When I first started the Ode to Bad Reels series I was already a fan of the film, Manos: The Hands of Fate and thought it was the funniest bad movie I had ever seen but then I was introduced to the marvelous disaster that was, The Room. This week, I had the privilege of watching Zaat, which easily ties Manos for second place in my all-time funniest bad movie list. Zaat is a horror movie done so poorly it became one of the funniest attempts at a serious movie I have ever seen.
*spoiler warning*
The beginning of Zaat begins with a 20-minute voice over by Dr. Kurt Leopold (played by Marshall Grauer) describing how great sea creatures are over some obvious stock footages of Marine Life. This mad scientist, who apparently is a Nazi somehow, plans to turn himself in a giant walking catfish to create a whole new race of catfish people to take over the “Universe.” To do this he uses “the formula they all laughed at, Z sub A, A sub T… Zaat.” Once he has this formula he insects himself with it and pours a red liquid into a tank of water. He then cranks himself, in what seems to be a helicopter emergency lift bed, into the the tank and the transformation begins. Watching this scene just makes me ask, why did he not just step into the tank instead of building this contraption? I am pretty sure it would have had the same effect as long as he was submerged in the water.
Once the experiment is completer we are introduced to the absolute funniest monster costumer ever filmed in a movie. Zaat looks like a cross between the Grinch and Guito from Starwars. What make this costume even better is that it is obvious the actor inside the suit could not see a thing and it was visibly hard for him to move in the suit. There are numerous moments in the film where Zaat trips while just trying to get around the environment and missing objects he was aiming for, and amazingly the director kept all these scenes in without reshooting them. Also, he was trying to turn himself into a catfish and this obviously is not a catfish, with the script even referring to this when Zaat passes a mirror for the first time. This costume is probably the most memorable thing about this movie unfortunately.
Zaat then goes out to kill the people who did not believe in his plan, because he is that petty. This does give us a spit-take worthy kill scene where Zaat chases a lady from the water to the beach, where she then trips. Zaat then throws a punch that completely misses but she dies anyway. I do not know how many times I had to rewind this scene from just how unbelievable it was seeing it the first time. My guess is that Zaat smells so bad that just the gust of wind from his punch can poison someone’s lungs but that would be giving this film way too much credit.
After taking out his haters, Zaat then turns his attention to finding a female to turn into a creature just like him. He even draws a sketch of a female Zaat on his “hitlist board” which he keeps staring at it. Zaat manages to abduct a female and lowers her into his tranformation tank but she ends up dying, so then he just starts his search all over again. The rest of the film is just Zaat looking for a mate and three characters fron the town trying to stop him. These characters consist of the Sheriff, his black son, who aparently nobody likes because the town is racist but he seems to be the only character to actually try to do something to stop Zaat and there’s also a third guy who just isn’t important like a lot of elements in this film.
In my favorite scene of the movie, after the rampage Zaat has unleashed on this small community, the Town Sherrie just happens to remember a crazy scientist that has been trying to turn himself into a fish. The character he gives this information to reacts just as I did after hearing this, “well why didn’t you tell us this sooner.” The fact that this is the way the movie decided to have the characters figure what exactly is going on almost had me in shock followed by laughter shortly after. But that was really all for not since everybody who tries to stop Zaat dies at the end and Zaat just walks into the ocean carrying an orange tank and gets away. So basically, with that ending, nothing at all mattered throughout this whole film.
Zaat is filled with useless scenes, bad acting, a story that does not make sense and if there was anybody in the town with any sense, Zaat would have been stopped at the beginning of the film. Even with all that however this movie is absolutely worth watching. You can watch this with friends or by yourself and you’ll still be laughing at the outrageousness of this film. Just to see the actor trying to move around in the Zaat costumes is worth the hour and forty minutes of absolute garbage. You can check out the trailer to Zaat below and enjoy.
