ShangLuda Admirable film.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Francene Odetta It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

burnadrenaline This is a bad movie, I think my rating is probably a bit generous because I have watched so many b-movies. However, it has two redeeming qualities. Unintentional humor and the fact that it is one of the weirder weird movies I've ever seen. Essentially, the guy is a disgruntled scientist with a lot of weird lab equipment and free time. The lab is pretty funny, as it has all kinds of arbitrary lab equipment, which, perhaps, looked less low- budget in the seventies when the movie was made. Anyway, the guy has some kind of obsession with trying to turn himself (and perhaps others) into catfish that can walk on land. I'm not kidding, and it gets even weirder... The scientist then goes on a bit of a revenge-killing spree and kills several of the scientists that doubted him on something some many years ago or wouldn't help fund his research, I don't really remember which. Anyway, the guy gets a crush on a blonde woman and decides that he wants to run off with her and form an empire of sea creatures (I'm still not kidding).Does he make it? I won't tell you. However, I will say that the police in this movie are remarkably bad shots.

poe426 There's one thing that ZAAT has going for it that very few monster movies do: it delivers the goods early on and doesn't skimp. I'm referring, of course, to the monster itself. In 99.9% of monster movies, the viewer is left wanting more (if not ANY) of the titular creature. ZAAT boldly breaks with tradition and gives us an active, almost always on-screen creature doing his best to wreak havoc on the local populace. He's not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer (he IS a mutant monster, after all- nor was he any worldbeater BEFORE his transformation, either), but he does his best. It helps that the locals make some serious errors in judgement when confronting our hero (like the sheriff who starts to draw his gun when he runs afoul of our hero, then opts to use it as a club rather than a firearm), but that's a big part of what makes the movie so much fun. ZAAT's costume is pretty neat (yes, I'm well aware that the fur is there to hide the seams, but so what?) and it's refreshing to run into a No Budget movie that just keeps plugging away to the very end. I've seen a LOT of movies a lot worse.

Anders Twetman The movie starts with an exceedingly inane narration overlayed on some kind of nature show about fishes. It then moves on to show the narrator, a scientist type guy, who bumbles about his bleepy, bloopy blinking lights laboratory doing sciency stuff. He then strips (not a pretty sight) and immerses himself in a pool full of red water, by which he is turned into a hilarious looking "walking catfish monster" (guy in ugly rubber suit). Said monster then spends the rest of the movie bumbling about in much the same way science guy did, only the monster kills people instead of doing science, all set to swamp sounds like "wuuuh" and the like, plenty of clips of water creatures spliced in for good measure. Meanwhile, hero type and love interest girl have shown up in their camper van and red jumpsuits, accompanied by overly dramatic music where ever they go. It takes them a good half an hour to figure out who the monster is and where to find him, then hero type spends the rest of the movie stumbling through a swamp in search of the monster and his kidnapped girlfriend. Final fight ensues, the end.As you can tell, the film is mostly a lot of boring stumbling and bumbling, not really moving in any direction. When anything does happen it is often rather ridiculous, and the monster, which is the main focus, is ridiculous all the time.

global_global Where do I begin? Well...This film really isn't as bad as some may make it out to be. (I think people are being overly dramatic about it because it was featured on MST3K.) At least it didn't waste time getting to the creation of the monster. So many movies would slowly build suspense, and while this can be an effective plot device, it can also get very pretentious. Zaat didn't waste time, the monster was created in the first 5 minutes.Also, the ending was pretty good. The colored guy prevented the girl from being dipped in the water that would turn her into a monster. However, she'd already been injected with the fluid, so although she didn't physically transform, she was mentally in-line with the creature and followed him back into the ocean, even though her boyfriend tried to stop her. She simply walked into the sea, as if in a trance, to her ultimate death. I'm giving this all away because anyone reading has either seen it, or will probably never see it.I didn't understand the part with the hippie sing-along, I guess that was just filler material. Maybe they were a local Jacksonville band and the director promised them screen time.While low budget, it was fairly well written in the sense that there weren't too many unexplained plot shifts or choppy plot line. So on the whole, I say this film was decent.Also, I wanted to mention that there were some pretty good shots of marine life at the beginning of the film. It may have been stock footage, I'm not sure. Despite the low budget, however, I have to give the underwater cameraman credit. Perhaps the underwater filming was where most of the budget was spent, because it was well done, and it was nice seeing that one chick swim around freely before the creature got her. Never really explained why she failed to transform into a sea creature too.