Mystery Science Theater 3000 #1005 The Blood Waters of Dr. Z

“On the surface it looks like an animal. Like a cat... or an ape.” - Walker 

This is one of those episodes which is funny for the first 30 minutes just because of how absurd the movie is, but becomes agonising soon after. The riffing is below par for season 10 standards, but decent enough if you're in the right frame of mind. Think “Manos”: The Hands of Fate for a similar episode. The bottom line is, if you're not battle hardened to the kind of schlock that The Blood Waters of Dr. Z is, there may be no hope for you lasting the full 90 minutes.

The film opens with what appears to be stock documentary footage of sea creatures, narrated over in disturbing fashion by our antagonist, a mad scientist who looks like Tim Burton but wants to look like a fish. Whilst spewing clichés like “they think I'm insane, THEY'RE the ones who are insane!” and “together we'll conquer the Universe!”, the scientist reveals his plan: he has developed a formula called Zaat that will merge his DNA with that of a fish. Once he has become a man-fish, he will wreak his revenge upon the world that scorned him. 

 "I think the world can handle this invasion." - Mike

If I had to choose two words to describe this film, they would probably be “slow” and “brown.” It takes 15 minutes for the evil doctor to turn into the fish-man and that's the first thing that happens. There is some attempt at horror and action as the Sheriff and his team of scientists try to stop the monster, but it doesn't really matter. This film has no plot. It's obvious that the concept began and ended with the monster costume, which is decent if extremely goofy.

The funniest thing about this film is the disparity between what the monster says and what the monster does. He spends the entire running time telling the audience how scary and powerful he is, when it's plain as the snout on his face that he is a fair-weather monster at best. He stumbles around and generally fails at the tasks he's set for himself on his wheel planner (and how many monsters have a wheel planner anyway?) At one point he gets into a fist fight with one of the good scientists and loses. Maybe if he had chosen to merge with something other than a catfish he'd have had more luck. Yeah, I forgot to mention the fish that he chose to merge with. Not a shark, not a piranha or octopus: a catfish.

"It's his "what shirt should I wear?" wheel." - Crow

Although I'm fond of this episode for its many absurdities, it's a difficult one to recommend. I found my mind wandering during the second half, and once you've seen the monster for the first time you might as well just skip to the end. This is one of those episodes where the riffing struggles to contain the beast within.

GOOD THING

The first host segment, “Cleaning Compound of Deceit.” Crow and Mike parody the ridiculous opening narration of the movie. It's rare for a late season host segment of MST3K to be this good. It's usually the case that the simpler the premise, the funnier the sketch, and this is a good example of that. Mike polishes his boots whilst Crow, playing the part of the mad scientist, taunts him by revealing his unsavoury love of shoes and his plan to turn them against mankind. “Soon there will be shoes the size of which they've never seen before, who like human flesh. And then, at just the right moment, ATTACK!”

BAD THING

The sound. This film is so unpleasant to listen to, the main culprit being the horrible, grating sound effects. Every now and again there's a chugging on the soundtrack like an old engine, and bleeps and bloops that I guess are meant to represent the sea. Most of the time there's no background noise and we just have to listen to the inane narration of the monster. We do get one weird folk song over the opening credits, which is so bad that it does at least make you grateful to not have to hear it again for the remainder of the movie.