This is one ugly mama-jamma of a movie, incredibly cheap looking and badly made. It also appears to have been edited with a garden weasel. Countless mistakes were made about what film devices would tell the story and establish a mood, as opposed to those that would drop the ball and irritate the viewer. For my own amusement, (and hopefully, the reader's as well), I'd like to expound on a few of the most obvious.
1) The monster costume. It looks as if it cost about a buck ninety-eight, and is possibly the most irritating monster costume to behold for extended periods of time since the pickle-stuffing sea monsters from "Horror At Party Beach". Since the monster is pretty much front-and-center for most of the movie, there is no getting away from this piece of crap. Every time I see it, I want to egg the director's house and pour sugar in the gas tank of his car.
2) The opening song: A lugubrious folk-guitar thing, it contains the lyrical line, "Sashay through the sarcasm". This is perhaps the stupidest line in an opening theme song in the last 30 years.
3) The stock footage: The director (or someone) apparently thought that if he spliced in stock footage of various lake and swamp creatures, he would establish a foreboding/foreshadowing of the world that Dr. Z hoped to create with his master plan. Or maybe he thought he was expressing the idea that Dr. Z was the embodiment of the rage and anger of the aquatic world, focused on mankind. Doesn't work, though. Typical example: the monster starts to kill a rival scientist, and the movie jumps to a 2 second shot of a bored looking catfish, then back to the monster killing the scientist, then to a 1 second shot of a shrimp. This isn't so much horrifying as it is incoherent.
4) Odd choices on how to spend camera time: In a "real" movie, the actual mechanism used to put the subjects in the "transformation tank" wouldn't be anything to waste movie time with. The subjects would step in at gunpoint, or would be pushed in, or would dangle from their wrists from an overhead winch, or would locked into a tub and have the solution poured in on them...something like that. You wouldn't think about it, or even notice it.
But here, the director spends what seems like 20% of the movie focusing on the block and tackle setup used to lower the subjects into the tank. Instead of experiencing the horror of the victims, we have to consider the endless ramification of pulley systems and sailor knots. After the fourth shot of the pulley system, I couldn't think of anything else. I am pretty sure that isn't what Barton had in mind.
4) The sound design: This is actually pretty effective for the first part of the movie - lots of echos and swamp creature calls, etc. But then as the movie hits its climax when the INPIT agent starts across the swamp in his little buggy...and the soundtrack cuts in with a 30 second 'chase' music loop straight out of old Hanna-Barbera cartoons like "Jonny Quest" and "The Herculoids" . What the...??
5) Speaking of the 'hero': he doesn't appear until 45 minutes into the movie. He then spends most of the next 25 minutes standing on the running boards of his Jeep as his team travels around as if he were Doc Savage or something. He then jumps into a six-wheeled Dune buggy thing (which looks like a toy that you would give your six year old) and drives hell bent into the swamp...only to stall out and bog down in the swamp in the very next scene. This makes him look like a complete idiot.
Our rugged, dynamic hero and expert in biology and natural ecosystems then spends the next few scenes getting beaten to pieces while walking though the swamp; he then gets to the monster/scientist hideaway too late to save anyone else. Excuse me...was this supposed to be exciting? What was the point of this guy being here? And by the way, when the film cuts back to the hero SLOWLY S-L-O-G-G-I-N-G through the swamp, the Hanna-Barbera chase music starts back up again. What the...?
6) Needless to say, no one in this movie can act, although the guy who plays the biologist has a certain amount of camera appeal.
7) The lighting, color values and camera-work: many of the shots used here, especially in the underwater sequences, are enough to make you lose your appetite. Everything is slimy, grainy, dingy, dull, and dirty. This may have been intentional, but it only adds to the viewer's distress at having to sit though this movie.
Anyway, enough. "ZAAT", or "Blood Waters..." or whatever it is, wouldn't even cut it as the bottom entry at a Saturday night drive-in triple feature. Avoid like the plague, unless you are a serious devotee of grade Z horror films. Even MST3K couldn't save this one, except for the bumper segment where Crow harangues Mike from the ceiling with a parody of the mad scientist's opening voice-over: "Saddle soap...cleaning compound of deceit!"
Oh yes, and the line, "I need another bowl of Zoloft!"
1) The monster costume. It looks as if it cost about a buck ninety-eight, and is possibly the most irritating monster costume to behold for extended periods of time since the pickle-stuffing sea monsters from "Horror At Party Beach". Since the monster is pretty much front-and-center for most of the movie, there is no getting away from this piece of crap. Every time I see it, I want to egg the director's house and pour sugar in the gas tank of his car.
2) The opening song: A lugubrious folk-guitar thing, it contains the lyrical line, "Sashay through the sarcasm". This is perhaps the stupidest line in an opening theme song in the last 30 years.
3) The stock footage: The director (or someone) apparently thought that if he spliced in stock footage of various lake and swamp creatures, he would establish a foreboding/foreshadowing of the world that Dr. Z hoped to create with his master plan. Or maybe he thought he was expressing the idea that Dr. Z was the embodiment of the rage and anger of the aquatic world, focused on mankind. Doesn't work, though. Typical example: the monster starts to kill a rival scientist, and the movie jumps to a 2 second shot of a bored looking catfish, then back to the monster killing the scientist, then to a 1 second shot of a shrimp. This isn't so much horrifying as it is incoherent.
4) Odd choices on how to spend camera time: In a "real" movie, the actual mechanism used to put the subjects in the "transformation tank" wouldn't be anything to waste movie time with. The subjects would step in at gunpoint, or would be pushed in, or would dangle from their wrists from an overhead winch, or would locked into a tub and have the solution poured in on them...something like that. You wouldn't think about it, or even notice it.
But here, the director spends what seems like 20% of the movie focusing on the block and tackle setup used to lower the subjects into the tank. Instead of experiencing the horror of the victims, we have to consider the endless ramification of pulley systems and sailor knots. After the fourth shot of the pulley system, I couldn't think of anything else. I am pretty sure that isn't what Barton had in mind.
4) The sound design: This is actually pretty effective for the first part of the movie - lots of echos and swamp creature calls, etc. But then as the movie hits its climax when the INPIT agent starts across the swamp in his little buggy...and the soundtrack cuts in with a 30 second 'chase' music loop straight out of old Hanna-Barbera cartoons like "Jonny Quest" and "The Herculoids" . What the...??
5) Speaking of the 'hero': he doesn't appear until 45 minutes into the movie. He then spends most of the next 25 minutes standing on the running boards of his Jeep as his team travels around as if he were Doc Savage or something. He then jumps into a six-wheeled Dune buggy thing (which looks like a toy that you would give your six year old) and drives hell bent into the swamp...only to stall out and bog down in the swamp in the very next scene. This makes him look like a complete idiot.
Our rugged, dynamic hero and expert in biology and natural ecosystems then spends the next few scenes getting beaten to pieces while walking though the swamp; he then gets to the monster/scientist hideaway too late to save anyone else. Excuse me...was this supposed to be exciting? What was the point of this guy being here? And by the way, when the film cuts back to the hero SLOWLY S-L-O-G-G-I-N-G through the swamp, the Hanna-Barbera chase music starts back up again. What the...?
6) Needless to say, no one in this movie can act, although the guy who plays the biologist has a certain amount of camera appeal.
7) The lighting, color values and camera-work: many of the shots used here, especially in the underwater sequences, are enough to make you lose your appetite. Everything is slimy, grainy, dingy, dull, and dirty. This may have been intentional, but it only adds to the viewer's distress at having to sit though this movie.
Anyway, enough. "ZAAT", or "Blood Waters..." or whatever it is, wouldn't even cut it as the bottom entry at a Saturday night drive-in triple feature. Avoid like the plague, unless you are a serious devotee of grade Z horror films. Even MST3K couldn't save this one, except for the bumper segment where Crow harangues Mike from the ceiling with a parody of the mad scientist's opening voice-over: "Saddle soap...cleaning compound of deceit!"
Oh yes, and the line, "I need another bowl of Zoloft!"