I saw this film under the title, The Blood Waters of Dr. Z on the cult riffing show Mystery Science Theater 3000. Apparently, it is more commonly known by the title Zaat and though I am sure there is a lot of movie that MST3K did not show, I am rather sure it still would have been a very poor movie. The main problem with it? No matter how much more gory it might have been, no matter if there was nudity you cannot ignore the fact the monster of this film looks and acts horribly! Seriously, the monster in this one does not look as good as a monster in a Roger Corman film from the 50's, the monster in Night of the Blood Beast looks more intimidating! Basically, the thing is supposed to be part man and part fish...part catfish that is, which is absurd to begin with. The body portion of the costume is very dumpy and the head looks like a joke as the mouth looks like it is a set of novelty vampire fangs! The Creature From the Black Lagoon looks way better than this thing and once again it is from an older film. If the looks of the thing were not bad enough then it is the fact I have never seen a more nonthreatening monster in terms of its movements. It is constantly tripping and stumbling and movie and swimming at a snail's pace, and the audience is supposed to believe this thing is a threat?

The story has a man talking over a bunch of clips of fish, making one almost think this is a nature documentary read by a deranged man. You see, Dr. Leopold wants to turn himself into a fish and rally the other fish to his cause to take over the world! His partner in crime, the walking catfish! Other than a scene where Leopold talks about how they achieve movement over land, you do not really see them do anything as far a terror. Dr. Leopold soon turns himself into the most embarrassing looking monster ever and begins his quest for world domination as he tries to kidnap an attractive blond and turn her into his mate. Meanwhile, the heroes of this piece consist of a sheriff, some sort of water guy and two agents who wear orange jumpsuits. The are the most incompetent group ever as they literally could have just went to Dr. Leopold's house and set up an ambush and probably wiped the floor with him.

This made for a very funny episode of MST3K as the film provided plenty of riffing material. As I've stated, the monsters looks, the strange voice over with the fish clips, the monster kills and the strange scene involving an off camera mom who you never see. You don't even see her car! The episode gets a bit boring during the stretch where the guy is riding the door and they are just driving, but then ramps back up when the one guy wants to track the beast in his little toy car/boat and then proceeds to stumble through the swamp letting you know that the monster simply lucked out in this one as he had the four most incapable heroes ever.

So the movie is rather bad and I am going to guess seeing an unedited version would not improve it much. That being said, I would almost like to see an unedited version to see what was taken out and see if maybe there is a scene depicting the giant catfish and see if maybe there was any nudity in this one as there were a couple of instances where there looked like there might of been. I don't think the kills would get much better as one of the kills they showed had the monster with a hand already full of blood swipe past a young man it was killing. Still, as bad as it was, it is still a rather amusing film to watch and made for a very funny episode of MST3K.

This film begins with what appears to be stock footage of undersea creatures during which completely irrelevant narration from Dr. Leopold intones loudly...and inanely. Then, after it finally finishes, the credits roll--and the audience is left completely baffled. Sadly, after the credits roll, the annoying narration continues with some prattle about 'walking fish'. Yeah, whatever. All I know is that this was really annoying and seemed to go on and on and on and make no sense. Finally, this is replaced by some loud and equally annoying whirring and old fashion computer sounds. The entire first 15-20 minutes of the film is nothing but that irritating and nonsensical sort of claptrap.

After all this annoyance and exposition, the doctor has now become some goofy sea monster--much like the ones you see in THE HORROR OF PARTY BEACH and other such 60s laughable crap. When my wife saw him, she began snickering. Thankfully, she knows me well enough that she didn't bother telling me what she thought of the film--she knew I had to get my horrible movie fix! In a brilliant move, once he transformed, now even MORE annoying sound effects are repeatedly thrown at the audience in an apparent attempt to drive them from the theaters for several more minutes. In fact, the sound track and sound effects for this film might just be the most annoying of any film in history. Also, inexplicably, the camera keeps jumping back and forth from the lame action to stock film of water animals--and it all seems so very irrelevant and cheap.

Apparently the plot has something to do with revenge or making a female creature like himself or something, but it's never very clear. What IS clear is that the film appears to have almost no script or direction. And, because of this, too often scenes are overplayed or repeated again and again without much regard to the story. It's really just a mess...a cheap and silly mess. Not surprisingly, this is writer/producer/director Don Barton's only film--it was just THAT bad! It is the most irritating film I have ever seen when it comes to the sound track and among the worst overall--with only MANOS HANDS OF FATE being the only film I can readily think of that is worse overall. That's saying a lot because I have seen most of the films of Al Adamson, Ed Wood, Ted Mikels, Larry Buchanan and many other of the worst film makers ever--and this one is WORSE. Clearly, it deserves its place as the current #8 worst film of all time on the IMDb list--though perhaps this is a bit too generous. This pile of crap at least gets my vote for most annoyingly loud film of all time.

A lot of people were exposed to Blood Waters of Dr Z through MST3K, myself included. The episode wasn't one of the classics, but it was funny and summed up very well what was wrong with the movie. The movie itself is one of the kind that makes your jaw drop just at the thought of it. The underwater photography is not so bad, beautiful is not how I describe it but it is the asset that is the least amateurish regarding Blood Waters of Dr Z. The rest is amateurish through and through, and the flaws are so numerous that the underwater photography is not enough to salvage. The rest of the camera work and editing though is nauseating, it hardly ever is still, and even for a genre movie the movie's colour scheme was much too drab. The monster was very non-threatening and looked ridiculous, not many movies I've seen recently have had a monster that looks like a man masquerading in a monster suit like he's at a fancy dress party but Blood Waters of Dr Z gives off that vibe in a painfully obvious way. The soundtrack is equally monotonous, with a song that is dull and really quite stupid, and it is one of those soundtracks that actually sounds as though it should be somewhere else. The dialogue is laughably cheesy and stilted, made even worse by the vapid and really annoying voice-overs, the attack scenes have no suspense or vitality(they are actually done so badly that I even couldn't deem them as unintentionally hilarious) and the story- the kind that is good concept-wise but badly executed- is senseless, filled with the brim with things left hanging there with no explanation and full of interminably plodding exposition and no sense of dread at all. The characters are annoying and undeveloped, often coming and going with no reason as to doing so, and the acting is just laughable from all involved. Overall, I've seen worse but that's saying a huge amount as Blood Waters of Dr Z is still terrible, one of the lamest monster movies almost certainly brought to celluloid. 1/10 for the underwater photography only. Bethany Cox