1005-Blood Waters of Dr. Z

Film Year:  1971
Genre:  Science Fiction, Horror
Director:  Don Barton
Starring:  Marshall Grauer, Wade Popwell
MST Season:  10

The Movie

Oddity of a mad scientist tale has a man who is fed up with humanity seeking to turn himself into a new breed of aquatic hybrid, spawn a new species, and become the dominant life form on the planet.  After his plan succeeds, he seeks revenge on those who scoffed at his experiments and then seeks a woman to turn into his mate.

Made on the cheap and poorly acted, yet there’s something oddly endearing about Blood Waters of Dr. Z that I can’t deny.  The crew makes great strides to make its low budget an asset and not a liability, and the film becomes sort of a creepy, voyeuristic horror movie akin to the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  The monster costume looks stupid, but it comes off as a genuine threat in spite of itself.

I like a lot of aspects to this movie.  I like how it shows the world from the monster’s point of view, and I like the internal narration that overdubs the movie.  I like how it’s a bizarro hybrid of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the Creature from the Black Lagoon done in a grindhouse style of a movie that barely anybody would watch.  I wish it had more in its favor, because it’s so close to being a good oldie chiller.  But at times it bumbles around, before jumping back up to a confident swagger where it acts like it did nothing wrong and was always being cool.

It’s actually a movie I hope to see unMSTed one day, just to see how it holds up on its own.

The Episode

It took a while for me to warm up to this episode.  I think the first time the movie overwhelmed me with its dourness that even if the riffing was good, it just wasn’t bleeding through.  In the first theater segment for example, almost nothing at all happens.  We watch our mad scientist turn into a fish monster at a veeeeeeeeeeery casual pace, and that’s about it.  It isn’t until about forty minutes into the episode in which some sort of storyline is set into motion (and even then it barely qualifies).  After a few viewings I started to notice the virtues of the production in general, which made the movie less of a slog, and Mike and the ‘bots comments became louder to me.

The crew immediately notices the tone of the piece, and they decide the best approach is to counterweight it.  They don’t want this episode to be a drag like I initially judged it to be, so they lighten the mood and keep things silly.  A lot of the comments point out the goofiest aspects of the dark imagery and if you aren’t put off by the movie you get a lot to laugh at here.  If you are, bear in mind that they’re doing their best to hold your hand and say “We can get through this together.”

The host segments do a lot to continue to make light of the movie’s darkness.  Crow’s parody of the movie’s narration is great for a belly laugh at the very least.  They aren’t always successful, as Servo and Crow’s attempt to make their case for acting in the nude grows a bit weary (and seeing Bobo and Observer au natural isn’t very appealing…and I though Brain Guy didn’t have a body?).  This particular segment ends on a high note bark of a laugh, to be fair.  Fairing the weakest is the ending, where Servo and Crow take inspiration by the monster’s odd carrying cases and try to make their own.  Each one is pretty much the same joke in a different shape.  Probably the segment I enjoyed the most had nothing to do with the movie at all, which is Pearl’s latest Mad experiment of love deprivation, which is wittily written and wonderfully executed.

Overall I’d say this is a good one to watch.  The movie, despite its tone, is not the worst thing they’ve ever watched and the boys get a lot of laughs.  Definitely check it out, just try to stay positive.

Good

The DVD

This episode was released by Shout Factory in their Volume XVII box set.  The episode featured exceptional audio and with one or two tape flaws on an overall fine video, and a few base movie-related extras.

First up are three TV promos, which advertise it under its original title of “Zaat.”  Each mostly show the same footage.  Next up is a fairly “what you see is what you get” trailer to the movie, also under the original title.  I can say with fair certainty that anybody who saw this trailer probably knew whether or not the movie was up their ally from this ad alone.  Finally is a photo gallery of print promotional material.  Here you’ll find black and white stills from the film, a print ad summery of the film, and a lot of the same poster image printed over and over again with different size ratios.