:33):
out the laboratory to see what's up, see what old
Doc Leopold was up to. And then of course we
also have Agent Walsh who has been kidnapped.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
Right, so they go to the monster's layer. The sheriff
fights the monster and loses and is strangled, so bye
bye Sheriff. And then Rex he comes across Leopold's notes
and he, I think, wants to understand them so we
can understand what was going on here. You wonder if
it's like that scene in the movie where one scientist
discovers what the mad scientist is doing, like the good

(01:14:05):
scientist is momentarily tempted. It's the last temptation of the
good scientist, and it's like, oh, it's genius.

Speaker 2 (01:14:13):
Yeah, But of course that shows up and violence ensues.
He ultimately tries to save Agent Walsh, and I guess
to a certain degree succeeds, because what Zach tries to
do is he puts her in the cage as well.
He forced he injects her with the green stuff, and
then he's going to lower her into the za baptismal

(01:14:34):
font but Rex disrupts that and then Rex is injured,
possibly killed by the monster, and the monster players off.

Speaker 3 (01:14:43):
Yeah, so I wonder do all the main characters die,
because we have this chase at the end where Rex
tries to save Walsh. You see him get injured and
then fall down, but I guess you never see him
after that. A similar thing happens to the other Inpit Agent.
He sort of it's injured and falls down, and at
the end of the movie, I think we see him
not moving, but it's not clear if he's dead or alive,

(01:15:06):
and you think, well, at least Agent Walsh has been saved.
She did not get turned into a catfish, but something
bad happened to her. I don't know exactly what it is.
She is not upgraded to fish level, but she is
sort of turned into a zombie human.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Yeah, so I think she got half the treatment right.
She's injected with the ZAT, but then she's not actually
lowered into the ZAT baptismal font to transform her body.
And so yeah, the ending of this film I think
is actually pretty effective. It's haunting and kind of pitch
perfect because throughout the whole film, we've watched Leopold stumble

(01:15:42):
awkwardly around his grandiose dreams and voiceover so mismatched with
his new body, his actual abilities, his focus, his mixed results,
but in the end, against all odds, he achieves his goal.
For the most part, he struggles and stumbles into the
ocean with his zat formula, like two tanks of it. Meanwhile,

(01:16:04):
one of the male agent that was snake that is
like shooting at him with a rifle and seems to
at least wing him, possibly kill him, but he gets
that za into the ocean. And then meanwhile, even though
he's unable to completely transform Agent Walsh into his catfish princess,
she does. She wakes in the zombified state. She wanders

(01:16:26):
out onto the beach, and the other agent tries to
call to He's like, oh, thank goodness, you're all right,
but she just wanders into the water, just like a zombie.
And yeah, we're left to pieces together because then we
kind of zoom out and some haunting music plays. So
we just don't know, like, did she enough, Is she

(01:16:46):
transformed enough that she'll survive in the water, or is
she about to drown? Did enough Zach get into the
ocean to bring about this new age of giant fish
and bring down humanity? I don't know, but it seems
like that might be the case, so it seems like,
you know, despite everything, doctor Leopold has won. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:17:06):
I think the implication is that all the human characters
die and he succeeds in throwing his formula into the
ocean to create a race of atomic superfish that will
conquer the world.

Speaker 2 (01:17:17):
Yeah, it's quite an ending. It ends on a really
good note where where you kind of forget some of
the awkwardness and weirdness and mismatched tonal choices.

Speaker 3 (01:17:26):
Now, another one of the many claims about this movie
online is that apparently the movie was originally supposed to
end with, or at least include I think this would
be at the ending, giant fish attacks, like a giant
catfish that was like rampaging around and destroying the town.
And apparently they filmed some versions of this, I think

(01:17:49):
with miniature models of the town, but then they realized, oh,
this does not look good, so they cut that part
out of the movie. But one shot from the sequence
allegedly made it into the film, Yeah, which is where
a catfish, like a little catfish, is squirming next to
a fence.

Speaker 2 (01:18:06):
Yes, I saw this when I did my recent viewing
of zat uncut, And yeah, like, suddenly, there's this brief
sequence that looks like like poor effects test footage of
a walking catfish flopping around on a model of some landscape.
So yeah, that seems to match up with what we're

(01:18:26):
seeing here, but there's no context for it. When it
actually shows up in the film, you're just going like,
what what was that?

Speaker 3 (01:18:32):
So I guess we mentioned the fact that when Doctor
Leopold first transforms and looks at himself in a mirror,
he says, ah, nothing like a catfish, but it's beautiful.
And I wonder was it intended that he would look
nothing like a catfish even though he is half man
half catfish, or did they just get whatever costume they

(01:18:56):
could get and then they're like, oh, we better add
a line and here sort of acknowledging this doesn't look
like a catfish.

Speaker 2 (01:19:02):
Yeah, maybe that's how it went down, or maybe that's
what they told themselves. You know, they're like, no, this
isn't quite what we went for, but it is beautiful.
Let's devote oodles of screen time to it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:11):
So weirdly, this is not the only Killer Catfish movie
that I've ever seen. It's been many years now, so
I've forgotten a lot of the details about it, but
I'm pretty sure that I watched a killer catfish movie
about six or seven years ago called Beneath that's about
people trapped on a boat who are being stalked on

(01:19:32):
a lake by a killer catfish, and I recall it
having a really good, subtle sense of humor. I think
it might have been a Larry Fessenden movie.

Speaker 2 (01:19:39):
But oh yeah, I just looked it up and it is.
Larry Fessenden. Quite a filmmaker. He's made some very interesting
genre pictures.

Speaker 3 (01:19:47):
The main moment of this movie that stuck with me
is there's one point where I think one of them
has just been attacked by catfish, and the people remaining
alive on the boat one of them gets up and
yells in the direction of the catfish, what do you
want from us?

Speaker 2 (01:20:05):
Well, clearly it's muck. They're here for the muck.

Speaker 3 (01:20:08):
Yeah, catfish want Now why would catfish want to eat humans?
They just sort of like suck up mud? And I
don't know it. Should have looked up something about catfish
feeding behaviors before I open my mouth on that. But
it's not a sequel to that, not that I can tell. Okay, no,
it's just like it doesn't look anything like the Grito alf.
It is just a gigantic Google eyed catfish.

Speaker 2 (01:20:31):
Well, in the end, there's nothing else quite like it.

Speaker 5 (01:20:34):
It is.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
It is quite an impressive film, all the everything, and
it comes together awkwardly but kind of perfectly. You know,
it's like it's the monster itself as film. Now you
might be wondering where can I watch that? Well, that
has been out on DVD and Blu Ray for years,
but it sadly looks like it's out of stock everywhere

(01:20:55):
at this moment as we're recording this. Hopefully that'll change
in the future. It's also been available i think on
Amazon Prime in the recent past, but it's not there
right now. But you can watch the MST version Bloodwaters
of Doctor Z. You can digitally obtain that most places,
including Amazon Prime. For our copy, again, we rented our

(01:21:17):
copy from Atlanta's own Video Drome, and if you're in Atlanta,
you can go there and rent various DVDs and Blu
rays or buy some cool merch And you can also
check them out online at videodrome dot tv and you
can buy stuff and they'll ship.

Speaker 4 (01:21:31):
It to you, which is pretty cool.

Speaker 3 (01:21:33):
They should make Doctor Leopold head motorcycle helmets. So you know,
it's the Zat monster, but it goes on for the
bike ride. In fact, you could do the whole thing,
like the leather jacket is a Zat jacket.

Speaker 4 (01:21:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:21:44):
Oh well, you know, speaking of that, because that sounds
like exactly the kind of thing that our Land would
potentially do. If you're listening to this and you don't
know the art of our Land, you can go to
our Land art dot com and you can check out
some of the stuff that he creates. All right, So
there you have it. That's episode two and what may
be a Florida movie trilogy. We'll see. I'm not sure

(01:22:07):
if we'll be back next week with another Florida movie
or the week after that. It kind of depends on
Joe's tolerance for all the Florida nests of these motion pictures.

Speaker 3 (01:22:17):
Oh, you know, I'm generally game.

Speaker 2 (01:22:19):
All right, we'll see, you know, sometimes it's nice to
have a palette cleanser sometimes between films. So I don't know,
we'll see, we'll figure it out in the meantime. If
you'd like to check out other episodes of Weird House, Cinema.
We publish this every Friday in the Stuff to Blow
Your Mind podcast feed We're primarily a science podcast, and
so our primary episodes on scientific topics like the sargassum, seaweed,

(01:22:43):
the organism, and the end of the environment those published
on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We publish listener mail on Mondays,
and the listener mail covers like everything Weird House cinema,
but also Stuff to Blow your Mind. And then on
Wednesdays we publish the artifact a short form bit a
particular artifacts in moments in time, etc. So check all

(01:23:04):
that out. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can find
us and we just ask the you rate, review and
subscribe if the website allows you to do that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:12):
Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:23:34):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,

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