What’s Zaat? Part 4
Life After Zaat
Or: The Afterlife of Zaat
Monsters never die. Not really. Even neglected, unloved, unwanted, long-forgotten monsters.
Like the walking catfish Zaat was ostensibly derivative of, once the water dried up in one pond, Zaat made its way over inhospitable turf to a fresh pool.
Zaat found new life in the 1980s. Under both titles, it popped up on late-night TV movie broadcasts; that’s where a friend of mine first saw it, and told me about it, as one of those after-midnight bleary-eyed wonders one isn’t really sure they didn’t, in fact, dream. I ached to see it after his account of this bizarre movie I’d never heard of before, and I soon got my chance.
I first caught Zaat on video, under a new title, where it joined the Elvira Thriller Video big-box video lineup. For those of you who weren’t around then, the first few years of videocassette rentals were as bizarre a fusion of the banal and the beatific as any I’ve ever experienced. Before there were video shops, videos were rented from the oddest places, primarily TV repair and hardware stores in our neck of the woods.
Before we owned a video player of our own, we’d be invited over to our friends for weekend marathons, working through stacks of mad rental binges of movies we’d seen, movies we’d only heard of, and (often the most memorable, for reasons good and bad) movies we never dreamed existed. By the time we purchases our first player, the best selections of weird new videos were in two nearby TV repair shops: one huge on in Greenfield, MA, and a smaller but much closer one in Brattleboro, VT.
I grew up watching a clutch of the 1960s AIP-TV (American-International Pictures Television) super-low-budget Azalea Pictures remakes of vintage AIP drive-in hits that were churned out of Texas by a film professor and filmmaker named Larry Buchanan. Though atrocious by any measure, Buchanan‘s films had their own uncanny, dreamy rhythms, palpable air of desperation, and grubby images I was quite fond of, and none were more uncanny than his non-remakes like Mars Needs Women (1967) and It’s Alive! (1968) with down-on-his-luck former Disney star Tommy Kirk (PS: It’s Alive bore no relation to the Larry Cohen sleeper of 1974), and a bottom-of-the-barrel John Agar mad scientist opus set by a swimming pool entitled Curse of the Swamp Creature (1966). The latter ended with the revelation of Agar‘s creation, which was even by Buchanan standards a miracle of making a nominal “monster” despite impoverished means.
It was during one of the weekend video binges at our own home, with our new player, that a new big-box atrocity captured my eye at the local TV repair joint’s bulging video wall display. Attack of the Swamp Creature! Could it be that Larry Buchanan movie I saw on Channel 22 in 1969?
I had to know.
Prepared to make my apologies to my viewing companions when they realized what a shot of novocaine to the brain I’d deliberately rented, I eagerly brought the lurid color box to the counter; at least there would be Elvira on hand to argue my case for the rental, since she hosted this stellar presentation.
As was so often the case, the title and box art had almost nothing to do with the movie on the cassette. Attack of the Swamp Creature was nothing more or less than the first official video release of Zaat!—and it was love at first sight for me.
I was mesmerized by the movie. This had to be the most miserable swamp monster movie I’d ever seen, and that was a formidable record to top.
I adored every mind-numbing, cortex-searing second of it. I rented it a couple of more times, and when the shop was selling off their copy, the owner suggested I buy it. “You’re the only one who ever rented it and not only didn’t complain, but came back to see it again,” he said, shaking his head at the faded cover in his hand. It was mine for a measly five spot.
So, that was the beginning of my love affair with Zaat. But it’s important to note that Zaat had already begun to have an unexpected influence on some sensitive viewers, like Atlanta, Georgia artist R. Land,
Equally creative are some of the online essays engaging with the uncanny Zaat moral universe,
More typical, especially given Zaat‘s popularity as an MST3K artifact, are
There are exceptions,
or this exquisite meditation on Zaat
What more do you need to know?
Everything changed, irrevocably, possibly forever for Zaat in 1999, casting a long, dark, funny shadow we cannot ignore.
which has pretty much ensured that:
(a) a 21st Century following for Zaat it never would have had otherwise, and
(b) the inevitability that Zaat will never again be screened on its own terms, as it was originally meant to be.
Oh, what a world! What a world!
But most important of all is the fact that the creators of Zaat are still at it!
Possibly mistaking the loving but nevertheless corrosive devotions of MST3K and it’s audience for a long-delayed commercial opportunity, the original filmmakers have resurrected their walking catfish man/monster.
most recently promoting 40th Anniversary theatrical showings of Zaat and Jacksonville, Florida‘s own Don Barton announcing his plans for a sequel to his chestnut monster movie.
The blog also features essays
Zaat aired on Turner Classic Movies a few months ago, one of its “TCM Underground” series- though I’d heard of the film (mostly under its Blood Waters of Dr. Z title) for years, I had never seen it. I was glad I finally got the chance.
I’ve also had a fascination for Larry Buchanon flicks since seeing It’s Alive and Mars Needs Women on Nashville Channel 5’s Big Show back in the 70’s, and reading about some of his other efforts in The Monster Times‘s “Worst” issue. One of Buchanon’s company of players settled in my small town here in south central Kentucky- Agar running buddy (by many accounts) Warren Hammack, who appeared in Mars (as Tommy Kirk’s right-hand man/Martian) as well as The Eye Creatures, and established a repertory theatre that continues here to this day. I tried my best to get him to share some stories about Agar and Buchanon and making those movies, but he declined, mostly shrugging it off as “just doing a job”. He was dubious and skeptical that anyone could be “really” interested in those films he made, despite my best efforts to convince him otherwise. Oh well! He was always nice to me and mine, and really helped my kids out when they were employed there for several years.