Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Zaat

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and today we got an
episode from the vault for you. This is Za or
the Blood Waters of Dr z Uh. This episode originally
aired on one April. Am I right about that? Yep?
I believe. So this one ties into the Stuff to

(00:26):
Blow Your Mind vault episode that we ran the other day,
so I think they pair nicely with each other. This is,
of course, one of three different Florida movies that we
discussed last year, the Florida Never Stops. Hey, everybody, sit back, enjoy.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

(00:46):
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird How Cinema. This is
Rob Lamb and I'm Joe 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. That's right.

(01:09):
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 ninety two Frogs, which we've covered previously.
Set in Florida as well, they capture a certain Florida
This both real and imagined. Uh. And this week we're

(01:29):
gonna look at the Florida movie par Excellence nineteen seventy
ones ZU. You might know it as the Blood Waters
of Doctor z. Some of you might even know its
Hydra basically. As we'll get into it had a number
of various releases over the years under different titles, but uh,
for the most part, the one that's stuck is z

(01:50):
Z a a 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 uh. This
is more of a sort of cheap body horror, mad
science movie with some ecological themes to it rather than

(02:11):
just like animals attacking for revenge on humankind. Yeah, it's
I guess at hart. It's a creature feature. But like
like a lot of films that you encounter like this,
certainly like like the first big independent efforts from from
filmmakers it It tries to do a lot of things,
so it's it's it's a creature feature, but it's also

(02:33):
like a science team adventure. It's also um, you know,
it also tries to be uh in the heat of
the night a little bit and uh. It also has
this nature strikes back element to it. It's also a
kind of a hippie folk musical, so it it kind
of bats itself around a lot and um. Depending on

(02:55):
where you are in the film, you might get something
that is uh tonally different from another portion of the film.
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 uh,
but I appreciated the the similar pompous voiceover narration, though
in this case it is the voiceover of a of

(03:17):
a crazed uh spurned scientist who wants revenge on the world,
whereas in Boggy Creek Too, it's just a kind of uh,
I don't know, like the town smart guy who wants
to to show off all his knowledge about the river.
Yeah yeah, yeah. The voiceover narration and this is um
is sardonic to the max. Like if you took Vincent

(03:39):
Price's voice and you reduced it overheat for a little
bit until it was it was just extra ikey and gooky.
That's what you'd have in the Bloodwaters of Doctor Z.
The voiceover narration wear's joker makeup. Yeah. Now, um, if
you mentioned Boggy Creeker earlier, and I think this is

(03:59):
a good point to mention that this film was was
riffed in a episode of Mystery Science Feed or three
thousand under the title the Bloodwaters of Dr Z. And
if you're like me, that might be where you discovered
the film. Um, and that's a great MST episode. I
don't want to take anything away from that, but as

(04:20):
I would watch and rewatch that episode, I found that,
like a lot of MST episodes that really called to 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 Florida ness of
it as well. So for this episode of Weird House Cinema,
this was the first time I watched an unriffed version

(04:43):
of that which rented from Atlanta's Video Drome video rental store.
And uh, 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 a there's a lot of
stuff that you're missing out on, some really um walky
and at times grotesque details and sometimes just ludicrous um

(05:06):
additions to the film. This is not of the attack
of the Crab Monsters School of Creature feature run time.
You know, it's not your sixty three minute abs this one,
I think is it's it's actually getting close to two
full hours, isn't it. Yeah, I think it's the it's
a hundred minutes long. It's a it's it's plus size
this one. Um, so you can you have to set

(05:28):
us out a little bit of time for it. Um.
And again the pacing is is at times kind of
weird but also antic um quite ludic at times. Uh huh.
Now we mentioned the MST episode. I think a lot
of people did discover it through that. Um. But the
film has has had a cult following outside of MST
as well, despite only having a limited release in Jacksonville, Florida,

(05:52):
and New York's Street back in nine two. The uh
you have the version we watched it begin ends with
the statement from the director where he's like people were
coming up to be and saying, don don You've got
to release this movie? Yes, so yeah, I think it was.
It was people really wanted some sort of release for

(06:13):
a long time, and luckily in recent years it has
been available. Um. But yeah, this this film, like the
Scorpion Fish uh and the Sargassum Fish is, it's been patient.
It knew that it would one day conquer the universe. Um.
And and it has its super fans, one of which
is the Atlanta artist and Jacksonville native our Land, who

(06:36):
I know we're both the fans of. Have you seen
any of our Lands Zapp pieces? Joe, Oh, 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 adults Win shows. I
could be wrong about that, but no, I don't know
which the za ones are. I know his, I know

(06:58):
his piece that's like the die verse with the spear guns.
Is that that related? Um? That one might not be
I mean, he's he works Florida into a lot of
his pieces, but he did, Um, he did create a
number of art pieces that actually feature that he did.
He did a show as part of a two thousand
nine screening of the film at the Plaza here in Atlanta,

(07:19):
and at least some of the pieces I assume from
that show were that they used to hang out over
at Joe's Coffee in East Atlanta. Uh, and I would
go there and bring my laptop and work. Uh and um,
I don't know, there may still be some pieces there.
I haven't been there in a in a spell, but uh,
there you know, images of Za and uh. He had
some some spinoffs over the years as well, Like there

(07:40):
was one that was like a real estate sign that
says that did it again. Um, And then he's he
recently did did one at least online that was a
zat or day uh thing. It was pretty amusing. But yeah,
he's he's apparently a zat Mega fan and they know
a lot of people like him out there, you know
where you see this maybe and you're younger, and something

(08:01):
about it's that it sticks in into your brain and
you can't quite get it out, all right, what's the
elevator pitch? 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
conquered the planet, perhaps the universe. Uh, and we're left

(08:23):
to follow him and see how it works out. Let's
hear that trailer audio and now coming to this theater.
One of the most incredible stories of modern time sat

(08:43):
Invasion of the Walking Catfish. A crazed scientist Dr. Leopold
is convinced he can turn humans into fish. He proves
it by transforming himself into a horrible oul that tells

(09:11):
it all. You won't want to miss that, positively, No
one admitted during the last minutes. Okay, now, you would

(09:34):
not have expected a movie like this to have major
folk music themes. And I don't know if the trailer
audio we just played had the folk music in it. Uh.
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. Oh yeah, I
mean we can go straight to the music here if
you like, uh this, uh, what we're about to hear

(09:57):
is um is a 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 Defrate's performing
the song. Alright, that's just a clip, but this song

(10:27):
is performed in its entirety at the top of the film.
Um and it's and I actually love it. 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 Z songs or or Jamie
Defrates you will find it. Uh, there's a B side

(10:49):
and we'll get to the B side track in a bit.
But these tracks are featured in the film in full
no cuts, so it's almost it's almost a rock opera,
not quite, only only a couple of songs in the movie,
but like it has musical numbers. Yeah, and I have
to say, I mean, we'll get into this little bit
when we start rolling through the plot, but yeah, the music.

(11:10):
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 great job of that. Like it
takes this this sort of awkward, fumbling creature feature and

(11:32):
and elevates it to a to this level where it
does legitimately get caught up in your brain. Do you
ever hear that story? It was by somebody who worked
on Halloween with John Carpenter. It might have been Donald
Pleasants 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

(11:53):
a disaster. I'm so embarrassed, and then seeing another cut
later when the music had been finn Ish and added in,
and suddenly everybody thinks this is a horror masterpiece. Yeah, yeah,
I mean it. It really does it? It? Uh, it
can really elevate things to to new levels. Though shocking
that Donald Pleasants would find embarrassment in a film at

(12:15):
that stage of his career, because it's not like this
would have been the first the first bad movie he
was in. This come before after Puma. Man. Uh, I
don't recall. Oh, but either either way, there were definitely
some Puma Man's in there before Halloween. All right, we'll
come back to more about the music in a bit,
but let's uh, let's start with the screenwriter, or one

(12:39):
of the screenwriters and the director, Don Barton, who lived
ninety so he was he was very much alive to
see the renaissance of of that, the resurgence of that,
and in fact, the disc that we watched featured introductory
commentary by Don Barton thanking everyone for their support of

(12:59):
the creature here. 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. It just you just
put it in and it just plays that the only
option is play. Um. But it starts with him talking
and he Don Barton says, uh, in nineteen seventy one,
my film production company in Jacksonville, Florida, decided that the

(13:21):
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.
Uh so this turned into an idea I think talking

(13:42):
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,

(14:03):
the film had been unavailable for like thirty years at
the time that it was rereleased. So I wonder, I mean,
there must have been some way people got it, because
the they must have gotten a tape of it for
Mystery science theater. I'm not sure what. Yeah, so I
think even that there was some issues, if I am
to understand correctly, like there was some there was a
situation where a sci fi channel I think at the time,

(14:24):
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. Okay, that
that that makes sense. But um 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

(14:48):
the TV news host Bill Moyers, who used to do
like I think he worked for Uh, he did his
specials for PBS, and then I think he worked for
CBS for a while. Um. But so like I got
that feeling like, oh no, this is like Bill Moyer's
introducing a PBS special on that it's going to feature
interviews with Joseph Campbell. Yeah, it does have that kind

(15:11):
of vibe. Now, yeah, we mentioned Jacksonville already, uh, and
we will mention Jacksonville. Somemore Barton was Jacksonville based. He's
a producer and director. This was his second and last
directorial credit, following nineteen sixty nine 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

(15:33):
and Television Production Association, and he also produced documentaries, training films,
TV commercials, etcetera. And this is actually more of 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
but if somebody out there has better sleuthing capabilities, please
send this our way. Um, this is not an entertainment film.

(15:56):
They're out to get you. From nineteen sixty nine is
an educational short that I think was supposed to be
shown to retail employees. So it's like one of those
you know, 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

(16:17):
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 named Tony Alto
who steals cars for a living, and he gets caught
and sent to prison, And in prison, his cell mate
turns out to be this, uh, I don't know this,
the smooth guy who's going to tell him no, no, no,

(16:38):
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 to make a living by stealing, 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. So it also sounds like

(17:00):
it's just in general, a shoplifting training video for very
either side of the equation. 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 all
the different kinds of drugs you could do. Alright, Well,
let's talk very briefly about the additional story credits um
Ron Kivett and Arnold Stevens and also Lee oh Lar LaRue.

(17:26):
Not much to report here though. Ron Kivitt was apparently
an investigator on History Channels ancient aliens at one point,
so he investigating aliens, I guess or pyramids. One of
it was, you know, one of the two, probably um.
But that 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

(17:50):
initially concerned with only one human being and devotes a
good twentysomething minutes to just him, and that is our
our signature character, our our main character, Dr Kurt Leopold,
played by Marshall Grower. Now this is his one and
only film role, and for a long time I assumed

(18:11):
that he only did the physical performance that we're seeing
Marshall Grower and somebody else's providing that just overly sardonic
voiceover that we were talking about that again, it's just
like Vincent Price turned up to eleven Vincent Price without
any uh you know, humanity left in it at all.
The you know, the the voice of just a uh

(18:32):
an overacting demon. But he apparently did the narration as well.
Um Leopold, the character, the human character never speaks on camera,
not a single time, but we have just this voiceover
at length describing what he's planning to do, what he's doing,
um what you know, his ultimate aspirations are, uh it's

(18:55):
it's a lot of fun. But I would say Marshall
Grower is is just delightful in this film because the
voiceover is just it's so rich, 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

(19:16):
throw in the sort of film quality of that, it
feels like you're watching a window into someone's personal hell.
You know, Dr 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

(19:40):
I realized about him that there's a scene early in
the film where he's walking along a beach, but he's
not dressed for the beach. He's wearing long slacks and
the shirt tucked in and his heads hanging down and
this kind of like sad like puppy dog way, except
he's he's a little he's more drabbed than a puppy dog. Uh.

(20:00):
And you know, there's this acoustic guitar strumming in the background,
and he's just this beacon of shabbiness. In some shots
he's giving off strong, hairy Dean Stanton fumes. Yeah, yeah,
I think that's a that's a good comparison, that kind
of drawn haggard appearance. Yeah. But on the other hand,
he has a haircut that doesn't quite match. Because I

(20:23):
don't know how to describe his his haircut. It's very strange.
It's kind of messy and mappy 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 this kind of puffy up in the
back and raises up towards the back or the crown
of the head, and then goes flat down toward the front.

(20:47):
Do you do you know what I'm talking about? Um,
I'm having a hard time picturing his hair in my head.
I all my pictures that face and then later that
that bod Uh we'll get to. Uh. Well, anyway, he's
a he's a profound screen presence. Imdbat is not list
birth and death dates for Grower, but I was looking

(21:09):
around and I think I found him as being listed.
Is buried in a a cemetery in Jacksonville, and he
lived nineteen two through And uh, if I have the
right guy here, and I'm pretty sure I do, he
was he was pretty active in the Jacksonville theaters, so uh,
and I would not be surprised if that's where Ultimately
a number of these actors come from, actors that in

(21:31):
many cases have no other movie credits listed to them.
Thinking about this guy being active in Jacksonville theater got
me off on a tangent that I actually think about
a good bit when we're watching these B movies, especially
locally produced B movies, movies that are, you know, not
a product of l A, but you know, come out
of Florida or somewhere else in the country. Uh. And

(21:53):
it got me thinking about how acting talent translates across
from stage to screen and and the connect 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,

(22:15):
but at one point he was directing an adaptation of
a Tennessee Williams play, I think, and he ended up
working with this actor who, according to him, was just
magical on stage, you know, one of the best actors
he had ever worked with, and and it was it
was spell binding. 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

(22:37):
horror movies, you know, Chuo Pacabra, Rampage nine or something
like that, And so we we watched these and this
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.

(23:00):
End context really matters. Like somebody who can be a
very good actor when they've got good material to work with,
Like a lot of 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

(23:24):
for those other acting contexts just don't really translate. But
there's a good 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 they're used
to doing Shakespeare or whatever. Yeah, I mean, I guess
there are so many different ways you can cut it.

(23:45):
I mean, on one hand, it's the difference between the
stage uh and being told by director. Yeah, we're filming
this next scene in the basement of this building. Um
or 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 still writing that part, you know,

(24:06):
so stuff like you can imagine that 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 um,
but but but yeah, yeah, the the tools that that

(24:26):
aid you in one dimension, uh might not aid you
as well without some re tinkering uh in the other. Yes,
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 and the
kind of stuff we talk about on this show, should
always remember that whenever you're watching one of these films,

(24:47):
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. Now, um, Leopold will eventually turn
into a monster and will detail all that at length,
but when he is a monster, he is played by
someone else. The monster is played by Wade Popwell, who
lived through two thousand and six. This was his only

(25:10):
film role, and he apparently answered a newspaper call for
tall actors who were also experienced scuba divers. 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 uh for this movie that are unsourced,

(25:30):
so I can't verify them, but at least the claim
is that he was recruited through a newspaper ad. Like
you say, it was basically like, we need a really
tall person who's going to play a monster, and they
got like tons of responses, like people were Florida was
into this alright. The next acting credit to highlight here,

(25:51):
Gerald Cruz played marine biologist Rex. He doesn't have a
last name as far as I know. Um. This was
his only film role, which ultimately surprised me because I
thought he had a nice screen presence in this as
the the African American Marine biologist who is the first
to realize that something is wrong. Yeah, this movie does
something that a lot of these creature feature nature strikes

(26:13):
back type movies do, which is there's somebody who's like
the voice of reason, you know, the 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
some He's the person who's out there saying like, oh,
there's pollution in the water, and oh, here's this report
of a catfish and this wound on the victim looks

(26:36):
like a giant catfish claw mark. I think he at
one point concludes, I'm not sure that really lines up
with reality, but like that's the role he plays in
the movie, and he's set opposite uh. For example, this
sort of like redneck sheriff who's always got a piece
of straw hanging out of his mouth or a guess,
a piece of hay, and he's always like, well, I
don't believe in monsters. And that is Sheriff leu Krantz

(26:59):
played by Paul Galloway, who lived um like everybody, and
this wasn't in tremendous much else, but he played garage man,
which I assume as a bit part in the in J.
D's Revenge from ninety six and New Orleans crime drama
starring Glenn Turman and Louis Gossett Jr. Um In this film, however, yeah,

(27:21):
he plays the small town sheriff who is lazy, um
and largely incompetent, but in the later portions of the
film shows a little bit of hustle, but not quite enough.
He's one of those characters who is uh not the
antagonist of the film. He's not a bad guy, but
he's just sort of he's a roadblock. He's just sort

(27:43):
of getting in the way of what what needs to
happen happening. Yeah, Now, another thing I should point out
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 Kivitt, who was one of
the writers of the film, was also the technical director

(28:05):
and did some of the costuming. And I think there
were 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 events, security
and stuff. But the but there is some some repetition
going on, all right, uh. A couple of other actors
that will mention Uh. Santa Ringhaer plays Agent Martha Walsh.

(28:30):
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 Molder and Scully and
that they know they work for a shadowy organization known
as in Pit. Yeah, they get called in by Rex,
the marine Biologist. I could not have told you these
characters names that for me. They were just Inpit Agent

(28:53):
one and Inpit Agent two. Yeah. Now another character that
the character is barely worth mentioning. And there's a dep
the sheriff in this, but it's played by an actor
by the name of Rich Valerie, who lived fifty two
through was only in eight films, but they included small
roles in Jaws three, The Road to Wellville and Night

(29:14):
of the Hunter. Well he was a Knight of the Hunter.
Wait that Night of the Hunter Joe made for TV
Night of the Hunter, starring Richard Chamberlain and featuring Burgess
Meredith and Ray McKinnon in a small role. Okay, that
would make sense now for him to have been in
the original Night of the Hunter, he would have to

(29:35):
have been I guess three years old when he started
in it. The original Night of the Hunter is is
a scary movie, man, talk about spell binding actors. That
that is one of the old time greats for me
in terms of a screen presence that you cannot take
your eyes off of. Robert Mitchum in that movie is
scary as hell. Yeah, But what if we remade it

(29:57):
in the early nineties with Richard Chamberlain in the role? Okay,
that's supposedly awful. Um Okay, now, uh, that's enough with
the cast. That's enough with the humans, uh and the monsters. Uh.
We we need to talk to just a little bit
about the music and then the next few people of
note are responsible for the music of that and the
music is that is is pretty great, even if it's

(30:18):
a bit all over the place as well, which is
kind of suitable. Uh. It encompasses more traditional late sixties
early seventies film score work. Um, which some of that
I suspect is um is stock music. Um. But but
then it also has um uh like folk rock. It
has ambient synth in there. Um. Yeah, so there's some

(30:41):
uncredited stock music and there PERI I am dB by
Trevor Duncan, So Um, it's kind of all over the place,
but there's some some really interesting stuff in there. I
was not really won over by the electronic music and
this one, which mostly just took the form of like
kind of painful, high pitched noises and screech. Oh really,

(31:01):
I ultimately really like yeah, mll it is like that.
It is kind of noisy at times. It kind of
gets into that Doctor X territory where, uh, 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

(31:21):
like modern post industrial electronic score, and so that definitely
has that vibe going on. Um. But but I actually
really liked it. It's um in my opinion, I thought
it was pretty effective. It's synthy, kind of noise ambient
and the electronic music like this in the film, and
I suspect some of the background. Electronic Weirdness is the

(31:44):
work of Jack Tamill, a Floridian synth musician and um
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 Everglade
of Everglades State Park and Gator Bellows and the Everglades,
both the collaborations with James T. Miller. But he also

(32:08):
also put out some excellent space music in the nineteen
eighties and nineties, including the Referee Has Vanished from nineteen
eight six, meditative Massage from synthe Synthist Synthist I think
it is from nine two, and then a religious affiliation
I'm a syntheist. And then there's a nineteen eighty album

(32:28):
you put out titled Electroacoustic like Electro slash Acoustic, which
was released on Spectrum Records. UM. I can't. 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 from from Zat's audio. Uh,

(32:49):
and you can also look like you can still pick
up electroacoustic used on vinyl um. I was listening to it.
It's uh, it's it's pretty good. I enjoyed it. Um.
Also not surprising the number one YouTube comment on that
on that track that I mentioned, it's our land chiming
in and saying thank you for putting this commenting with

(33:12):
his real name. Yeah. If you know another Jack Tamill track,
if you can look up um on band camp, there's
a comp titled Escape from the Cage Volume two, Into
the Underworld, originally released by Oracle Music in nineteen nine.
If you look that up, he has a track on there.
It's called Ember Days and I thought it was rather nice. Anyway,

(33:36):
that's Jack Tamill. That's the the electro uh you know,
synth noise background that you hear. But again the folk
music that comes to us from Barry hodgen And and
Jamie de Frate's um and and that their story is
kind of interesting as well. According to to the blog
Bill Etric's Place, Bill is an o'calla based writer and

(33:58):
blogger in Florida. Uh Defrate's lived in Jacksonville at the time,
and he was a traveling musician, having a supposedly open
for the likes of Willie Nelson, h Janice Ian, uh
Little River Band. You know, it's said various people that
were making the rounds in those days. And he ran
a recording studio in Jacksonville and is still active. I

(34:19):
looked him up. He has a or had a website. Uh,
some of these guys, their websites kind of come in
and out. But yeah, Jamie defrates. So you can look
him up on on Spotify and you can find the
music from Zach. It's pretty it's pretty nice. Interesting. Well, Rob,
I I regret having having yucked your your your your
delicious synth music, or maybe I should give it another shot.

(34:40):
I just recall when I was watching it, there was
frequently like a just high pitched noise that was starting
to kind of make me feel a little woozy. Well,
but 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 uh an alienation and flurid Ian weirdness. Well,

(35:04):
I'm there, Seth. Give us just a little taste of
some of that Jack Tamil music before we move onto
the plot. All right, Joe let's get into the plot

(35:28):
of this baby. Yes, let us tell the story of
of a man who dreamed he was a catfish? Or
was he a catfish dreaming he was a man? A
true tale of metamorphosis of mythic proportions. Absolutely So the
movie starts, of course, the version we watched has that
that great intro from Don Barton again with the Bill
Moyers energy for me. But uh, then it gets right

(35:50):
into the film with stock footage. I doubt this was
shot for the film it was. It looks like something
from a nature documentary where he's showing off sargassum seaweed
as we have just discussed on the core episode from yesterday,
and uh and in a real nice, prickly looking fish
and we when we get voice over that at first
I thought was a poem. It really sounded like he

(36:11):
was reciting a poem because he says, sargassum the weed
of deceit, sargassum fish, mighty hunter of 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,

(36:33):
your life of hiding, waiting, stalking your prey at just
the right moment attack. I love you. What are you
the poetry police, Joe? You're saying this isn't poetry. Oh
I don't know. I mean what I was trying to
figure out was whether the movie thought it was a
poem or whether just talking. I mean, yeah, anything, anything's

(36:56):
a poem. If you say it is, now it is.
It is such a startling start to this picture because
again it's it's clearly stock footage, and that then the
voiceover is just amazing. And I do love the idea
of somebody on early nineteen seventies forty two Street in
New York City walking into this picture, um, you know,
thinking they're getting some sort of sleazy monster movie, and

(37:18):
they're hit with documentary footage right off the bat, and
just the guy who sounds kind of like Vincent Price
telling this fish that he loves it. 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. Yeah,

(37:42):
very good and the scorpion fish and 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. Yeah, it's it's pretty tremendous.
Another thing that cool, though, is that actually the stock
footage they select, I don't know what it's originally from,

(38:04):
but whatever nature documentary it is, that 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 fish
that it eats is almost as big as the sargassum
fish itself. This reminds me that in the actual science

(38:27):
episode we recorded yesterday about this organism, I neglected to
mention that apparently sometimes when it eats another fish, uh
it's since it's it's you can actually see the prey
inside of it through its semi translucent skin. So yeah,
I've seen that. So that's so wonderful. I love it.
I don't want to be it like like Dr Leopold here,

(38:49):
but but I do like it a lot. Oh well,
I don't know if we mentioned that's how he follows up.
So he's looking at the sargassum fish and he's saying
I love you, but then he says, I hope I'll
be a good m a tater. Yes. Um. Basically he's
he begins to lay this out through you know, ultimately
like twenty minutes of narration. Uh that that he is

(39:10):
going to draw inspiration perhaps behavioral but also genetic uh
inspiration from these organisms as part of his master plan.
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.

(39:31):
Up until up until then, it is exclusively uh Dr
Leopold looking like Harry Dean Stanton shuffling around on the
beach and through the ruins of a marine park and
uh and like stock footage of animals from the sea,
and then a monster just sort of rambling around. Yeah.
Most films, you know, they'd probably start off with you

(39:51):
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 Dr Eopold in stock footage of fish.
From the get go, we do get a teenage couple
fooling around. Later in the movie when the monster is
on a rampage, there's this, uh, this young couple that
are like on a porch swing and they're making out

(40:12):
and the guys like, I don't believe in monsters. And
then of course an hour and a half into the
picture you get what he's probably an opening segment in
most films. Yeah, um, but yeah, how to describe that
there is there is a powerful emotional resonance to the
opening of this film when you first see Dr Leopold

(40:32):
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 sad,
it's lonely. He is failing and and he 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 Boys

(40:53):
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's Sace Sace through the sarcasm. Yes, the 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,

(41:16):
you know, just sort of like trying to loosely figure
out what the plot is like it refers to your, um,
your calendar research, which it seems like 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

(41:38):
wanting to change himself, um outside you change yourself to
be inside what you already see, you know, which I
guess it is kind of like you know, which is
as yeah, they say, already a giant catfish. I don't know,
it like it it ends up working for some weird reason,
it just works very well. The true catfish was inside
you all along. Yeah. Uh no. So I've a question

(42:00):
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

(42:21):
sea world. Like if if a Marine World type attraction
was abandoned for years and just you know, things collected
all over it as 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

(42:43):
like an abandoned ruin. So I'm not sure exactly what
we're seeing. Yeah, Like there's a scene where he's walking
around or through what looks like what's previously a tank
of some sort. Uh, and now it's just empty and
as leaves and clutter in it. Um. I guess my
thinking is is two fold on this. First of all, Um,
just because Marine World was up and running didn't mean

(43:03):
there were parts of it that maybe had fallen into
disuse or weren't being used, you know, the outskirts of
the facility, that sort of thing. Um, Like, I think
if you go to any any player. 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. Um. On
the other hand, it could just be off season. I mean,
maybe it looks that bad just as the winter. That's well,

(43:25):
that's the other thing. Like we have to remember that
Florida is Florida and it is a jungle, so um,
you know that we're talking about just like a few
months without anybody paying attention to the maintenance of a place,
and it will look like absolute ruin, you know, um,
which I think is one of the appeals of certain
Florida movies as well, the Florida Ruins. Yeah. Okay, so

(43:47):
I'm going to guess that this is actually part of
Marine Land, Florida, um, which which is a place that
has operated off and on and I think was also
a filming location for Revenge of the Creature. A very strange,
a very strange floor toa movie. Indeed. Yeah, probably the best,
uh Creature from the Black Lagoon movie, if one can

(44:07):
can say such a thing about Creature from the Black Lagoon.
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

(44:29):
to think that the humans are good for just going
to a place where a monster lives and and killing it. Yeah. Yeah,
I mean the creature was the character that we we
all relate to and associate with then, 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.

(44:50):
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
relate to in a film like this. 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. That is the aggressor that that is is

(45:12):
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 think are are
unresolved issues. Instead, he's like, no, I'll turn myself into
a catfish critter and and come to your house and
kill you. Right. He's very clear on this. It's not
just I want to restore ecological balance. No, No, he

(45:34):
wants to basically all but wipe out the human race,
um hunt the remaining humans for sport, and proclaim himself
ruler of not merely the Earth, but the universe. Uh
so he has some grandiose plans here, Dr Leopold, you
you are asking for more than as your due? Yes,

(45:54):
But of course, so we see Dr 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
in an actual marine biology lab or and I don't know,
an animal marine veterinary clinic or something. Yeah. And I

(46:18):
think they coppled together a lot of stuff too, um
like there's a black light some black light stuff back
not black light dark room, um equipment in the back.
It went 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 looking good.
I felt like it if I feel like this is
an adequately lonesome and mad science e layer. Yes it is.

(46:43):
It is very dingy, it is very damp. It is
very dank. It is it doesn't look like a place
you'd want to sleep. Uh. 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 jim Z. And we find out that
that is a it's like a formula. It's like Z

(47:07):
sub a a sub t. I think, yes, okay, so
it's like a it's a it's a mathematical or chemical
formula of some kind. Um. But he he tells the
through the voice over. He says it's very powerful. Uh,
they'll have fish the size they've never seen before, walking
fish who like human flesh. So he wanders around the

(47:30):
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 um 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 Kivet, one of the writers, uh,

(47:55):
he got the idea for this movie by reading an
article about this specie is of catfish, the so called
walking catfish or clarius but track us. 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. Uh.

(48:17):
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

(48:38):
the whole world will know and respect us. Uh and
I saw. 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. Um, yeah, I
guess at the very least. But also, you know, he
does allude to the fact later on this humans will

(49:00):
be alive, possibly, so maybe those are the ones who
will respect him. Alright, 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

(49:21):
of green gatorade looking liquid and he just jams it
straight into his arm. But that's just phase one of
the transformation. First is the injection. Next comes the kind
of a baptism. Yeah. Yeah, 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

(49:41):
water and uh, I think there are 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, that this pool
of water may be. It could be that it's supposed
to be heavy water, because later on, uh, some characters
talk about how his laboratory. Dr. Leopold's laboratory used to

(50:04):
do heavy water experiments. Ties right into previous episodes of
stuff to ball your mind. 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 that the science checks out. But then he gets
himself into this kind of winch gurney thing. I don't
know how best to explain this. It's like it looks

(50:26):
like a device that would be used for airlifting comatose dolphins. Yeah. Yeah,
it's fittingly awkward and ritualistic. It's um, it's an unsettling
scene because he didn't just climb in. Yeah, he lowers
himself into it on this thing. Yeah, so he gets
in the gurney, he lowers himself into the water with

(50:46):
a rope, and then we get electronic beeps and Geiger
counter clicks, and then finally he emerges and he is
the creature. Uh, and then we will never want we
will never again the rest of the movie. See the
actor who plays Leopold, he has just gone that's right.
All we have is this this fabulous monster. So it's
not like a where catfish movie where he's changing back

(51:08):
and forth. He's just he's just this creature permanently. Yeah.
And I think this is one of the things I
always that always captured my imagine vation imagination about the
film is that instantly we look at this and we're like, oh, sweetie,
you have you have really done it? Now? This is
this is not good. Um. But but he has different
thoughts about it. Oh yeah. So as soon as he

(51:29):
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 beautiful. And what
is he talking about? Well, I would say that he
looks like a cross between Grido and Alf, except he's

(51:50):
got a sort of like dirty or texture than either
one of them. So it's like if you cross Grido
and Alf, but then have that creature fall into a
puddle of mud and dead leaves that gets stuck to
him and then uh, 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 of

(52:11):
his suit comes together, because it's it's similar to the
white fluffy parts of a Santa suit. Yeah, he looks
a little bit like the Grinch at times, you know,
and he has kind of like Grinch physique. Yes, he does. That.
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

(52:32):
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 with 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. It

(52:53):
is not even remotely articulated though, like no, no, no
painted on teeth basically, and according to the writer Ron Kivett,
this is another one of those IMDb trivias. Uh. 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,

(53:13):
so he was going to be a vampire catfish monster.
But I think they scrapped the sucking blood, but the
costume was already made, I suppose. Okay, so he's transformed.
And then we get to a part that I 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 how did It's like this giant

(53:36):
disc shaped wall calendar that he's got his 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

(53:59):
next to a drawing of the outline of the state
of Florida, and this this drawing is labeled f L
A period, which is which is the correct AP styling
of abbreviation of Florida, which makes me think we may
have a journalist decorating this set um because I don't
know if you remember, I mean that we we used
to have to know AP style when we were writing

(54:20):
for How Stuff Works, and uh yeah, yeah, I still
I mean, it's it's hard to shake. 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 what any rate. This is the calendar research that
Jamie Defrates was referring to, and I don't know, Joe,
I think this is just how you had to do

(54:40):
things before modern project management software. I have to keep track.
You just had to have a giant, uh circular uh
calendar chart on the on the wall taking up enormous
real estate and your mad science layer. Yeah, you had
to draw pictures of the state that you're going to transform.
So you draws Florida transformation. I guess of Florida. Another

(55:02):
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's going to be confused?
Wasn't he just making this for himself? Well maybe he
wasn't sure, you know, after the transformation, you know, his
brain might be a little foggy. That that's a good point. Yeah,

(55:25):
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 at any rate. It looks it looks weird
and um, and I like it. I actually made a
Christmas tree ornament based on it. At one point. Oh
that's good. So the Leo, the Leopold catfish monster goes
out on the town. He goes out equipped with a

(55:46):
spray bottle and just starts spraying nature I think with
the ZA formula. So 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
and a crab. You see them literally with the spray
bottle like under the water, squeezing it. And now, yeah,

(56:07):
so we have some 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 which even today they're not as clear as they
used to be due to environmental reasons and run off

(56:28):
and so forth. Um, which is uh, you know, depressing,
but but 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. Okay, yeah,
I should have noticed that they really did not look
like the cloudy, stagnant pond water I would imagine in
in most North Florida. Yeah. So yeah, we are twenty

(56:57):
three minutes into the film before we find only introduced
non Leopold humans and actual dialogue one car human character
talking to another human character. Unbelievable. So here we introduced
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

(57:18):
night thing here. Uh. This is based on a novel.
Nineteen sixty seven movie directed by Norman Jewison saw a
small town southern sheriff played by Rod Steiger teaming up
with an African American homicide detective from up North played
by Sydney Potier, And um, yeah, that is nowhere near
in the Heat of the Night in terms of serious

(57:40):
drama and cultural commentary. But it seems to be like
that's what they were going for here. Uh, they were
they were they were thinking, hey, what if it was
like in the heat of the night, except there was
also a giant catfish. Yeah, this is something we've seen
in in a number of these other like ecological monster
movies from the seventies. They also seemed to try to
inject some so sal commentary in there. It's often kind

(58:02):
of light and not super deep, but yeah, I think
that is probably what they're attempting, is is Rex the
marine biologists also supposed to be from out of town.
I don't recall if if that was the case, but
I don't remember if it's expressly stated that it, it
feels implied that he's he's not from around here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so there's a general suggestion that there's this this rigid,
uh parochial, local white conservative infrastructure that does not process

(58:28):
the introduction of knowledge about pollution causing monster attacks. Uh,
being it does not incorporate that information well, and it
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

(58:48):
out of town, but at least as reacted to that way.
And of course, as we said earlier, the redneck sheriff
and this is literally chewing on a on a hay
stock when we first met him, and generally seems to
be derisive of the concept of science and expertise. Yeah, yeah,
he's kind of uh, he's kind of a Floridian Wigham

(59:10):
from the Simpsons. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, the sheriff, there
are a lot of people in this movie that the
sheriff shows, um, 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. He I

(59:31):
think he he represents um Southern cultural rigidity. But that's
enough human stuff. Then we come back to Leopold once more.
That's right, Leopold. He comes back to the lab after
he's been out there spray and stuff, and he he
goes up to another thing on his big wall calendar
and he says, Matts and your days are numbered again.

(59:53):
I think this is voice over, and we have no
idea who Matson is. But I think the point is
he's got a grudge against some scientists who we worked
with who told him 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. Yeah, and this is where
you begin to I mean, it's it's already been an
awkward transformation. We've watched him move around that the month.

(01:00:18):
I mean, his name is not Zat. Sometimes I think
of him as that, though again Za refers to the chemical,
not the monster. The monsters just Leopold giant fish. But
he moves around so awkwardly, certainly on land, it's really
hard for me to buy that 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,

(01:00:38):
but um, it's already seeming to go and 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, he
also has some petty revenge agendas in there. He also
wanted to commit murder crimes. Oh, he's got several. He

(01:00:59):
gets sidetracked and 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. Yeah, he goes the classic
of Frankensteence 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,
he decides he needs to at the last minute adding

(01:01:21):
a bride of catfish action item and that that that's
how things really go off the rails. Um. 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

(01:01:41):
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. Yeah, yeah, that that
seems to be the case. One of the problems is
that we get less and less narration from Leopold as
we and I don't know if that's by design, like

(01:02:02):
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 and even if he's doing something successful. Yeah,
and so at some point he Leopold attacks another one
of the scientists who doubted him, but he attacks him
in his house, not in the water. And I was

(01:02:25):
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
a big human. He just attacks the guy in his
house and chokes him. I think, Yeah, the only possible
answer I can think of. There is that human Leopold
does look kind of shambily and puny. I'm not sure

(01:02:48):
if he could have pulled this off. So I guess
arguably monster form is better, okay, But also at some
point here evidence starts mounting that something weird is going
on with pollution the water, and the Leopold attacks, and
Rex is on the case. Rex starts putting the pieces together.
At one point he's out collecting data with a net

(01:03:08):
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 use them for humans
if any survive. Yeah, it's like, let's not get ahead
of ourselves, Leopold. Yeah. But Rex ends up summoning these

(01:03:29):
uh people we talked about before, the INPIT agents. INPIT
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 you say is the deal
with them international nature police information technologies? I'm not sure.

(01:03:51):
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 happens. They have their own van,
they have jumpsuits. By god, it's like the A team
is here. Yeah, they're the professionals. They're here just to
get stuff done. But it does it does feel like
they're coming from an entirely different television show and in

(01:04:13):
in in indeed, they may feel like this if you're
watching it unriffed for the first time, because a lot
of the inpit stuff was cut from the Bloodwaters of
Dr Zu. Addition, on MST three k Okay. Now, they yeah,
they arrive in this big camper like RV basically, and
they are dressed in these red uniform jump suits, so

(01:04:35):
they look kind of like they stepped out of Flash
Gordon or something. And they compare notes with Rex and
they talk about all the pollution he's found and how
this might be affecting the mutant marine life attacks and uh,
and so they start putting the pieces together along with Rex.
Now we mentioned that unfortunately Leopold gets distracted from his

(01:04:57):
transform everybody into fish. Well, I don't know if that's
what he's ultimately his whatever it is he's doing. He
gets distracted by deciding that he must make a bride
of catfish. Um. So he goes back to 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

(01:05:17):
of catfish. And it doesn't work. Yeah, it is um
a lonesome and disastrous episode in the ascent of Dr
Leopold here where yeah, she dies half transform still in
the the baptism cage thing and uh. And then afterwards
he has to get rid of her body. And this

(01:05:38):
is another this is another sequence that was cut from
the MST version. What does he do to get rid
of her body? Does he feed her two fishes or
anything like that. Nope, he dissolves her in a big
old vat of Hollywood acid or old friend. Yeah, it's
a great sequence. We have some like weird you know,
the weird Tamil electronic music going on in the background.
When we see him test the acid on a fish,

(01:05:59):
he dips off ish in the asset and it eats
away half of it. This film is not concerned with
wasting anybody's time there. They know that we're gonna we're
gonna do some an acid scene and we're going to
spend about fifteen minutes doing it. We've got to make
sure that our catfish monster is doing quality assurance on
his acid. Um. So we see Rex in the inpit

(01:06:19):
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 two. And the legend continues where they will set
up traps in the woods and then chill in an RV.
But eventually the catfish monster attacks them and they somehow

(01:06:41):
scare it away I think with a camera flash. Uh.
They end up getting photos of it, and it's a
really good photo. If this is another place where is
that I mean ductor Leopold is just really messing up, like,
oh my goodness, now you're come being completely photographed and
it's crystal clear. Yeah yeah, So they get perfectly good
photos of him. Uh. And there's one part somewhere in

(01:07:02):
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 does not look like
the woman that he kidnapped. It looks like Elvira. Or

(01:07:24):
maybe you're supposed to be drawing somebody else. And did
he have like a long lost love? Is that implied
in the movie. I don't think that's even implied, Okay,
but 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

(01:07:44):
do this alone. Maybe it was Elvira, or I guess
at this time it would maybe it was Vampira. He
was like Vampira, Yes she could have she could have
been my companion in the fish world. But but alas
at any rate, the the main experiment continues, right, so
Rex and the inpit agents they end up making the
connection to Leopold, one of the inpit agents. I guess

(01:08:07):
agent Walsh. 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 from the
lab he worked at, and so they asked the sheriff
to check on those researchers. And uh. Then then, so

(01:08:28):
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 you've mentioned that his posture is awkward,
and it really it's amusing in a way that's difficult
to describe. It's kind of like a drunk guy trying
to walk through the sand and flip flops, you know,

(01:08:49):
or it's like hard to get solid footing and you've
got things coming off your feet. So it's that kind
of walk. Um. But another thing about this movie is
that it does not followed the Jaws rule, you know,
the rule that 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

(01:09:12):
the whole thing for minutes at a time, it's just
alf Grido, uh, front and center, wandering through the empty
streets at night. You see him break into a drug
store to get some kind of medicine. He smashes a
bunch of stuff, I think, because that's because he's yeah,
well he's um. He becomes injured at one point, so
so so not only does the experiment seem to be failing,

(01:09:33):
he becomes perhaps mortally wounded or at least like heavily
wounded to where he's having to break into a pharmacy
and wreck the place and steal some drugs and so like,
the whole plan seems to just be going completely off
the rails at this point. Now one of my favorite scenes,
and this one I laughed out loud at this one. Uh.
This is a scene that that was cut from the

(01:09:55):
MST treatment of the film. Uh, and it's ultimately a
lost because it's hilarious. There's would have probably been a
lot of fun riffing on this one, but it's it's
what I think of as the hippie parade. So the
sheriff here he goes to check on folks in town
and find the youth enjoying a little folk music. Clearly
and like some sort of abandoned building and they're hanging

(01:10:16):
out with none other than the actual real life Jamie
de Frate's 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 that he
can hang you know, and he looks like he's enjoying

(01:10:37):
the music. Yeah, it looks like he's enjoying. It's like, yeah,
this is good. I can I'm seeing eye to eye
with the young folk. Now. Um, 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. It's almost like it
was meant to be a music video for this song,

(01:10:59):
you know, because again, uh this these songs are featured
in their entirety. Nothing is cut. Um. 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 a
police escorted parade through town with with the with Jamie

(01:11:22):
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 um office
and then right into a jail cell and um. It's
then explained that this is to keep them safe and
that the hippies seem okay with it, but it's not
clear for a moment, and it I found it kind

(01:11:43):
of perversely humorous. It's like he he you know, the
old sheriff. You think he's uh, he's you know ce
an eyed I with the young folks and he's looking
after them. Now he's just arresting all of them. Um,
so they don't seem bothered by it, Like they all
just go into the jail cell and they're just like
cool man. Yeah, yeah, pretty much, and they're locked up
and you never see them in the film again. Yeah.

(01:12:05):
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. That 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
the windows at people and spy on them. And at

(01:12:26):
one point he observes the two Inpit 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 Inpit agents, and create
another bride of Catfish. Bride of Catfish two point oh right,
So again really veering off schedule here with with with

(01:12:48):
the whole plan because he's again heavily injured at this point,
having to self medicate with stolen uh pharmacy drugs. But
then he's like, I'm gonna I'm gonna try it again.
I'm gonna try and transform this woman who is hunting
me into my bride. Yes, So he kidnaps her from
her house, takes her back to the lab and then
and then Rex Walker and the cops Walker is the

(01:13:09):
other Inpit agent. They figure out what's going on and
they're chasing the monster down and that they split up
to chase him and the other Inpit Agent, Walker uses
this hilarious looking amphibious vehicle that looks kind of like
a power wheel. It's very small. It's very cool, I
assume from the non existent in Pit television series that
I'm imagining in my head. Yeah, and and coming up

(01:13:32):
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 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 it looks kind of real. It

(01:13:54):
looks it looks realistic. And and but I also really
like the way it plays into the ending of the picture.
Uh so, 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, um and the sheriff. Uh. They they
are going to check out the laboratory to see what's up,

(01:14:17):
see what old Doc Leopold was up. To and then
and then of course we also have Agent Walsh who
has been kidnapped, right, So they go to the monster's lair.
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

(01:14:38):
wonder if it's like that scene in the movie where
where one scientist discovers what the mad scientist is doing,
Like the good scientist is momentarily tempted. It's the last
temptation of the good scientist, and it's like, oh, it's
it's genius. Yeah. Um, but of course that shows up
and uh and in violence and sus he ultimately tries

(01:15:01):
to save Agent Walsh, and I guess to a certain
degree succeeds because what Za tries to do is he
puts her in the cage as well. He forced he
injects her with the green stuff. Uh, and then he's
going to lower her into the za baptismal font um,
but Rex disrupts that and then Rex is injured, possibly

(01:15:22):
killed by the monster. And the monster. Yeah it's 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 in Pit Agent. He
sort of gets injured and falls down and at the

(01:15:43):
end of the movie, I think we see him not moving,
but it's not clear if he's dead or alive, And
you think, well, at least Agent Walsh has been saved,
as 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. Yeah,

(01:16:03):
so I think she got half the treatment right. She's
injected with with the ZAT but then she's not actually
lowered into the zap baptismal font to transform her body.
Um and so yeah, the the ending of this film,
I think is is actually pretty effective. It's it's haunting
and kind of pitch perfect because throughout the whole film,
we've watched Leopold stumble awkwardly around his grandiose dreams and

(01:16:26):
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 he wants. He strug struggles and stumbles into the
ocean with his zap formula like two tanks of it. Meanwhile,
one of the male agent that was Snake that is

(01:16:48):
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 she
wanders out onto the beach, and the other agent tries

(01:17:09):
to call to He's like, oh, thank goodness, you're all right,
But she just wanders into the water, just just like
a like a zombie. And yeah, we're left to pieces
together because then we we kind of zoom out and
some haunting music plays. Uh, so we just don't know,
like did she is she? And is she transformed enough
that she'll survive in the water or she about to drown? Um?

(01:17:32):
Did enough Za get into the ocean to bring about
this new age of giant fish and bring down humanity. Um,
I don't know, but it seems like that might be
the case. So it seems like, uh, you know, despite everything,
Dr Leopold has one. Yeah. 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

(01:17:55):
of atomic superfish that will conquer the world. Yeah, it's
it's quite an ending. It ends on a really good
note where you where you kind of forget some of
the awkwardness and weirdness and mismatched tonal choices. Now. Another
one of the many claims about this movie online is
that apparently the movie was originally supposed to end with,

(01:18:17):
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 uh.
And apparently they filmed some versions of this, I think
with miniature models of the town. But then they realized
this does not look good, so they cut that part
out of the movie. But one shot from the sequence

(01:18:39):
allegedly made it into the film, which is yeah, which
is where a catfish, like a little catfish is squirming
next to a fence. Yes, I I I saw this
when I did my recent viewing of of that uncut,
and and yeah, like suddenly there's this brief sequence that
looks like like poor effects test footage of a walking

(01:19:00):
catfish flopping around on a model of of like some landscape.
So yeah, that seems to match up with what we're
seeing here, but there's no context for it. When it
actually shows up in the film, you just go like, what,
what was that? So I guess we mentioned the fact
that when uh Dr Leopold first transforms and looks at

(01:19:20):
himself in a mirror, he says, uh, 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 could get and then they're like, oh,
we better add a line and here sort of acknowledging

(01:19:41):
that this doesn't look like a catfish. 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
of screen time to it. So weirdly, this is not
the only killer catfish movie that I've ever seen. It's
been many years now, so I don't I've forgotten a

(01:20:01):
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 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, but oh yeah, I just looked

(01:20:22):
it up and it and it is. Larry Fessenden h
quite a filmmaker. He's made some very interesting genre pictures.
The main moment of this movie that stuck with me
is that there's one point where I think one of
them has just been attacked by a catfish, and the
people remaining alive on the boat. One of them gets
up and yells in the direction of the catfish, what

(01:20:42):
do you want from us? Well, clearly, it's muck. They're
here for the muck catfish one. Why would catfish want
to eat humans? Aren't they They just sort of like
suck up mud? And I don't know it should have
looked up something about a catfish feeding behaviors before I
opened my mouth on that. But but it's not a
sequel to that, not that I can tell. No, it's

(01:21:05):
just like it doesn't look anything like the Grito elf.
It is just a gigantic Google eyed catfish. Well in
the end that there's there's nothing else quite like it.
It is u It is quite an impressive film, all
the everything, and it comes together awkwardly but kind of perfectly.
You know, it's it's like it's it's it's the monster

(01:21:26):
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's sadly looks like
it's out of stock everywhere at this moment as we're
recording this. Hopefully that will 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

(01:21:47):
can watch the MST version Bloodwaters of Dr Zu. You
can digitally obtain that most places, including Amazon Prime. Uh
For for our copy again, we rented our copy from
atlantis om Video Drome And if you're in Atlanta. You
can go there and rent various DVDs and blue rays
or buy some cool merch And you can also check

(01:22:08):
them out online at video Drome dot tv and you
can buy stuff and they'll ship it to you, which
is pretty cool. They should make Dr Leopold head motorcycle helmets,
so you know, it's it's the zap Monster, but it
goes on for the bike ride. In fact, you can
do the whole thing, like the leather jacket is a
zat jacket. Yeah, well, you know, speaking of that, because
that sounds like exactly the kind of thing that our

(01:22:29):
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. Um, that's episode two and
uh and and what maybe a Florida movie trilogy we'll see, Um,
I'm not I'm not sure if we'll be back next

(01:22:49):
week with another Florida movie or the week after that.
It kind of depends on on Joe's tolerance for all
the Florida ness. Uh. These these motion pictures, oh, you know,
I'm generally all right, We'll say, you know, sometimes it's
nice to have a palate cleanser sometimes between films. So
I don't know. Well, we'll see, we'll figure it out
in the meantime. If you would like to check out
other episodes of Weird How Cinema, we published this every

(01:23:12):
Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed
were primarily a science podcast, uh, and so are our
primary episodes on scientific topics like the sargassum, seaweed, the organism,
and the environment. Uh. Those published on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
We publish listener Mail on Mondays, and the listener Mail

(01:23:33):
covers like everything Weird How Cinema, but also stuff to
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(01:23:54):
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(01:24:17):
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