Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Jill McCormick, and I regret to inform you
Speaker 3: right at the start here that the Weird House Cinema
Speaker 3: tour bus has broken down in Florida, so we are
Speaker 3: still stuck in the Sunshine State.
Speaker 2: That's right. We're continuing our look at Florida movies from
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies, movies filmed in Florida, and certainly in
Speaker 2: the case of today's film, and also nineteen seventy two's Frogs,
Speaker 2: which we covered previously set in Florida as well. They
Speaker 2: capture a certain Florida nis, both real and imagined. And
Speaker 2: this week we're going to look at the Florida movie
Speaker 2: par excellence, nineteen seventy one's zat You might know it
Speaker 2: as the Blood Waters of Doctor Z. Some of you
Speaker 2: might even know it as Hydra Sickly, as we'll get
Speaker 2: into it had a number of various releases over the
Speaker 2: years under different titles, but for the most part, the
Speaker 2: one that's stuck is zat Z a a.
Speaker 3: T This movie has some thematic overlap with other movies
Speaker 3: that we've looked at, including sort of like Nature strikes
Speaker 3: Back movies, though this is not exactly Nature strikes Back.
Speaker 3: This is more of a This is more of a
Speaker 3: sort of cheap body horror, mad science movie with some
Speaker 3: ecological themes to it, rather than just like animals attacking
Speaker 3: for revenge on humankind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's I guess at heart, it's a creature feature,
Speaker 2: but like like a lot of films that you encounter
Speaker 2: like this certain like like the first big independent efforts
Speaker 2: from from the filmmakers.
Speaker 3: It.
Speaker 2: It tries to do a lot of things, so it's
Speaker 2: it's it's a creature feature, but it's also like a
Speaker 2: science team adventure. It's also you know, it also tries
Speaker 2: to be in the heat of the night a little bit.
Speaker 2: It also has this Nature strikes Back element to it.
Speaker 2: It's also a kind of a hippie folk musical, so
Speaker 2: it kind of bats itself around a lot, and depending
Speaker 2: on where you are in the film, you might get
Speaker 2: something that is tonally different from another portion of the film.
Speaker 3: It also has a little bit of overlap with Boggy
Speaker 3: Creek two and the legend continues. We can talk about
Speaker 3: some of the similarities as we go on, but I
Speaker 3: appreciated the similar pompous voiceover narration, though in this case
Speaker 3: it is the voiceover of a of a crazed, spurned
Speaker 3: scientist who wants revenge on the world, whereas in Boggie
Speaker 3: Creek two it's just a kind of I don't know,
Speaker 3: like the town smart guy who wants to show off
Speaker 3: all his knowledge about the river.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The voiceover narration in this is is sardonic to the max.
Speaker 2: Like if you took Vincent Price's voice and you were
Speaker 2: douced it overheat for a little bit until it was
Speaker 2: it was just extra icky and gooky. That's what you'd
Speaker 2: have in The Blood Waters of Doctor Z.
Speaker 3: The voiceover narration whar's joker makeup?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Now, if you mentioned Boggy Creeker earlier. And I think
Speaker 2: this is a good point to mention that this film
Speaker 2: was riffed in a nineteen ninety nine episode of Mystery
Speaker 2: Science Theater three thousand under the title the Bloodwaters of
Speaker 2: Doctor Z. And if you're like me, that might be
Speaker 2: where you discovered the film. And that's a great MST episode.
Speaker 2: Don't want to take anything away from that, but as
Speaker 2: I would watch and rewatch that episode, I found that,
Speaker 2: like a lot of MST episodes that really called me,
Speaker 2: there was something in the underlying film. There was an
Speaker 2: awkwardness to it, a kind of loneliness to it, and
Speaker 2: I've also grown to really appreciate the flora theness of
Speaker 2: it as well. So for this episode of Weird House Cinema,
Speaker 2: this was the first time I watched an unriffed version
Speaker 2: of ZA, which rented from Atlanta's Videodrome Video rental store.
Speaker 2: And you know, ultimately I encourage fans of the MST
Speaker 2: episode to do the same because, like a lot of
Speaker 2: MST films, it was really edited, really cut down for time,
Speaker 2: and so there's there's a lot of stuff that you're
Speaker 2: missing out on, some really wonky and at times grotesque
Speaker 2: details and sometimes just ludicrous additions to the film.
Speaker 3: This is not of the attack of the Crab Monster's
Speaker 3: School of Creature feature run time. You know, it's not
Speaker 3: your sixty three minute abs. This one, I think is
Speaker 3: oh god, it's actually getting close to two full hours,
Speaker 3: isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's the it's one hundred minutes long,
Speaker 2: it's a it's it's plus sized, this one. So you can.
Speaker 2: You have to set us out a little bit of
Speaker 2: time for it. And again, the pacing is is at
Speaker 2: times kind of weird but also hypnotic quelutic at times.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: Now we mentioned the MST episode. I think a lot
Speaker 2: of people did discover it through that, but the film
Speaker 2: has had a cult following outside of MST as well,
Speaker 2: despite only having a limited release in Jacksonville, Florida and
Speaker 2: New York's forty second Street back in nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 3: You had the version we watched. It begins with a
Speaker 3: statement from the director where he's like people were coming
Speaker 3: up to be in saying don don You've got to
Speaker 3: release this movie.
Speaker 2: Yes, so yeah, I think people really wanted some sort
Speaker 2: of a release for a long time, and luckily in
Speaker 2: recent years it has been available. But yeah, this film,
Speaker 2: like The Scorpion Fish and the Sargassum Fish, is it's
Speaker 2: been patient. It knew that it would one day conquer
Speaker 2: the universe. And it has its super fans, one of
Speaker 2: which is the Atlanta artist and Jacksonville native our Land,
Speaker 2: who I know we're both fans of. Have you seen
Speaker 2: any of our Lands zat pieces, Joe, Oh.
Speaker 3: I don't know I've seen a lot of his stuff
Speaker 3: around town, a lot of you know, restaurants and coffee
Speaker 3: shops and stuff. We'll have our land pieces up on
Speaker 3: the walls. I think some of his work also, though
Speaker 3: I don't quite recall how, was featured in some adult
Speaker 3: swim shows. I could be wrong about that, but no,
Speaker 3: I don't know which the z That ones are. I know
Speaker 3: his piece that's like the divers with the spear guns.
Speaker 3: Is that z related?
Speaker 2: That one might not be. I mean, he's he works
Speaker 2: Florida into a lot of his pieces, but he did.
Speaker 2: He did create a number of art pieces that actually
Speaker 2: feature Zat. He did a show as part of a
Speaker 2: two thousand and nine screening of the film at the
Speaker 2: Plaza here in Atlanta, and at least some of the
Speaker 2: pieces I assume from that show were they used to
Speaker 2: hang out over at Joe's Coffee in East Atlanta, and
Speaker 2: I would go there and bring my laptop and work,
Speaker 2: and I don't know, there may still be some pieces there.
Speaker 2: I haven't been there in a spell, but there, you know,
Speaker 2: images of Zad and he had some spin offs over
Speaker 2: the years as well, like there was one that was
Speaker 2: like a real estate that says Za did it again,
Speaker 2: and then he recently did one at least online. That
Speaker 2: was a satur Day thing.
Speaker 4: It was pretty amusing, very nice.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he's apparently a Zat megafan, and you know
Speaker 2: a lot of people like him out there, you know
Speaker 2: where you see this maybe when you were younger, and
Speaker 2: something about about it sticks into your brain and you
Speaker 2: can't quite get it out.
Speaker 3: All right, what's the elevator pitch?
Speaker 2: On this film, a lonely mad scientist in Florida hatches
Speaker 2: a plan to raise an army of giant walking catfish
Speaker 2: and avenge himself over his colleagues, and also conquer the planet,
Speaker 2: perhaps the universe, and we're left to follow him and
Speaker 2: see how it works out.
Speaker 3: Let's hear that trailer.
Speaker 5: Audio and now coming to this theater. One of the
Speaker 5: most incredible stories of modern time, Zat Invasion of the
Speaker 5: Walking Catfish. A crazed scientist, doctor Leopald is convinced he
Speaker 5: can turn humans into fish. He proves it by transforming
Speaker 5: himself into a horrible, revengeful killer fish. Za tells it all.
Speaker 5: You won't want to miss Zat Positively no one admitted
Speaker 5: during the last fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: Okay, now, you would not have expected a movie like
Speaker 3: this to have major folk music themes. And I don't
Speaker 3: know if the trailer audio we just had the folk
Speaker 3: music in it. If not, maybe we should insert a
Speaker 3: clip right here, just because like you've got to have
Speaker 3: this in your head to understand everything that comes after.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean, we can go straight to the
Speaker 2: music here if you like this. What we're about to
Speaker 2: hear is is a bit from a song titled World
Speaker 2: War two Boy, which is a very strange, strange title.
Speaker 2: But this is from Barry Hodgen and Jamie Defrates. They
Speaker 2: were the composers, and this is Jamie Defrates performing the
Speaker 2: song give Us all Right. That's just a clip, but
Speaker 2: this song is performed in its entirety at the top
Speaker 2: of the film and it's and I actually love it.
Speaker 2: I listened to this song quite a bit, especially in
Speaker 2: the last couple of weeks leading up to this episode,
Speaker 2: because you can you can find this on Spotify and
Speaker 2: various other streaming places. If you just look up Zat
Speaker 2: Songs or Jamie Defrats, you will find it. There's a
Speaker 2: B side, and we'll get to the B side track
Speaker 2: in a bit. But these tracks are featured in the
Speaker 2: film in full no cuts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's almost it's almost a rock opera. I
Speaker 3: mean not quite, only a couple of songs in the movie,
Speaker 3: but like it has musical numbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I have to say, I mean we'll get
Speaker 2: into this a little bit when we start rolling through
Speaker 2: the plot. But yeah, the music. Music always elevates the film.
Speaker 2: If you have quality music, it can really create dimensions
Speaker 2: that would not be there otherwise. And I legitimately think
Speaker 2: that the music and Za, both the folk music and
Speaker 2: some of the other music will get to does a
Speaker 2: great job of that. Like it takes this this sort
Speaker 2: of awkward, fumbling creature feature and elevates it to this
Speaker 2: level where it does legitimately get caught up in your brain.
Speaker 3: Do you ever hear that story? It was by somebody
Speaker 3: who worked on Halloween with John Carpenter. It might have
Speaker 3: been Donald Pleasance who told the story about going to
Speaker 3: see a preview screening of the movie where the music
Speaker 3: had not been added in yet and thinking like, oh no,
Speaker 3: what a disaster, like I'm so embarrassed, and then seeing
Speaker 3: another cut later when the music had been finished and
Speaker 3: added in, and suddenly everybody thinks this is a horror masterpiece.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it really does. It can really
Speaker 2: elevate things to new levels. Though shocking that Donald Pleasance
Speaker 2: would find embarrassment in a film at that stage of
Speaker 2: his career, because it's not like this would have been
Speaker 2: the first the first bad movie he was in.
Speaker 3: This come before or after Puma Man.
Speaker 4: Oh, I don't recall.
Speaker 2: Oh, but either way, there were definitely some Puma Man's
Speaker 2: in there before Halloween. All right, Well, we'll come back
Speaker 2: to more about the music in a bit, but let's
Speaker 2: start with the screenwriter, or one of the screenwriters and
Speaker 2: the director, Don bart who lived nineteen thirty through twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: so he was very much alive to see the renaissance
Speaker 2: of ZA, the resurgence of ZA, and in fact, the
Speaker 2: disc that we watched featured introductory commentary by Don Barton
Speaker 2: thanking everyone for their support of the creature.
Speaker 5: Here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, he shows up right at the top of
Speaker 3: the film. And I should point out this disc it
Speaker 3: like it's one of those that doesn't even have a
Speaker 3: menu in it. You just put it in and it
Speaker 3: just plays. The only option is play. But it starts
Speaker 3: with him talking and Don Barton says in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 3: my film production company in Jacksonville, Florida, decided that the
Speaker 3: time was right to make a feature film, meaning this
Speaker 3: was his first feature film. He'd only done one other
Speaker 3: movie before this, which we'll talk about in the second
Speaker 3: which was a short film. But he says he sat
Speaker 3: down with his staff to discuss ideas quote, and we
Speaker 3: decided that our first motion picture should be a creature feature.
Speaker 3: So this turned in to an idea I think talking
Speaker 3: with some writers and associates of his about a man
Speaker 3: catfish creature that terrorizes a small town in his quest
Speaker 3: for revenge. And then Don Barton says that the initial
Speaker 3: theatrical release was very promising. He doesn't elaborate on what
Speaker 3: exactly that means, but he says that due to unspecified mishaps,
Speaker 3: the film had been unavailable for like thirty years at
Speaker 3: the time that it was re released. Though I wonder,
Speaker 3: I mean, there must have been some way people got it,
Speaker 3: because they must have gotten a tape of it for
Speaker 3: Mystery science theater. I'm not sure what.
Speaker 2: Yeah, though I think even that there were some issues
Speaker 2: if I am to understand correctly, like there was there
Speaker 2: was a situation where a Sci Fi Channel I think
Speaker 2: at the time aired it, and then Barton's people got
Speaker 2: in touch with them and there was some back and
Speaker 2: forth about like the rights, but it eventually got worked out.
Speaker 3: Okay, that makes sense. But man, when I was watching
Speaker 3: this preamble by Don Barton at the beginning of the movie,
Speaker 3: I kept thinking, who does this guy remind me of
Speaker 3: his Something about his voice and the way he talks,
Speaker 3: And then I realized, he reminds me of the TV
Speaker 3: news host Bill Moyers, who used to do like I
Speaker 3: think he worked for uh, he did his specials for PBS,
Speaker 3: and then I think he worked for CBS for a while.
Speaker 3: But so like I got that feeling like, oh no,
Speaker 3: this is like Bill Moyer's introducing a PBS special on
Speaker 3: ZA that's going to feature interviews with Joseph Campbell.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it does have that kind of vibe.
Speaker 2: Now, Yeah, we mentioned Jacksonville already and we will mention
Speaker 2: Jacksonville some more. Bart Barton was Jacksonville based. He was
Speaker 2: a producer and director. This was his second and last
Speaker 2: directorial credit, following nineteen sixty nine's They're Out to Get You.
Speaker 2: But he was apparently involved throughout his life in the
Speaker 2: Florida film industry, having co founded the Florida Motion Picture
Speaker 2: and Television Production Association, and he also produced documentaries, training films,
Speaker 2: TV commercials, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And this is actually more the genre that They're out
Speaker 3: to Get You was, so they're out to get you.
Speaker 3: I was really looking for an online copy of it
Speaker 3: and I couldn't find anything. But if somebody out there
Speaker 3: has better sleuthing capabilities, please send this our way. This
Speaker 3: is not an entertainment film. They're out to Get You
Speaker 3: from nineteen sixty nine is an educational short that I
Speaker 3: think was supposed to be shown to retail employees. So
Speaker 3: it's like one of those harassment or ethics training video
Speaker 3: workplace videos they show you on the first day at
Speaker 3: a new job, except it is about shoplifting, and the
Speaker 3: plot of it is that there's this young criminal, or
Speaker 3: at least this is the alleged plot. I had to
Speaker 3: find a summary. Somebody wrote online there's a young criminal
Speaker 3: named Tony Alto who steals cars for a living, and
Speaker 3: he gets caught and sent to prison, and in prison,
Speaker 3: his cellmate turns out to be this I don't know,
Speaker 3: this smooth guy who's going to tell him no no,
Speaker 3: no stealing cars. You're doing it all wrong. Here's what's
Speaker 3: up shoplifting, and he explains to him why shoplifting is
Speaker 3: a much better way to make a living by stealing.
Speaker 3: And so as you go through the narrative, I think
Speaker 3: it shows the tricks that shoplifters could be using in
Speaker 3: your store, or your store or yours.
Speaker 2: So it also sounds like it's just in general, a
Speaker 2: shoplifting training video. Yes, for either side of the equation.
Speaker 3: Well, it's kind of like how Dare was supposed to
Speaker 3: scare kids away from doing drugs, but instead it was
Speaker 3: just kind of like, here are all the different kinds
Speaker 3: of drugs you could do.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, let's talk very briefly about the additional
Speaker 2: story credits ron Kivitt and Arnold Stevens and also Lee
Speaker 2: O LaRue. Not much to report here, though. Ron Kivitt
Speaker 2: was apparently an investigator on History Channels ancient aliens at
Speaker 2: one point. So what was he investigating aliens? I guess
Speaker 2: or pyramids? You know, one of the two. Probably that's
Speaker 2: the main creative force behind the picture that we're going
Speaker 2: to discuss here. At the top, it's time to get
Speaker 2: into the cast and the film is initially concerned with
Speaker 2: only one human being and devotes a good twenty something
Speaker 2: minutes to just him, and that is our signature character,
Speaker 2: our main character, doctor Kurt Leopold, played by Marshall Grower.
Speaker 2: Now this is his one and only film role, and
Speaker 2: for a long time I assumed that he only did
Speaker 2: the physical performance that we're seeing. Marshall Grower and somebody
Speaker 2: else is providing that just overly sardonic voiceover that we
Speaker 2: were talking about that again is just like Vincent Price
Speaker 2: turned up to eleven Vincent Price without any humanity left
Speaker 2: in it at all, you know, the voice of just
Speaker 2: an overacting demon. But he apparently did the narration as well.
Speaker 2: Leopold the character, the human character never speaks camera, not
Speaker 2: a single time, but we have just this voiceover at
Speaker 2: length describing what he's planning to do, what he's doing,
Speaker 2: what you know, his ultimate aspirations are. It's a lot
Speaker 2: of fun. But I would say Marshall Grower is just
Speaker 2: delightful in this film because the voiceover is just so rich,
Speaker 2: it's just so overdone. And then physically he has this
Speaker 2: weird combo of sinister awkwardness and this kind of outsider sadness,
Speaker 2: which when you throw in the sort of film quality
Speaker 2: of Zat, it feels like you're watching a window into
Speaker 2: someone's personal hell.
Speaker 3: You know, doctor Leopold is a human with the personality
Speaker 3: of a car that's having maintenance problems. He's having trouble accelerating,
Speaker 3: he's releasing dark, foul smelling exhaust like he needs to
Speaker 3: get his catalytic converter replaced. But also the thing that
Speaker 3: I realized about him, there's a scene early in the
Speaker 3: film where he's walking along a beach, but he's not
Speaker 3: dressed for the beach. He's wearing long slacks and a
Speaker 3: shirt tucked in, and his head's hanging down in this
Speaker 3: kind of like sad like puppy dog way, except he's
Speaker 3: he's a little he's more drab than a puppy dog.
Speaker 3: And you know, there's this acoustic guitar strumming in the background,
Speaker 3: and he's just this beacon of shabbiness. In some shots
Speaker 3: he's giving off strong Harry Dean Stanton fumes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good comparison that kind
Speaker 2: of drawn Haggard appearance.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but on the other hand, he has a haircut
Speaker 3: that doesn't quite match because I don't know how to
Speaker 3: describe as his haircut. It's very strange. It's kind of
Speaker 3: messy and moppy in the front, but also to make
Speaker 3: it weirder. So it's a haircut that I think I've
Speaker 3: basically only seen on women before. It's a cut style
Speaker 3: that kind of puffy up in the back and raises
Speaker 3: up toward the back or the crown of the head,
Speaker 3: and then goes flat down toward the front. Do you
Speaker 3: know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: I'm having a hard time picturing his hair in my head.
Speaker 2: All I picture is that face and then later that bod.
Speaker 4: Which we'll get too.
Speaker 3: Well. Anyway, he's a profound screen presence.
Speaker 2: IMDb does not list birth and death dates for Grower,
Speaker 2: but I was looking around and I think I found
Speaker 2: him as being listed. Is buried in a cemetery in Jacksonville,
Speaker 2: and he lived nineteen twenty two through nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: And if I have the right guy here, and I'm
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure I do, he was pretty active in
Speaker 2: the Jacksonville theater so and I would not be surprised
Speaker 2: if that's where Ultimately a number of these actors come from.
Speaker 2: Actors that in many cases have no other movie credits
Speaker 2: listed to them.
Speaker 3: Thinking about this guy being active in Jacksonville theater got
Speaker 3: me off on a tangent that I actually think about
Speaker 3: a good when we're watching these B movies, especially locally
Speaker 3: produced B movies, movies that are, you know, not a
Speaker 3: product of la but you know, come out of Florida
Speaker 3: or somewhere else in the country. And it got me
Speaker 3: thinking about how acting talent translates across from stage to
Speaker 3: screen and the disconnect that can occur when somebody spans
Speaker 3: these two worlds. Because I was thinking about a story
Speaker 3: where a longtime close friend of mine, he used to
Speaker 3: do some local theater directing in Tennessee, and he was
Speaker 3: at one point directing. This was years ago, but at
Speaker 3: one point he was directing an adaptation of a Tennessee
Speaker 3: Williams play, I think, and he ended up working with
Speaker 3: this actor, who, according to him, was just magical on stage,
Speaker 3: you know, one of the best actors he had ever
Speaker 3: worked with, and was spellbinding. But we found out this
Speaker 3: guy had also been in a few movies and I
Speaker 3: don't recall the exact titles, but they were just like
Speaker 3: Z grade horror movies, you know, Chupacabra Rampage nine or
Speaker 3: something like that, And so we watched these and this
Speaker 3: amazing local theater actor was, you know, just not especially
Speaker 3: impressive in a direct video horror context. And I remember
Speaker 3: having a kind of revelation at that point that like, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, stage talent and screen talent are not always interchangeable,
Speaker 3: and context really matters. Like somebody who can be a
Speaker 3: very good actor when they've got good material to work with,
Speaker 3: Like a lot of the people who do these Z
Speaker 3: grade horror movies are probably a lot of times doing
Speaker 3: Shakespeare or something, you know, in local theater, or they're
Speaker 3: or they're they're doing Tennessee Williams plays or something like that.
Speaker 3: But then when you put them in in a catfish
Speaker 3: monster movie, the whatever talents they've developed for those other
Speaker 3: acting contexts just don't really translate. But there's a good
Speaker 3: chance in any given B movie that there are plenty
Speaker 3: of members of the cast who are no names in
Speaker 3: the film world, but they're like the best actor in
Speaker 3: their local theater group and their use to doing Shakespeare
Speaker 3: or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess there are so many different
Speaker 2: ways you can cut it. I mean, on one hand,
Speaker 2: it's the difference between the stage and being told by
Speaker 2: a director, Yeah, we're filming this next scene in the
Speaker 2: basement of this building. Or just walk on the beach
Speaker 2: for a little bit. Yeah, now, I don't know what
Speaker 2: your motivation is, just you know, just just walk on
Speaker 2: the beach and we'll fill you in a bit. We're
Speaker 2: still writing that part, you know, stuff like you can
Speaker 2: imagine the distance between the two projects. On top of
Speaker 2: just how you know, colossal and undertaking any level of
Speaker 2: film is not to take anything away from a stage production,
Speaker 2: which of course is also a colossal undertaking in so
Speaker 2: many regards. But but yeah, yeah, the tools that aide
Speaker 2: you in one dimension might not aide you as well
Speaker 2: without some tinkering in the other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, certainly true. But I mean, just I think it's
Speaker 3: important that people should always keep in mind if you
Speaker 3: are a fan of z grade horror movies and the
Speaker 3: kind of stuff we talk about on this show, should
Speaker 3: always remember that whenever you're watching one of these films,
Speaker 3: there's a good chance that the actor who is completely
Speaker 3: failing in front of you right now is actually great
Speaker 3: in some other context.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, Leopold will eventually turn into a monster and
Speaker 2: will detail that at length. But when he is a monster,
Speaker 2: he is played by someone else. The monster is played
Speaker 2: by Wade Popwell, who lived nineteen forty eight through two
Speaker 2: thousand and six. This was his only film role, and
Speaker 2: he apparently answered a newspaper call for tall actors who
Speaker 2: were also experienced scuba divers.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, this was a funny thing I read as
Speaker 3: one of the mini trivia facts claimed about this movie.
Speaker 3: I guess I'll cite several of these throughout the episode.
Speaker 3: There are a number of interesting facts that are claimed
Speaker 3: on the IMDb page for this movie that are unsourced,
Speaker 3: so I can't verify them, but at least the claim
Speaker 3: is that he was recruited through a newspaper ad. Like
Speaker 3: you say, it was basically like, we need a really
Speaker 3: tall person who's going to play monster, and they got
Speaker 3: like tons of responses, like people were Florida was into this.
Speaker 2: All right. The next acting credit to highlight here, Gerald
Speaker 2: Cruz played marine biologist Rex. He doesn't have a last
Speaker 2: name as far as I know. This was his only
Speaker 2: film role, which ultimately surprised me because I thought he
Speaker 2: had a nice screen presence in this as the African
Speaker 2: American Marine biologist who is the first to realize that
Speaker 2: something is wrong.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this movie does something that a lot of these
Speaker 3: creature feature nature strikes back type movies do, which is
Speaker 3: there's somebody who's like the voice of reason, you know,
Speaker 3: the cooler head who's putting together the evidence while everybody
Speaker 3: else around them is just sort of like reacting erratically
Speaker 3: and emotionally. And he plays the cool head in this movie,
Speaker 3: like he's the person who's out there saying like, oh,
Speaker 3: there's pollution in the water, and oh, here's this report
Speaker 3: of a catfish and this wound on the victim looks
Speaker 3: like a giant catfish claw mark. I think he at
Speaker 3: one point concludes, I'm not sure that lines up with reality,
Speaker 3: but like that's the role he plays in the movie,
Speaker 3: and he's set opposite. For example, this sort of like
Speaker 3: redneck sheriff who's always got a piece of straw hanging
Speaker 3: out of his mouth or I guess a piece of hay,
Speaker 3: and he's always like, well, I don't believe in monsters.
Speaker 4: Yep, yep.
Speaker 2: And that is Sheriff lou Krantz played by Paul Galloway
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen twenty three through twenty fifteen. Like everybody
Speaker 2: in this wasn't in tremendous much else. But he played
Speaker 2: garage man, which I assume is a bit part in
Speaker 2: the in JD's Revenge from nineteen seventy six in New
Speaker 2: Orleans crime drama starring Glenn Turman and Lewis Gossip Junior.
Speaker 2: In this film, however, yeah, he plays the small town
Speaker 2: sheriff who is lazy and largely incompetent. Yeah, but in
Speaker 2: the later portions of the film shows a little bit
Speaker 2: of hustle, but not quite enough.
Speaker 3: He's one of those characters who is not the antagonist
Speaker 3: of the film. He's not a bad guy, but he's
Speaker 3: just sort of a he's a roadblock. He's just sort
Speaker 3: of getting in the way of what needs to happen happening.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Now, another thing I should point out is that this
Speaker 3: is one of those movies where you see a few
Speaker 3: repeats during the credits. For example, Paul Galloway here, who
Speaker 3: plays the sheriff, he was in the cast, but he
Speaker 3: was also a unit manager. And then I saw in
Speaker 3: the credits that Ron Kivett, who was one of the
Speaker 3: writers of the film, was also the technical director and
Speaker 3: did some of the costuming, And I think there were
Speaker 3: a few others like this, so it's not all the
Speaker 3: way to Neil Breen or Coleman Francis Tire where the
Speaker 3: directors also getting credits for catering and event security and stuff.
Speaker 3: But there is some repetition going on, all right.
Speaker 2: A couple of other actors that we'll mention. Sannah Ringhaer
Speaker 2: plays Agent Martha Walsh. Dave Dickerson plays Agent Walker Stevens.
Speaker 2: Both of these actors these were their only film roles,
Speaker 2: but these two will come back to them. There are
Speaker 2: Moulder and Scully and that they work for a shadowy
Speaker 2: organization known as in Pit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they get called in by Rex, the marine biologist.
Speaker 3: I could not have told you these characters' names for me.
Speaker 3: They were just Inpit Agent one and Inpit Agent two.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now another character that the character's barely worth mentioning him.
Speaker 2: There's a deputy sheriff in this, but it's played by
Speaker 2: an actor by the name of Rich Valerie, who lived
Speaker 2: fifty two through twenty eighteen. Was only in eight films,
Speaker 2: but they included small roles in Jaws three, The Road
Speaker 2: to Welville, and Knight of the Hunter.
Speaker 3: Well, he was in Knight of the Hunter.
Speaker 2: Wait that Night of the Hunter Joe, the nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: one made for tv Knight of the Hunter starring Richard
Speaker 2: Chamberlain and featuring Burgess Meredith and Ray McKinnon in a
Speaker 2: small role.
Speaker 3: Okay, that would make sense. Now for him to have
Speaker 3: been in the original Night of the Hunter, he would
Speaker 3: have to have been I guess three years old when
Speaker 3: he starred in it. The original Night of the Hunter
Speaker 3: is a scary movie, man, talk about spellbinding actors. That
Speaker 3: that is one of the all time greats for me
Speaker 3: in terms of a screen presence that you cannot take
Speaker 3: your eyes off of. Robert Mitcham in that movie is
Speaker 3: scary as hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But what if we remade it in the early
Speaker 2: nineties with Richard Chamberlain in the role? Okay, that's supposedly awful. Okay,
Speaker 2: Now that's enough with the cast. That's enough with the
Speaker 2: humans and the monsters. We need to talk just a
Speaker 2: little bit about the music and then the next few
Speaker 2: people of note are responsible for the music of that.
Speaker 2: And the music of that is pretty great, even if
Speaker 2: it's a bit all over the place as well, which
Speaker 2: is kind of suitable. It encompasses more traditional late sixties
Speaker 2: early seventies film score work, which some of that I
Speaker 2: suspect is stock music, but then it also has like
Speaker 2: folk rock, it has ambient synth in there. Yeah, there's
Speaker 2: some uncredited stock music in there, per IMDb by Trevor Duncan.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of all over the place, but there's
Speaker 2: some some really interesting stuff in there.
Speaker 3: I was not really won over by the electronic music
Speaker 3: in this one, which mostly just took the form of
Speaker 3: like kind of painful, high pitch noises and screeching.
Speaker 2: Oh really, I I ultimately really liked that, That's what
Speaker 2: I recall. Yeah, well, it is like that. It is
Speaker 2: kind of noisy at times. It kind of gets into
Speaker 2: that Doctor X territory where you know we discussed in
Speaker 2: that film there are these these these scenes that have
Speaker 2: ambient mad science noises in the background. It sounds a
Speaker 2: lot like it is some manner of like modern post
Speaker 2: industrial electronic score, and so Za definitely has that vibe
Speaker 2: going on. But I actually really liked it. It's in
Speaker 2: my opinion, I thought it was pretty effective. It's cynthy
Speaker 2: kind of noise ambient and the electronic music like this
Speaker 2: in the film, and I suspect some of the background.
Speaker 2: Electronic Weirdness is the work of Jack Tamil, a Floridian
Speaker 2: synth musician, and if you look him up on Spotify
Speaker 2: and other digital platforms like that, you'll find some rather
Speaker 2: haunting nature ambient recordings that he's done, such as Voices
Speaker 2: of the Everglades of Everglades State Park and Gator Bellows
Speaker 2: in the Everglades, both the collaborations.
Speaker 4: With James T.
Speaker 3: Miller.
Speaker 2: Okay, but he also put out some excellent space music
Speaker 2: in the nineteen eighties and nineties, including The Referee Has
Speaker 2: Vanished from nineteen eighty six, Meditative Massage from nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 2: Cynthist I think it is from nineteen eighty two, and.
Speaker 3: Then well that's a religious affiliation. Honestly, I am a synthist.
Speaker 2: And then there's a nineteen eighty album he put out
Speaker 2: titled Electroacoustic like Electro Slash Acoustic, which was released on
Speaker 2: Spectrum Records. I couldn't find any of these available in
Speaker 2: the normal places online, but I did find a YouTube
Speaker 2: upload that consists of Electroacoustic The Referee Has Vanished and
Speaker 2: sounds from Zat's audio, and you can also looks like
Speaker 2: you can still pick up electroacoustic used on vinyl. I
Speaker 2: was listening to it. It's pretty good. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Also not surprising the number one YouTube comment on that
Speaker 2: track that I mentioned. It's our land chiming in and
Speaker 2: saying yeah, thank you for putting this.
Speaker 3: Comment with his real name. Yeah.
Speaker 2: If you know another Jack Tamil track you can look
Speaker 2: up on band camp. There's a comp titled Escape from
Speaker 2: the Cage Volume two Into the Underworld, originally released by
Speaker 2: Oracle Music in nineteen ninety. If you look that up,
Speaker 2: he has a track on there. It's called Imber Days,
Speaker 2: and I thought it was rather nice. Anyway, that's Jack Tamil.
Speaker 2: That's the electro you know, synth noise background that you hear.
Speaker 2: But again, uh, the the folk music that comes to
Speaker 2: us from Barry Hodgen and Jamie Defrates and and their
Speaker 2: story is kind of interesting as well. According to the
Speaker 2: blog Bill Ectric's Place, Bill is an ocala based writer
Speaker 2: and blogger in Florida. Defrates lived in Jacksonville at the time,
Speaker 2: and he was a traveling musician, having supposedly opened for
Speaker 2: the likes of Willie Nelson, janis Ian Little River Band,
Speaker 2: you Know, et c. Various people that were making the
Speaker 2: rounds in those days. And he ran a recording studio
Speaker 2: in Jacksonville and is still active.
Speaker 4: I looked him up.
Speaker 2: He has or had a website. Some of these guys,
Speaker 2: their websites kind of come in and out. But yeah,
Speaker 2: Jamie defrates. You can look him up on on Spotify
Speaker 2: and you can find the music from ZA. It's pretty,
Speaker 2: it's pretty nice.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Well, Rob, I regret having having yucked your your
Speaker 3: your delicious synth music, or maybe I should give it
Speaker 3: another shot. I just recall when I was watching it,
Speaker 3: there was frequently like a just a high pitched noise
Speaker 3: that was starting to kind of make me feel a
Speaker 3: little woozy.
Speaker 2: Well, but then again, you have to remember, like that's
Speaker 2: kind of what the music is supposed to do in
Speaker 2: a film like this. It's to build that sense of
Speaker 2: unease and an alienation and Floridian weirdness.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm there, Seth.
Speaker 2: Give us just a little taste of some of that
Speaker 2: Jack Tamil music before we move on to the plot.
Speaker 2: All right, Joe, let's get into the plot of this baby.
Speaker 3: Yes, let us tell the story of a man who
Speaker 3: dreamed he was a catfish or was he a catfish
Speaker 3: dreaming he was a man.
Speaker 2: A true tale of metamorphosis of mythic proportions.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so the movie starts, of course, the version we
Speaker 3: watched has that great intro from Don Barton again with
Speaker 3: the Bill Moyer's energy for me. But then it gets
Speaker 3: right into the film with stock footage. I doubt this
Speaker 3: was shot for the film. It looks like something from
Speaker 3: a nature documentary where it's showing off sargassum seaweed as
Speaker 3: we have just discussed on the core episode from yesterday,
Speaker 3: and a real nice prickly looking fish, and we get
Speaker 3: voiceover that at first I thought was a poem. It
Speaker 3: really sounded like he was reciting a poem because he says,
Speaker 3: sargassum the weed of deceit, sargassum fish, mighty hunter of
Speaker 3: the deep. Okay, so that's almost like a close and
Speaker 3: near rhyme there, so you think he's developing a poem.
Speaker 3: But then the stuff he starts saying after that doesn't
Speaker 3: really fit. He starts saying, what an inspiration you have
Speaker 3: been in my plot, your life of hiding, waiting, stalking
Speaker 3: your prey at just the right moment attack, I love you?
Speaker 4: What are you?
Speaker 2: The poetry police, Joe, you're saying this isn't poetry.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't know. I mean what I was trying
Speaker 3: to figure out was whether the movie thought it was
Speaker 3: a poem or right, I was just talking. I mean, yeah, anything,
Speaker 3: anything's a poem.
Speaker 4: If you say it is, it is.
Speaker 2: It is such a startling start to this picture, because
Speaker 2: again it's clearly stock footage, and the voiceover is just amazing.
Speaker 2: And I do love the idea of somebody on early
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies forty second Street in New York City walking
Speaker 2: into this picture, you know, thinking they're getting some sort
Speaker 2: of a sleazy monster movie, and they're hit with documentary
Speaker 2: footage right off.
Speaker 3: The bat, and just the guy who sounds kind of
Speaker 3: like Vincent Price telling this fish that he loves it.
Speaker 2: Yes, I love you, and then he goes on to
Speaker 2: admire various other species for minutes at a time. You know,
Speaker 2: the shark, I admire you. Soon I'll swim with you.
Speaker 2: They'll be afraid.
Speaker 3: Yeah, very good. And the scorpion fish an objectively ugly,
Speaker 3: beautiful fish, like a fish that is beautiful in how
Speaker 3: ugly it is. And he's like, you are gorgeous. They
Speaker 3: think I'm insane, they're the ones who are insane.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's pretty tremendous.
Speaker 3: Another thing that's cool, though, is that actually the stock
Speaker 3: footage they select, I don't know what it's originally from,
Speaker 3: but whatever nature documentary it is, they got some cool
Speaker 3: footage because monster Science moment. Here, they catch a sargassum
Speaker 3: fish eating another fish whole, like just spreading its mouth
Speaker 3: wide and clamping down over this fish's body, and the
Speaker 3: fish that it eats is almost as big as the
Speaker 3: sargassm fish itself.
Speaker 2: This reminds me that in the actual science episode we
Speaker 2: recorded yesterday about this organism, I neglected to mention that apparently,
Speaker 2: sometimes when it eats another fish, since you can actually
Speaker 2: see the prey inside of it through its am I
Speaker 2: translucent skin.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so yeah, I've seen that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so that's so wonderful.
Speaker 2: I love it. I don't want to be it like
Speaker 2: doctor Leopold here, but I do like it a lot.
Speaker 3: Oh. I don't know if we mentioned that's how he
Speaker 3: follows up. So he's looking at the sargasm fish and
Speaker 3: he's saying I love you, but then he says, I
Speaker 3: hope I'll be a good imitator.
Speaker 2: Yes, Basically he begins to lay this out through you know,
Speaker 2: ultimately like twenty minutes of narration, that he is going
Speaker 2: to draw inspiration perhaps behavioral, but also genetic inspiration from
Speaker 2: these organisms as part of his master plan.
Speaker 3: I think you already mentioned this, but we should stress
Speaker 3: it's like twenty three minutes into this movie before you
Speaker 3: see a human being who is not a mad scientist.
Speaker 3: Right up until up until then, it is exclusively doctor
Speaker 3: Leopold looking like Harry Dean Stanton, shuffling around on the
Speaker 3: beach and through the ruins of a marine and like
Speaker 3: stock footage of animals from the sea, and then a
Speaker 3: monster just sort of rambling around.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Most films, you know, they'd probably start off with like
Speaker 2: a teenage couple meeting they're relatable, and then they're killed
Speaker 2: by a monster or something like that. Not this film. No,
Speaker 2: it's just it's doctor Leopold and stock footage of fish
Speaker 2: from the get go.
Speaker 3: We do get a teenage couple fooling around. Later in
Speaker 3: the movie, when the monster is on a rampage, there's
Speaker 3: this this young couple that are like on a porch
Speaker 3: swing and they're making out and the guy's like, I
Speaker 3: don't believe in monsters. And then, of course it's a good.
Speaker 2: Hour and a half into the picture you get what
Speaker 2: is probably an opening segment in most films.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, how to describe that there is a
Speaker 3: powerful emotional resonance to the opening of this film when
Speaker 3: you first see doctor Leopold wandering around. I mean, I
Speaker 3: guess we've already tried to describe it nine different ways.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's it's Harry Dean stanton Ish, it's it's shabby,
Speaker 3: it's drab, it's it's lonely. He is failing, and he
Speaker 3: is going to do science to fix it. Oh and
Speaker 3: of course we should mention that while we see him
Speaker 3: wandering on the beach, this is when the World War
Speaker 3: two Boy song is playing. And one of the lines
Speaker 3: in the song that is just a kiss on the
Speaker 3: top of the head from the Sun God. It's the
Speaker 3: part where he says Sachet, sachet through the sargasm.
Speaker 2: Yes, I could go on and on about just how
Speaker 2: wonderful that song is, because the lyrics at once, the
Speaker 2: lyrics sound like lyrics that were composed after half watching
Speaker 2: part of the film, you know, just sort of like
Speaker 2: trying to loosely figure out what the plot is like
Speaker 2: it refers to your your calendar research, which seems like
Speaker 2: a strange description of what appears to be going on
Speaker 2: in the in the motion picture. But also it ultimately,
Speaker 2: like I don't know, it ends up giving Leopold more
Speaker 2: depth because he's talking about you know, you know about
Speaker 2: you know, how he's wanting to change himself outside you
Speaker 2: change yourself to be inside what you already see you know,
Speaker 2: which I guess is kind of.
Speaker 3: Like you know, which is a catfish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's already a giant catfish.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It ends up working for some weird reason. It just
Speaker 2: works very well.
Speaker 3: The true catfish was inside you all along.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Uh no.
Speaker 3: So I've got a question about how a filming location
Speaker 3: here matches up with reality. I don't know if you
Speaker 3: have any insight on this, but I'm wondering. So, after
Speaker 3: we see Harry Dean Stanton here wandering through this desolate
Speaker 3: beach landscape while the World War two boy plays, he
Speaker 3: wanders into a place that looks to me like the
Speaker 3: ruins of an off brand sea world, like if a
Speaker 3: marine world type attraction was abandoned for years and just
Speaker 3: you know, things collected all over it. As the seasons
Speaker 3: came and went, that's what we'd be seeing that he
Speaker 3: walks through. I know that part of this movie was
Speaker 3: filmed at Marine Land of Florida, but from what I
Speaker 3: can tell, I think it was actually in operation at
Speaker 3: this time, not like an abandoned ruin. So I'm not
Speaker 3: sure exactly what we're seeing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like there's a scene where he's walking around or
Speaker 2: through what looks like what's previously a tank of some
Speaker 2: sort and now it's just empty and as leaves and
Speaker 2: clutter in it. I guess my thinking is twofold on this.
Speaker 2: First of all, just because Marine World was up and
Speaker 2: running didn't mean there were parts of it that maybe
Speaker 2: had fallen into disuse or weren't being used, you know,
Speaker 2: the outskirts of the facility, that sort of thing. Like
Speaker 2: I think if you go to any play, you go
Speaker 2: to your local zoo or botanical garden, there's going to
Speaker 2: be a part of the property where you could probably
Speaker 2: film a scene for a monster movie, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 2: on the other hand.
Speaker 3: It could just be off season. I mean, maybe it
Speaker 3: looks that bad just as the winter.
Speaker 2: Well that's the other thing, Like we have to remember
Speaker 2: that Florida is Florida, and it is a jungle, so
Speaker 2: you know, we're talking about just like a few months
Speaker 2: without anybody paying attention to the maintenance of a place,
Speaker 2: and it'll look like absolute ruin, you know, which I
Speaker 2: think is one of the appeals of certain Florida movies
Speaker 2: as well, the Florida Ruins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna guess that this is actually
Speaker 3: part of Marine Land, Florida, which is a place that
Speaker 3: is operated off and on and I think was also
Speaker 3: a filming location for Revenge of the Creature, a very strange,
Speaker 3: a very strange Florida movie. Indeed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably the best Creature from the Black Lagoon movie,
Speaker 2: if one can say such a thing about Creature from
Speaker 2: the Black Lagoon.
Speaker 3: It's the sequel to Creature from the Black Lagoon, and
Speaker 3: I think it's the one where the creators have realized that, like, oh,
Speaker 3: in the original Creature, the humans were definitely the bad guys, right, Like,
Speaker 3: the creature didn't do anything, it was just living in
Speaker 3: its own place, and then humans showed up and they
Speaker 3: were like, let's shoot at it. And we're supposed to
Speaker 3: think that the humans are good for just going to
Speaker 3: a place where a monster lives and killing it.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean the Creature was the character that we
Speaker 2: we all relate to and associate with, and I think
Speaker 2: a certain similar thing is going on in this film
Speaker 2: as well. I mean the creature from the Black Lagoon,
Speaker 2: or that they are both literally fish out of water.
Speaker 2: You know, they're they're they're they're they're literally outsiders, and
Speaker 2: you know that's that's the sort of thing you often
Speaker 2: relate to in a film like this.
Speaker 3: Though, I will say I will make a strong distinction,
Speaker 3: which is that I fully side with the creature because
Speaker 3: he's just hanging out in his place and they come
Speaker 3: there and start attacking him. Right, that is the aggressor
Speaker 3: that that is trying to work out scores in a
Speaker 3: way that is not productive. He could have, like, if
Speaker 3: he was mad at his former coworkers, coworkers, he could
Speaker 3: have written them a letter saying like, here's what I
Speaker 3: think are our unresolved issues. Instead, he's like, no, I'll
Speaker 3: turn myself into a catfish critter and and come to
Speaker 3: your house and kill you.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: He's very clear on this. It's not just I want
Speaker 2: to restore ecological balance, No, No, he wants to basically
Speaker 2: all but wipe out the human race, hunt the remaining
Speaker 2: humans for sport, and to proclaim himself ruler of not
Speaker 2: merely the Earth, but the universe. So he has some
Speaker 2: grandiose plans here.
Speaker 3: Doctor Leopold, you are asking for more than as your do. Yes,
Speaker 3: But of course, so we see doctor Leopold still in
Speaker 3: human form at the beginning. He goes back to his lab,
Speaker 3: which I think are probably some some places at Marine
Speaker 3: Land of Florida. I'm not sure, but there are places
Speaker 3: with like hooses attached to the ceiling and stuff like
Speaker 3: that kind of equipment that you would imagine might be
Speaker 3: in an actual marine biology lab or I don't know,
Speaker 3: an animal marine veterinary clinic or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think they cobble together a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff too, like there's a black light, some black light
Speaker 2: stuff back not black light darkroom equipment in the back,
Speaker 2: and went at one point, you know, so clearly you know,
Speaker 2: they took some initial clutter, they filled it up with
Speaker 2: some other technological stuff, but it ends up looking good.
Speaker 2: I felt like it. I feel like this is an
Speaker 2: adequately lonesome and mad scigence.
Speaker 3: And see layer, Yes it is. It is very dingy.
Speaker 3: It is very damp. It is very dank. It is
Speaker 3: a it doesn't look like a place you'd want to sleep.
Speaker 3: And of course we get some classic mad scientist dialogue
Speaker 3: while he's fiddling around with his equipment. He he says,
Speaker 3: the formula. They all laughed at my little gym zat
Speaker 3: and we find out that Z is a. It's like
Speaker 3: a formula. It's like Z sub a A sub t.
Speaker 2: I think, yes, yeah, I believe so.
Speaker 3: Okay, So it's like a. It's a. It's a mathematical
Speaker 3: or chemical formula of some kind. But he tells the
Speaker 3: through the voiceover. He says, it's very powerful. They'll have
Speaker 3: fish the size they've never seen before, walking fish who
Speaker 3: like human flesh.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 3: So he wanders around the labs a lot. He stops
Speaker 3: to tickle an octopus, which I liked. He just reaches
Speaker 3: into the tank and kind of like touches it a
Speaker 3: little bit, and then he starts doing voiceover about this
Speaker 3: one species of catfish, the walking catfish, which according to
Speaker 3: this is another one of those claims that was listed
Speaker 3: on IMDb unsourced. But according to the claims of the Kivott,
Speaker 3: one of the writers, he got the idea for this
Speaker 3: movie by reading an article about this species of catfish,
Speaker 3: the so called walking catfish, or Clarius betracus. But anyway,
Speaker 3: this voiceover about the catfish, I wondered if this was
Speaker 3: actually written for the film, because it sounds like he
Speaker 3: is reading from an encyclopedia or a field guide entry,
Speaker 3: and I was wondering if somebody could find the text.
Speaker 3: But I was googling sections of what he says in quotes,
Speaker 3: and I came up with nothing. But I wonder maybe
Speaker 3: I'm just not looking for it quite the right way.
Speaker 3: But then he goes on, I rant about how there's
Speaker 3: a problem with the walking catfish, which is that it
Speaker 3: is too small, and he tells it that you are
Speaker 3: not ready to battle humans. But then he says, soon
Speaker 3: the whole world will know and respect us. And so
Speaker 3: I'm a little confused about his plan because he's he's
Speaker 3: going on about how all the humans will be killed,
Speaker 3: but then he also says that they will finally respect him.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, Maybe it's that they'll respect him
Speaker 3: before they are killed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess at the very least. But also, you know,
Speaker 2: he does allude to the fact later on that some
Speaker 2: humans will be alive, possibly so maybe those are the
Speaker 2: ones who will respect him.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, no more screwing around. It's just time
Speaker 3: to inject myself with the giant needle. And that's what
Speaker 3: he does. He grabs this needle that is huge. It's
Speaker 3: like a you know, it's like a feather duster sized handle,
Speaker 3: you know, So it looks like it was designed for
Speaker 3: saltwater crocodiles, and it's full of some kind of green
Speaker 3: gatorade looking liquid and he just jams it straight into
Speaker 3: his arm.
Speaker 2: But that's just phase one of the transformation. First is
Speaker 2: the injection.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Next comes the kind of a baptism.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: He's got to get into a tank. So he gets undressed.
Speaker 3: He's wearing these huge blue box or shorts with his
Speaker 3: butt kind of hanging out and that's funny. And then
Speaker 3: there's this pool of water, and I think there is
Speaker 3: some blood mixed in with the water. And then there
Speaker 3: are these Geiger counter sound effects in the background. So
Speaker 3: I think, suppose something is supposed to be radioactive this
Speaker 3: pool of water may be it could be that it's
Speaker 3: supposed to be heavy water. Because later on some characters
Speaker 3: talk about how his laboratory, doctor Leopold's laboratory used to
Speaker 3: do heavy water experiments.
Speaker 2: Ties right into previous episodes of Stuff to Bout Your Mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, as we discussed in that episode, as
Speaker 3: soon as you get into a pool of heavy water,
Speaker 3: you turn into a catfish creature. So the science checks out.
Speaker 3: But then he gets himself into this kind of winch
Speaker 3: gurny thing. I don't know how best to explain this.
Speaker 3: It's like it looks like a device that would be
Speaker 3: used for airlifting comatose dolphins.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's fittingly awkward and ritualistic. It's an unsettling
Speaker 2: scene because he doesn't just climb in. Yeah, he lowers
Speaker 2: himself into.
Speaker 4: It this thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so he gets in the gurney, he lowers himself
Speaker 3: into the water with a rope, and then we get
Speaker 3: electronic beeps and Geiger counter clicks and then finally he
Speaker 3: emerges and he is the creature, and then we will
Speaker 3: never want We will never again the rest of the movie.
Speaker 3: See the actor who plays Leopold, he's just gone.
Speaker 2: That's right. All we have is this this fabulous monster.
Speaker 3: So it's not like a ware catfish movie where he's
Speaker 3: changing back and forth. He's just he's just this creature permanently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think this is one of the things
Speaker 2: I always that always capture my imagination imagination about the
Speaker 2: film is that instantly we look at this and we're like, oh, sweetie,
Speaker 2: you have you have really done it?
Speaker 4: Now?
Speaker 2: This is this is not good. But he has different
Speaker 2: thoughts about it.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, So as soon as he gets out of
Speaker 3: the water, he looks at himself in a mirror and
Speaker 3: he you think for a second he's upset, but but no,
Speaker 3: he turns it around. He says nothing at all like
Speaker 3: a catfish, but it's utiful. And what is he talking about? Well,
Speaker 3: I would say that he looks like a cross between
Speaker 3: Greedo and Alf, except he's got a sort of like
Speaker 3: dirtier texture than either one of them. So it's like
Speaker 3: if you cross Greedo and Alf, but then have that
Speaker 3: creature fall into a puddle of mud and dead leaves
Speaker 3: that get stuck to him. And then he's also got
Speaker 3: green fur around certain parts of his upper body. I
Speaker 3: think it's the parts where the sort of shirt part
Speaker 3: of his suit comes together, because it's similar to the
Speaker 3: white fluffy parts of a Sanda suit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he looks a little bit like the Grinch at times,
Speaker 2: you know, and he has kind of like Grinch physique.
Speaker 3: Yes, he does. That's a very good comparison. I didn't
Speaker 3: think of that. Some parts of his body have a
Speaker 3: kind of peter pan garment shingled leaf texture, or maybe
Speaker 3: the Green Giant has some clothes that look like this,
Speaker 3: the shins in particular. But also he has a snout
Speaker 3: that ends in a leech mouth. Well, it's kind of
Speaker 3: like a leech mouth. It's like a red circle with
Speaker 3: teeth in the middle, but they're not those circular leech
Speaker 3: like teeth. They're more just kind of like a dog's
Speaker 3: teeth with canines.
Speaker 2: It is not even remotely articulated though.
Speaker 3: Like no no, no, painted on teeth basically, and according
Speaker 3: to the writer Ron Kivett, this is another one of
Speaker 3: those IMDb trivias. The monster has this mouth that looks
Speaker 3: kind of like a leech's mouth because in an earlier
Speaker 3: version of the script, he was supposed to suck blood
Speaker 3: out of his victim, so he was going to be
Speaker 3: a vampire catfish monster. But I think they scrapped the
Speaker 3: sucking blood, but the costume was already made, I suppose. Okay,
Speaker 3: so he's transformed and then we get to a part
Speaker 3: that a legitimate laugh out loud part of the movie,
Speaker 3: which is when he goes to his big to do
Speaker 3: list on the wall. He's got this wall, it's like
Speaker 3: this giant disc shaped wall calendar that he's got his
Speaker 3: upcoming tasks written on. And we see him go up
Speaker 3: to the cell on this calendar labeled self transformation and
Speaker 3: he crosses it off, like oh, there's one thing off
Speaker 3: my to do list. And then the next item on
Speaker 3: the list is another instance of the word transformation, but
Speaker 3: it is next to a drawing of the outline of
Speaker 3: the state of Florida, and this drawing is labeled fla period,
Speaker 3: which is the correct AP styling of abbreviation of Florida.
Speaker 3: Which makes me think we may have a journalist decorating
Speaker 3: this set, because I don't know if you remember, I
Speaker 3: mean that we used to have to know AP style
Speaker 3: when we were writing for How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: And yeah, yeah, I still, I mean it's hard to shake.
Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody just uses the postal abbreviations now, or maybe
Speaker 3: they didn't have the postal abbreviations in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 3: I don't actually know.
Speaker 2: We at any rate, this is the calendar research that
Speaker 2: Jamie defraits was referring to. Yes, And I don't know, Joe.
Speaker 2: I think this is just how you had to do
Speaker 2: things before modern project management software, right, have to keep track.
Speaker 4: You just had to have a.
Speaker 2: Giant circular calendar chart on the wall taking up enormous
Speaker 2: real estate in your mad science layer.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you had to.
Speaker 3: Draw pictures of the state that you're going to transform.
Speaker 3: So he draws Florida transformation. I guess of Florida. Another
Speaker 3: hilarious thing about this is that next to the drawing
Speaker 3: of Florida, there's a label of the ocean, and it's
Speaker 3: just labeled Atlantic Ocean. But like, who was going to
Speaker 3: be confused? Wasn't he just making this for himself?
Speaker 2: Well maybe he wasn't sure. You know, after the transformation,
Speaker 2: you know, his brain might be a little foggy.
Speaker 3: He needs lots of visual that's a good point. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like he couldn't predict his future mental state, so he's like,
Speaker 3: maybe I will be confused and I will need to
Speaker 3: relearn geography.
Speaker 2: At any rate. It looks, it looks weird, and I
Speaker 2: like it. I actually made a Christmas tree ornament based
Speaker 2: on it. At one point.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's good. So the Leopold catfish monster goes out
Speaker 3: on the town. He goes out equipped with a spray
Speaker 3: bottle and just starts spraying nature, I think with the
Speaker 3: ZAT formula. So the sprays snakes and frogs, and he
Speaker 3: sprays reads. At the water's edge. He goes swimming and
Speaker 3: then uses the spray bottle underwater to spray an octopus
Speaker 3: and a crab. You see him literally with the spray
Speaker 3: bottle like under the water, squeezing it.
Speaker 2: And now, yeah, so we have some underwater photography going
Speaker 2: on in this sequence and then in some sequences to come.
Speaker 2: And I don't know if you noticed, Joe, but we
Speaker 2: have some very clear underwater sequences here, and I believe
Speaker 2: that's because they were filming in the various springs of Florida,
Speaker 2: which even today they're not as clear as they used
Speaker 2: to be due to environmental reasons and runoff and so forth,
Speaker 2: which is depressing, but even now, very clear waters and
Speaker 2: back in seventy one, yeah, perfect place to shoot your
Speaker 2: monster movie, even if you were doing so on a budget.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, yeah, I should have noted that they really
Speaker 3: did not look like the cloudy, stagnant pond water I
Speaker 3: would imagine in most of North Florida.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, we are twenty three minutes into the film
Speaker 2: before we finally introduced non leopold humans and actual dialogue
Speaker 2: one keric human character talking to another human character.
Speaker 3: Unbelievable. So here we.
Speaker 2: Introduce the sheriff and Rex, the marine biologist. And if
Speaker 2: it's not clear at this point, it becomes clear that
Speaker 2: they were sort of going for in the heat of
Speaker 2: the night thing here. This is based on a novel.
Speaker 2: Nineteen sixty seven movie directed by Norman Jewison. I saw
Speaker 2: a small town southern sheriff played by Rod Steiger teaming
Speaker 2: up with an African American homicide detective from up north
Speaker 2: played by Sidney Poitier. And yeah, that is nowhere near
Speaker 2: in the Heat of the Night in terms of serious
Speaker 2: drama and cultural commentary. But it seems to be like
Speaker 2: that's what they were going for here. They were thinking, Hey,
Speaker 2: what if it was like in the Heat of the night,
Speaker 2: except there was also a giant catfish.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is something we've seen in a number of
Speaker 3: these other ecological monster movies from the seventies. They also
Speaker 3: seem to try to inject some social commentary in there.
Speaker 3: It's often kind of light and not super deep. But yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that is probably what they're attempting. Is Rex
Speaker 3: the marine biologist also supposed to be from out of town.
Speaker 3: I don't recall if that was the case, but.
Speaker 2: I don't remember if it's expressly stated, but it feels
Speaker 2: implied that he's not from around here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so there's a general suggestion that
Speaker 3: there's this rigid, parochial, local white conservative infrastructure that does
Speaker 3: not process the introduction of knowledge about pollution causing monster attacks,
Speaker 3: being it does not incorporate that information well, and it
Speaker 3: sort of requires the expertise of somebody who provides a
Speaker 3: different perspective. And so it's got in this case, an
Speaker 3: African American scientist who may or may not be from
Speaker 3: out of town, but at least has reacted to that way.
Speaker 3: And of course, as we said earlier, the redneck sheriff
Speaker 3: and this is literally chewing on a hay stalk when
Speaker 3: we first meet him, and generally seems to be derisive
Speaker 3: of the concept of science and expertise.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, he's kind of a Floridian wigum from the Simpsons.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah. In fact, the sheriff there are a lot
Speaker 3: of people in this movie that the sheriff shows he
Speaker 3: does not respect, and that includes hippies, the press. At
Speaker 3: one point we have a reporter who's trying to cover
Speaker 3: the issue, but the Sheriff's just like somebody ought to
Speaker 3: smash you flat. And then of course he's not fond
Speaker 3: of out of towners scientists. I think he represents southern
Speaker 3: cultural rigidity.
Speaker 2: But that's enough human stuff. Then we come back to
Speaker 2: Leopold once more.
Speaker 3: That's right, Leopold. He comes back to the lab after
Speaker 3: he's been out there spraying stuff, and he goes up
Speaker 3: to another thing on his big wall calendar and he says,
Speaker 3: mats in your days are numbered again. I think this
Speaker 3: is voiceover, and we have no idea who Matson is.
Speaker 3: But I think the point is he's got a grudge
Speaker 3: against some scientists who he worked with who told him
Speaker 3: that his theories were too extreme. I think this other
Speaker 3: scientist told him he was taking it too personal and
Speaker 3: he didn't like that. So he's going to get his revenge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and this is where you begin to I mean,
Speaker 2: it's already been an awkward transformation. We've watched him move
Speaker 2: around za the month. I mean its name's not Zat
Speaker 2: sometimes I think of him as that, though again Za
Speaker 2: refers to the chemical, not the monster. The monsters just Leopold, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the giant fish. But he moves around so awkwardly, certainly
Speaker 2: on land. It's really hard for me to buy that
Speaker 2: this is better than your human form. And in the water, Okay,
Speaker 2: I guess he's marginally better in the water than a
Speaker 2: human would be, but it's already I mean to going
Speaker 2: kind of rocky. And then he's like, you know what,
Speaker 2: I also, revenge is part of my plan. And then
Speaker 2: it's like, so he's not only going to attempt to
Speaker 2: unbalance the ecosystem and bring upon a new age of fish,
Speaker 2: he also has some petty revenge agendas in there. He
Speaker 2: also needs to commit murder crimes.
Speaker 3: Oh, he's got several. He gets sidetracked on a lot
Speaker 3: of stuff. So, yeah, he's got revenge murders. And then
Speaker 3: at some at some point later on, I think he
Speaker 3: becomes lonely and he wants he wants a fish wife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he goes the classic of Frankenstein's monster route, and yeah,
Speaker 2: he wants a companion. And so that's addition, you know,
Speaker 2: it's just the budget on this plan is just getting
Speaker 2: blown out of proportion, right.
Speaker 3: He decides he needs to at the last minute add
Speaker 3: in a bride of catfish action item, and that that's
Speaker 3: how things really go off the rails. But so at
Speaker 3: first we just see him creeping around on various people.
Speaker 3: He creeps on Rex, the marine biologist, while Rex is
Speaker 3: out taking samples of nature. He creeps on a woman
Speaker 3: who's painting beside the lake. He creeps on a family
Speaker 3: while they're fishing, and then he ambushes them, sort of
Speaker 3: flips over their boat, and I think kills the dude.
Speaker 3: And I think the dude who was fishing was one
Speaker 3: of the scientists who doubted him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that seems to be the case. One of
Speaker 2: the problems is that we get less and less narration
Speaker 2: from Leopold as we go, Yes, And I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's by design, like he's becoming less and less
Speaker 2: human so there's less of that voice in there, or
Speaker 2: if they just ran out of time. I don't know,
Speaker 2: But we're increasingly on our own to figure out what
Speaker 2: he's doing and why he's doing and even if he's
Speaker 2: doing something successful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and so at some point Leopold attacks another one
Speaker 3: of the scientists who doubted him. But he attacks him
Speaker 3: in his house, not in the water. And I was
Speaker 3: just noticing at this point, like, wait, a minute, does
Speaker 3: Leopold even really have any catfish powers? I mean, I
Speaker 3: guess you were sort of alluding to that a minute ago,
Speaker 3: but like, this murder could have just been done by
Speaker 3: a big human. He just attacks a guy in his
Speaker 3: house and chokes him.
Speaker 2: I think, Yeah, the only possible answer I can think
Speaker 2: of there is that human Leopold does look kind of
Speaker 2: shambly and puny. I'm not sure if he could have
Speaker 2: pulled this off, So I guess arguably monster form is better, okay.
Speaker 3: But also at some point here evidence starts mounting that
Speaker 3: something weird is going on with pollution in the water,
Speaker 3: and the Leopold attacks, and Rex is on the case.
Speaker 3: Rex starts putting the pieces together. One point, he's out
Speaker 3: collecting data with a net and Leopold is swimming in
Speaker 3: the water underneath his boat, and he tears up the net,
Speaker 3: and Leopold's like, nets are harmful to fish, We will
Speaker 3: use them for humans if any survive.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, let's not get ahead of ourselves, Leopold.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Rex ends up summoning these people we talked
Speaker 3: about before, the INPIT agents. In PIT I think is
Speaker 3: an acronym. I don't know what it stands for. I
Speaker 3: tried to look it up, and there is something called INPIT,
Speaker 3: but I don't think it is what is being referenced here,
Speaker 3: So I really don't know what it is. What would
Speaker 3: you say, is the deal.
Speaker 2: With them international Nature Police Information Technologies?
Speaker 4: I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: I guess they're kind of like they feel like they've
Speaker 2: arrived from a TV show, Like there's a TV show
Speaker 2: where they investigate strange nature happenings. They have their own van,
Speaker 2: they have jumpsuits.
Speaker 3: By god, it's like the A team is here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're the professionals. They're here to get stuff done.
Speaker 2: But it does feel like they're coming from an entirely
Speaker 2: different television show. And indeed they may feel like this
Speaker 2: if you're watching it unriffed for the first time, because
Speaker 2: a lot of the end pit stuff was cut from
Speaker 2: the Blood Waters of Doctor Z edition on MST three.
Speaker 3: Kh Okay. Now, yeah, they arrive in this big camper
Speaker 3: like RV basically, and they are dressed in these red
Speaker 3: uniform jumpsuits, so they look kind of like they stepped
Speaker 3: out of Flash Gordon or something. Yeah, and they compare
Speaker 3: notes with Rex and they talk about all the pollution
Speaker 3: he's found and how this might be affecting the mutant
Speaker 3: marine life attacks, and so they start putting the pieces
Speaker 3: together along with Rex. Now we mentioned that unfortunately Leopold
Speaker 3: gets distracted from his transform everybody into fish. Well, I
Speaker 3: don't know if that's what he's ultimately, whatever it is
Speaker 3: he's doing, he gets distracted by deciding that he must
Speaker 3: make a bride of catfish. So he goes back to
Speaker 3: the lady who's painting by the lake, who's still there
Speaker 3: it seems like maybe days later, and he kidnaps her
Speaker 3: and takes her back to the lab to turn her
Speaker 3: into bride of catfish. And it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a lonesome and disastrous episode in the
Speaker 2: Ascent of Doctor Leopold here where yeah, she dies half
Speaker 2: transform still in the baptism cage thing. And then afterwards
Speaker 2: he has to get rid of her body. And this
Speaker 2: is another this is another sequence that was cut from
Speaker 2: the MST version. What does he do to get rid
Speaker 2: of her body? Does he feater to fishes or anything
Speaker 2: like that?
Speaker 4: Nope.
Speaker 2: He dissolves her in a big old vat of Hollywood.
Speaker 3: Acid, our old friend.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great sequence. All while we have some
Speaker 2: like weird you know, the weird Tamil electronic music going
Speaker 2: on in the background.
Speaker 3: And we see him test the acid on a fish.
Speaker 3: He dips the fish in the acid and it eats
Speaker 3: away half of it.
Speaker 2: This film is not concerned with wasting anybody's time. We're
Speaker 2: gonna do some an acid scene and we're going to
Speaker 2: spend about fifteen minutes doing it.
Speaker 3: We've got to make sure that our catfish monster is
Speaker 3: doing quality assurance on his acid. Yeah. So we see
Speaker 3: Rex in the inpit agents set up traps for the monster.
Speaker 3: I guess at this point they suspect there's a giant
Speaker 3: catfish monster somehow, and they set up traps and then
Speaker 3: they chill in a camper. And this part also reminded
Speaker 3: me of Boggy Creek too. And the legend continues where
Speaker 3: they will set up traps in the woods and then
Speaker 3: chill in an RV. But eventually the catfish monster attacks
Speaker 3: them and they somehow scare it away I think with
Speaker 3: a camera flash, and they end up getting photos of
Speaker 3: it and.
Speaker 2: It's a really good photo. If this is another place,
Speaker 2: where is that? I mean, doctor Leopold is just really
Speaker 2: messing up, like, oh my goodness, now you're you've come
Speaker 2: been completely photographed and it's crystal clear.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So they get perfectly good photos of him. And
Speaker 3: there's one part somewhere in here where Leopold is I think,
Speaker 3: sad and defeated. And he goes back to his lab
Speaker 3: and you see that he is sad. I think about
Speaker 3: the fact that he failed to successfully turn the woman
Speaker 3: he kidnapped into into bride of Catfish, and so he
Speaker 3: starts drawing her. But the picture he draws of her
Speaker 3: does not look like the woman that he kidnapped. It
Speaker 3: looks like Elvira. Maybe he was supposed to be drawing
Speaker 3: somebody else, and did he have like a long lost love?
Speaker 3: Is that implied in the movie.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's even implied, Okay, but you know,
Speaker 2: we're left to figure out a lot of this on
Speaker 2: our own, So maybe it is. Or maybe he just
Speaker 2: was like, this is my this was my one shot
Speaker 2: at romantic happiness, and the kidnapping and forced transformation did
Speaker 2: not work, So I've got to do this alone.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was Elvira, or I guess at this time,
Speaker 3: maybe it was Vampira. He was like, oh, Vampira, Yes
Speaker 3: she could have she could have been my companion in
Speaker 3: the fish world.
Speaker 2: But alas, at any rate, the main experiment continues.
Speaker 3: Right, so Rex and the inpit agents they end up
Speaker 3: making the connection to Leopold. One of the inpit agents,
Speaker 3: I guess agent Walls. She figures out that Leopold was
Speaker 3: working on a lab that was conducting secret experiments with
Speaker 3: heavy water, and he is attacking his former co workers
Speaker 3: from the lab he worked at, and so they asked
Speaker 3: the sheriff to check on those researchers. And then then
Speaker 3: so I guess they're doing that. But then we spend
Speaker 3: a long time with the monster going out for a walk,
Speaker 3: just wandering around the streets at night. His posture as
Speaker 3: he walks, You've mentioned that his posture is awkward, and
Speaker 3: it's amusing in a way that it's difficult to describe.
Speaker 3: He's kind of like a drunk guy trying to walk
Speaker 3: through the sand and flip flops, you know, or it's
Speaker 3: like hard to get solid footing and you got things
Speaker 3: coming off your feet. So it's that kind of walk
Speaker 3: But another thing about this movie is that it does
Speaker 3: not follow the Jaws rule, you know, the rule that
Speaker 3: you should not show too much of your monster until
Speaker 3: the final act. This movie, the monster is on screen
Speaker 3: constantly full view, bright lights. You see the whole thing
Speaker 3: for minutes at a time. It's just alf Grido front
Speaker 3: and center, wandering through the empty streets at night. You
Speaker 3: see him break into a drug store to get some
Speaker 3: kind of medicine. He smashes a bunch of stuff, I think.
Speaker 2: Because yeah, that's because he's yeah, well he's He becomes
Speaker 2: injured at one point. So so not only does the
Speaker 2: experiment seem to be failing, he becomes perhaps mortally wounded
Speaker 2: or at least like heavily wounded to where he's having
Speaker 2: to break into a pharmacy and wreck the play and
Speaker 2: steal some drugs and so like, the whole plan seems
Speaker 2: to just be going completely off the rails at this point.
Speaker 2: Now one of my favorite scenes, and this one I
Speaker 2: laughed out loud at this one. This is a scene
Speaker 2: that was cut from the MST treatment of the film,
Speaker 2: and it's ultimately a lost because it's hilarious. There would
Speaker 2: have probably been a lot of fun riffing on this one,
Speaker 2: but it's what I think of as the hippie parade.
Speaker 2: So the sheriff here, he goes to check on folks
Speaker 2: in town and finds the youth enjoying a little folk
Speaker 2: music clearly in like some sort of abandoned building, and
Speaker 2: they're hanging out with none other than the the actual
Speaker 2: real life Jamie Defrates, who is performing a song the
Speaker 2: B side to World War Two boy Running Don't Make
Speaker 2: You Free. And so anyway, the sheriff, you know, he
Speaker 2: comes under in the midst of this. He sets down
Speaker 2: and he listens for a spell, you know, perhaps proving
Speaker 2: that he can hang you know, and.
Speaker 3: He's like he's enjoying the music.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it looks like he's enjoying. It's like, yeah, this
Speaker 2: is good. I can I'm see and I to eye
Speaker 2: with the young folk now.
Speaker 3: But quickly. Another thing that made me laugh in the
Speaker 3: scene is that for just a moment, Leopold arrives and
Speaker 3: is watching through the window the monster and he's also
Speaker 3: ambiguously kind of grooving, but then he just moves on.
Speaker 2: It's almost like it was meant to be a music
Speaker 2: video for this song, you know. Yeah, because again these
Speaker 2: songs are featured in their entirety, nothing is cut. So
Speaker 2: the sheriff, you know, he enjoys it for a bit,
Speaker 2: but he's there with a purpose. He has to he
Speaker 2: has to protect these hippies. So the sheriff, uh you know,
Speaker 2: gets up and leads the hippies all mid song on
Speaker 2: a police escorted parade through town with with the with
Speaker 2: Jamie de Frate's playing the guitar the whole time and singing.
Speaker 2: And then so they have this procession through the small
Speaker 2: Florida town and then right into the sheriff's office and
Speaker 2: then right into a jail cell. And it's then explained
Speaker 2: that this is to keep them safe and that the
Speaker 2: hippies seem okay with it, but it's not clear for
Speaker 2: a moment, and I found it kind of perversely humorous.
Speaker 4: It's like.
Speaker 2: The old sheriff. You think he's, you know, see an
Speaker 2: eyed eye with the young folk and he's looking after them.
Speaker 2: Now he's just arresting all of them, so.
Speaker 3: They don't seem bothered by it. Like they all just
Speaker 3: go into the jail cell and they're just like cool.
Speaker 2: Man, yeah, yeah, pretty much, and they're locked up and
Speaker 2: you never see them in the film again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so a lot of the rest of the movie
Speaker 3: is just Leopold stalking around looking at things and menacing people,
Speaker 3: and then Rex and the Inpit agents trying to track
Speaker 3: him down. They're on his trail at this point and
Speaker 3: they're trying to find him, but at one point Leopold.
Speaker 3: A lot of what Leopold does is like look through
Speaker 3: the windows at people and spy on them, And at
Speaker 3: one point he observes the two in Pit agents kissing.
Speaker 3: He spies on them through a window, and I guess
Speaker 3: he gets jealous, so he decides at this point to
Speaker 3: kidnap Agent Walsh, one of the two in Pit agents,
Speaker 3: and create another of Catfish Bride of Catfish two point zero.
Speaker 2: Right, So again really veering off schedule here with the
Speaker 2: whole plan because he's again heavily injured at this point,
Speaker 2: having to self medicate with stolen pharmacy drugs. But then
Speaker 2: he's like, I'm gonna try it again. I'm going to
Speaker 2: try and transform this woman who is hunting me into
Speaker 2: my bride.
Speaker 3: Yes, So he kidnaps her from her house, takes her
Speaker 3: back to the lab, and then Rex Walker and the cops.
Speaker 3: Walker is the other Inpit agent. They figure out what's
Speaker 3: going on and they're chasing the monster down that they
Speaker 3: split up to chase him and the other in Pit
Speaker 3: agent Walker uses this hilarious looking amphibious vehicle that looks
Speaker 3: kind of like a power wheel. It's very small.
Speaker 2: It's very cool, I assume from the non existent in
Speaker 2: Pit television series that I'm imagining in my head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and coming up as a scene where you see
Speaker 3: this Inpit agent sort of wading through a swamp and
Speaker 3: he gets bitten by a snake. And this is another
Speaker 3: one of those IMDb trivia claims. It claims is that
Speaker 3: the snake bite was not scripted. It was just something
Speaker 3: The guy actually got bitten by a snake while they
Speaker 3: were filming the scene and they just left it in
Speaker 3: the movie. Well, I don't know, I feel doubtful, but
Speaker 3: it looks kind of real.
Speaker 2: It looks it looks realistic. But I also really like
Speaker 2: the way it plays into the ending of the picture.
Speaker 2: So yeah, for a bit here we have this kind
Speaker 2: of double chase where where one agent is trying to
Speaker 2: chase down the monster and then we have Rex, the
Speaker 2: marine biologists and the sheriff. They are going to check
Speaker 2: out the laboratory to see what's up, see what old
Speaker 2: Doc Leopold was up to. And then of course we
Speaker 2: also have Agent Walsh who has been kidnapped.
Speaker 3: Right, so they go to the monster's layer. The sheriff
Speaker 3: fights the monster and loses and is strangled, so bye
Speaker 3: bye Sheriff. And then Rex he comes across Leopold's notes
Speaker 3: and he, I think, wants to understand them so we
Speaker 3: can understand what was going on here. You wonder if
Speaker 3: it's like that scene in the movie where one scientist
Speaker 3: discovers what the mad scientist is doing, like the good
Speaker 3: scientist is momentarily tempted. It's the last temptation of the
Speaker 3: good scientist, and it's like, oh, it's genius.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But of course that shows up and violence ensues.
Speaker 2: He ultimately tries to save Agent Walsh, and I guess
Speaker 2: to a certain degree succeeds, because what Zach tries to
Speaker 2: do is he puts her in the cage as well.
Speaker 2: He forced he injects her with the green stuff, and
Speaker 2: then he's going to lower her into the za baptismal
Speaker 2: font but Rex disrupts that and then Rex is injured,
Speaker 2: possibly killed by the monster, and the monster players off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I wonder do all the main characters die,
Speaker 3: because we have this chase at the end where Rex
Speaker 3: tries to save Walsh. You see him get injured and
Speaker 3: then fall down, but I guess you never see him
Speaker 3: after that. A similar thing happens to the other Inpit Agent.
Speaker 3: He sort of it's injured and falls down, and at
Speaker 3: the end of the movie, I think we see him
Speaker 3: not moving, but it's not clear if he's dead or alive,
Speaker 3: and you think, well, at least Agent Walsh has been saved.
Speaker 3: She did not get turned into a catfish, but something
Speaker 3: bad happened to her. I don't know exactly what it is.
Speaker 3: She is not upgraded to fish level, but she is
Speaker 3: sort of turned into a zombie human.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think she got half the treatment right.
Speaker 2: She's injected with the ZAT, but then she's not actually
Speaker 2: lowered into the ZAT baptismal font to transform her body.
Speaker 2: And so yeah, the ending of this film I think
Speaker 2: is actually pretty effective. It's haunting and kind of pitch
Speaker 2: perfect because throughout the whole film, we've watched Leopold stumble
Speaker 2: awkwardly around his grandiose dreams and voiceover so mismatched with
Speaker 2: his new body, his actual abilities, his focus, his mixed results,
Speaker 2: but in the end, against all odds, he achieves his goal.
Speaker 2: For the most part, he struggles and stumbles into the
Speaker 2: ocean with his zat formula, like two tanks of it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: one of the male agent that was snake that is
Speaker 2: like shooting at him with a rifle and seems to
Speaker 2: at least wing him, possibly kill him, but he gets
Speaker 2: that za into the ocean. And then meanwhile, even though
Speaker 2: he's unable to completely transform Agent Walsh into his catfish princess,
Speaker 2: she does. She wakes in the zombified state. She wanders
Speaker 2: out onto the beach, and the other agent tries to
Speaker 2: call to He's like, oh, thank goodness, you're all right,
Speaker 2: but she just wanders into the water, just like a zombie.
Speaker 2: And yeah, we're left to pieces together because then we
Speaker 2: kind of zoom out and some haunting music plays. So
Speaker 2: we just don't know, like, did she enough, Is she
Speaker 2: transformed enough that she'll survive in the water, or is
Speaker 2: she about to drown? Did enough Zach get into the
Speaker 2: ocean to bring about this new age of giant fish
Speaker 2: and bring down humanity? I don't know, but it seems
Speaker 2: like that might be the case, so it seems like,
Speaker 2: you know, despite everything, doctor Leopold has won. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think the implication is that all the human characters
Speaker 3: die and he succeeds in throwing his formula into the
Speaker 3: ocean to create a race of atomic superfish that will
Speaker 3: conquer the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's quite an ending. It ends on a really
Speaker 2: good note where where you kind of forget some of
Speaker 2: the awkwardness and weirdness and mismatched tonal choices.
Speaker 3: Now, another one of the many claims about this movie
Speaker 3: online is that apparently the movie was originally supposed to
Speaker 3: end with, or at least include I think this would
Speaker 3: be at the ending, giant fish attacks, like a giant
Speaker 3: catfish that was like rampaging around and destroying the town.
Speaker 3: And apparently they filmed some versions of this, I think
Speaker 3: with miniature models of the town, but then they realized, oh,
Speaker 3: this does not look good, so they cut that part
Speaker 3: out of the movie. But one shot from the sequence
Speaker 3: allegedly made it into the film, Yeah, which is where
Speaker 3: a catfish, like a little catfish, is squirming next to
Speaker 3: a fence.
Speaker 2: Yes, I saw this when I did my recent viewing
Speaker 2: of zat uncut, And yeah, like, suddenly, there's this brief
Speaker 2: sequence that looks like like poor effects test footage of
Speaker 2: a walking catfish flopping around on a model of some landscape.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that seems to match up with what we're
Speaker 2: seeing here, but there's no context for it. When it
Speaker 2: actually shows up in the film, you're just going like,
Speaker 2: what what was that?
Speaker 3: So I guess we mentioned the fact that when Doctor
Speaker 3: Leopold first transforms and looks at himself in a mirror,
Speaker 3: he says, ah, nothing like a catfish, but it's beautiful.
Speaker 3: And I wonder was it intended that he would look
Speaker 3: nothing like a catfish even though he is half man
Speaker 3: half catfish, or did they just get whatever costume they
Speaker 3: could get and then they're like, oh, we better add
Speaker 3: a line and here sort of acknowledging this doesn't look
Speaker 3: like a catfish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe that's how it went down, or maybe that's
Speaker 2: what they told themselves. You know, they're like, no, this
Speaker 2: isn't quite what we went for, but it is beautiful.
Speaker 2: Let's devote oodles of screen time to it.
Speaker 3: So weirdly, this is not the only Killer Catfish movie
Speaker 3: that I've ever seen. It's been many years now, so
Speaker 3: I've forgotten a lot of the details about it, but
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure that I watched a killer catfish movie
Speaker 3: about six or seven years ago called Beneath that's about
Speaker 3: people trapped on a boat who are being stalked on
Speaker 3: a lake by a killer catfish, and I recall it
Speaker 3: having a really good, subtle sense of humor. I think
Speaker 3: it might have been a Larry Fessenden movie.
Speaker 2: But oh yeah, I just looked it up and it is.
Speaker 2: Larry Fessenden. Quite a filmmaker. He's made some very interesting
Speaker 2: genre pictures.
Speaker 3: The main moment of this movie that stuck with me
Speaker 3: is there's one point where I think one of them
Speaker 3: has just been attacked by catfish, and the people remaining
Speaker 3: alive on the boat one of them gets up and
Speaker 3: yells in the direction of the catfish, what do you
Speaker 3: want from us?
Speaker 2: Well, clearly it's muck. They're here for the muck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, catfish want Now why would catfish want to eat humans?
Speaker 3: They just sort of like suck up mud? And I
Speaker 3: don't know it. Should have looked up something about catfish
Speaker 3: feeding behaviors before I open my mouth on that. But
Speaker 3: it's not a sequel to that, not that I can tell. Okay, no,
Speaker 3: it's just like it doesn't look anything like the Grito alf.
Speaker 3: It is just a gigantic Google eyed catfish.
Speaker 2: Well, in the end, there's nothing else quite like it.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 2: It is quite an impressive film, all the everything, and
Speaker 2: it comes together awkwardly but kind of perfectly. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like it's the monster itself as film. Now you
Speaker 2: might be wondering where can I watch that? Well, that
Speaker 2: has been out on DVD and Blu Ray for years,
Speaker 2: but it sadly looks like it's out of stock everywhere
Speaker 2: at this moment as we're recording this. Hopefully that'll change
Speaker 2: in the future. It's also been available i think on
Speaker 2: Amazon Prime in the recent past, but it's not there
Speaker 2: right now. But you can watch the MST version Bloodwaters
Speaker 2: of Doctor Z. You can digitally obtain that most places,
Speaker 2: including Amazon Prime. For our copy, again, we rented our
Speaker 2: copy from Atlanta's own Video Drome, and if you're in Atlanta,
Speaker 2: you can go there and rent various DVDs and Blu
Speaker 2: rays or buy some cool merch And you can also
Speaker 2: check them out online at videodrome dot tv and you
Speaker 2: can buy stuff and they'll ship.
Speaker 4: It to you, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 3: They should make Doctor Leopold head motorcycle helmets. So you know,
Speaker 3: it's the Zat monster, but it goes on for the
Speaker 3: bike ride. In fact, you could do the whole thing,
Speaker 3: like the leather jacket is a Zat jacket.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh well, you know, speaking of that, because that sounds
Speaker 2: like exactly the kind of thing that our Land would
Speaker 2: potentially do. If you're listening to this and you don't
Speaker 2: know the art of our Land, you can go to
Speaker 2: our Land art dot com and you can check out
Speaker 2: some of the stuff that he creates. All right, So
Speaker 2: there you have it. That's episode two and what may
Speaker 2: be a Florida movie trilogy. We'll see. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if we'll be back next week with another Florida movie
Speaker 2: or the week after that. It kind of depends on
Speaker 2: Joe's tolerance for all the Florida nests of these motion pictures.
Speaker 3: Oh, you know, I'm generally game.
Speaker 2: All right, we'll see, you know, sometimes it's nice to
Speaker 2: have a palette cleanser sometimes between films. So I don't know,
Speaker 2: we'll see, we'll figure it out in the meantime. If
Speaker 2: you'd like to check out other episodes of Weird House, Cinema.
Speaker 2: We publish this every Friday in the Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind podcast feed We're primarily a science podcast, and
Speaker 2: so our primary episodes on scientific topics like the sargassum, seaweed,
Speaker 2: the organism, and the end of the environment those published
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We publish listener mail on Mondays,
Speaker 2: and the listener mail covers like everything Weird House cinema,
Speaker 2: but also Stuff to Blow your Mind. And then on
Speaker 2: Wednesdays we publish the artifact a short form bit a
Speaker 2: particular artifacts in moments in time, etc. So check all
Speaker 2: that out. Wherever you get your podcasts, you can find
Speaker 2: us and we just ask the you rate, review and
Speaker 2: subscribe if the website allows you to do that.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our wonderful audio producer Seth
Speaker 3: Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,