By Nathanial Barter

“One of the most incredible stories of modern time. Zaat: invasion of the walking catfish.”
— Marshall Grauer, “Zaat” theatrical trailer (1971)

The titular monster from the 1971’s “Zaat.”

From Barton Films, the same masterminds behind industrial-safety films and assorted local TV commercials of the Jacksonville, Florida, area comes their first feature film, “Zaat.”

After three minutes of montage featuring random aquatic life accompanied by a very B-movie voice-over, the story opens with a dumpy old Nazi scientist, Dr. Kurt Leopold (Marshall Grauer) stomping around a beach on his way home. Now of course, Leopold is an old Nazi, so he’s not staying in a beautiful Floridian beach home. He lives in an old, decommissioned WWII lab deep in Florida, where they experimented with turning fish into people, naturally. Within the first 20 minutes, he drops himself into a pit of radioactive water and turns himself into Zaat, a bipedal half-man, half-catfish.

And so goes the story everyone I’m sure is familiar with: a sci-fi horror rampage of a Greedo-looking rubber-suited man, slashing slowly and unmenacingly at peoples’ necks and chests. His goal? To pollute all the water in the world with radiation to create a massive army of mutated fish and destroy mankind. At least he’s ambitious; I just want to pass Bio.

There is something about watching a campy monster movie made by the same people who would make a hard-hat safety film that brings me intense pleasure.* Maybe it’s because this movie is so systematic in its lack of exposition. For example, Dr. Leopold never once speaks directly. All of his dialogue is done in a very grandiose voiceover. This is partly because his 16 minutes and 17 seconds of onscreen humanity is him walking to his lab before literally turning into a fish-man. The events are lined up like dominoes in a very confusing and disjointed pattern, but they all magically fall down in a row, however confusing it might be.

Now, of course, we get to Zaat himself. We all know that 1970 was the pinnacle of CGI and rubber-makeup applications,** So the monster design of Zaat is well made for a film shot in a month on a $75,000 budget. As I said earlier, Zaat bears a close resemblance to Greedo from “Star Wars: A New Hope.” However, “A New Hope” was made in 1977, while “Zaat” was made in 1970. Say what you will, but I know Zaat shot first.

Overall, this film is a must-watch for people who are fans of old B-movies and LaserDisc icons. But if, for example, you think “Transformers: The Last Knight” is a great movie, I’d skip this one. Maybe watch “Sausage Party” instead, you monster.

“Zaat” gets 5 radioactive fish out of 7. It’s the best “Nazi mad scientist turns himself into a walking catfish to take over the world” movie of all time.

Notice: This review is extremely sarcastic
in places.
*Not sarcasm
**Definitely sarcasm