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