1005 - Blood Waters of Dr. Z
Air Date	May 2, 1999
AKA	Zaat Dr. Z Legend of the Zaat Monster
Movie Director	Don Barton
Year	1975
Cast	Marshall Grauer Wade Popwell Paul Galloway Gerald Cruse
Preceded by	1004 - Future War
Followed by	1006 - Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues…

Contents 1 The Movie 1.1 Synopsis 1.2 Information 2 The Episode 2.1 Host Segments 2.2 Obscure References

The Movie

Synopsis

First the good news:

Screenwriter/director/producer Ron Barton and set designers Roy Neering and Hal Henderson never made another movie.

Now the bad news:

They made this one.

Undoubtedly, worse movies have been made. Undoubtedly. But somewhere around five minutes into this one, you will be hard pressed to name any of them. After ten minutes, you will be hard pressed to name any good movies. After half an hour, this movie will have consumed most of your soul, and by the time the movie is over, there will be only a dry husk where once joy and laughter dwelt.

As far as plot goes, it's pretty simple: like The Projected Man, Dr. Z is a mad scientist seeking revenge against administrative types that have cruelly denied his perfectly reasonable requests for unlimited quantities of money and human beings to experiment on. He also wants to get a girl (undoubtedly because focus groups insisted that 'love interest' was the only thing missing from this movie). And, well, that's about it. There's also your usual assortment of victims and clueless law enforcement. Nazis (the World War II-era kind) are involved somehow, it seems, although not  in person.

Apparently shot on expired film that was x-rayed a few times for good measure, the cinematography looks like Aunt Earlene's slides of the family trip to the Everglades in '68.

Dr. Z's laboratory is enough to make those people who think the government is beaming signals into their fillings shake their heads and say, "Boy, this guy's got problems."

His catfish costume, while not quite as goofy as the outfits worn by the The Horror of Party Beach creatures is of that general ilk.

As was pointed out about a different Florida-based monster movie, the lousy editing seems to cover up how badly most of the scenes were shot.

There's an In the Heat of the Night-ish dynamic between a lumpy Caucasian sheriff and a young African-American swamp-management guy, another swamp-management guy riding around in a less-than-reliable swamp buggy leased from the Banana Splits, and one of the most ridiculously overblown soundtracks you are ever likely to enounter (culminating in a selection apparently culled from "an Italian neo-realist film from the 60's").

Trust me, what you've read here is all there is to this movie, and I've actually padded it some. This movie is about five minutes worth of plot crammed into an hour and a half.

Information

Yes, walking catfish do exist. They are native to Southeast Asia, and are an invasive species in the United States, primarily in Florida. For more information, please consult our resident ichthyologist, Miss Helen Dobson .

The Episode

Host Segments

• Opening Scene: Crow takes up chewing tobacco. He keeps spitting the juice into soda cans, so Mike doesn't know which one to drink.
• Segment One: Crow marks the cans he spits into so Mike won't drink it accidentaly, but Tom does. Pearl deprives the SOL of love, as part of an experiment.
• Segment Two: Crow does an evil voiceover while watching Mike at the bridge, but he gets wedged in a bulkhead and Mike has to loosen him.
• Segment Three: The SOL crew goes fishing while in orbit over a lake. However, the decompression makes their catches worthless.
• Segment Four: Crow and Tom get Bobo and Observer to help convince Mike that nudity in acting is good. Mike is not convinced and asks the 'bots if they just want nude women.
• Segment Five: The 'bots create personalized food carrying cases. Pearl turns Bobo into a mermonkey.

• Stinger: Dr: Z. says, "Sargassum: the weed of deceit!" over a shot of the plant.

Obscure References

• "...Unless you're Doug Flutie."

​At 5'10", NFL quarterback Doug Flutie was one of the shorter QBs in the league.

• "So, all roads lead to Wally Cox."

​Wally Cox was a comedic actor during the early years of television, known best for playing 'Mr. Peepers.'

• "Now I'm going to fall in love with Winona Ryder, trash a hotel, maybe take a gun on a plane."

​These are various activities undertaken by actor Robert Downey Jr . during his heavy drug use phase.

• "It's Andy Warhol's 'Swimming'!"

A reference to pop artist Andy Warhol's literally-named experimental films, such as Sleep and Eat, the first consisting of five and-a-half hours' worth of footage of a sleeping man, the second being fourty-five minutes of film of a man eating what appears to be a mushroom.

• "He's gonna try to win Ben Stein's money."

Win Ben Stein's Money was a 1997-2003 game show on Comedy Central where contestants competed for $5000 of character actor Ben Stein's money.

• "I gotta finish this up, then I gotta go kill Farley Granger's wife..."

An allusion to Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 film Strangers on a Train.

• "Can't you see what I'm trying to tell you? I love you!"

A line from the 1933 film Duck Soup, starring the Marx Brothers, and a favorite MST3K riff during fight/struggle scenes and awkward verbal exchanges.

• "Open up! It's the Fish Police!"

Fish Police was a comic book series by cartoonist Steven Moncuse, adapted as a short-lived animated TV show in 1992.

• "I'll go pick up the other Banana Splits!"

​Sid and Marty Krofft created the Banana Splits Adventure Hour for Hanna-Barbera in 1967. The main characters -- Bingo, Drooper, Fleegle, and Snork -- drove around in amphibious six-wheelers like... Um, whatshisname, the white guy... does for a while at the end of this movie.

• "I ain't got time to bleed."

​This was the title of a book (ostensibly) written by former pro wrestler and Minnesota governor Jesse 'The Body' Ventura. (If your child ever needs you to explain what the phrase "populist horse-hockey" means, just hand him or her a copy of this tome.) The name of the book was taken from Ventura's character in the movie "Predator", where he famously says "I ain't got time to bleed" when told that he's bleeding by one of his compatriots. He then proceeds to mow down several guerillas with his hand-held gatling gun.