YMMV / Blood Waters of Dr. Z

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Sargassum is a real plant, and it really is sometimes called the "weed of deceit", as ludicrously melodramatic as such a title sounds.
• Awesome Music: "World War Two Boy" by Jamie Defrates and Barry Hodgin, the weirdly incongruous folk song that opens the movie (though the lyrics actually do fit, sort of), is surprisingly catchy. It's commercially available as a single for download, too (complete with the phrase "As seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000" on the cover image).
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The entire hippie scene.
• Fight Scene Failure: Well, more like "Murder scene failure", but it definitely qualifies. At one point Leopold kills a girl with a Force punch that would make a Jedi proud. There has to be, at minimum, eight inches of visible space between his fist and the victim.
• Narm:
  • The entire opening speech is completely ridiculous, but clearly intended to sound sinister and foreboding. Maybe if the guy wasn't talking about sargassum fish and how he loves them...
    "...and at just the right moment... ATTACK!"
  • Dr. Leopold's mannerisms and movement in general. It's quite obvious that the actor wearing the suit cannot see a goddamn thing, As a result, the doctor often does unintentionally hilariously things like tripping on random bits of scenery, failing to cross out pictures, having difficulty grasping objects within his immediate reach, and other achievements of hand-eye coordination failure. It's hard to take Leopold seriously when he's so visibly clumsy.
  • At one point the guy playing Leopold apparently misses his cue as you can clearly see him just standing there for a second or two before he starts moving. (In the scene in question, he is approaching his latest victim.)
  • The brainless government officials, who initially call the bites that of a cat (?) or an ape (?!).
• Padding: The interminable "setting up the lab" and transformation scene at the beginning.
• Signature Scene: Leopold taking medicine at the pharmacy and destroying everything there in a haze.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The first 20 minutes are dull, dry, and slower than a snail. Once Leopold becomes the catfish monster, then the movie really gets going.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Unless ol' Doc's monster form is supposed to make us laugh, it falls neatly into this category. He looks like Trumpy's reclusive uncle or something. In particular the creature's head, which is obviously a gas mask with papier mache. He also has some kind of weird lichen-like growths on him which are pretty obviously meant to hide the zippers. Watching the film in 4:3 (as with many films, it was screened at 16:9 with the theater cutting off the top and bottom sections of the film), the creature can clearly be wearing white sneakers.
  • Even Leopold himself points out that his monster form looks nothing like a catfish.^note "But it's beautiful!"
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: RedLetterMedia accuses George Lucas of ripping off Greedo from the film. Though considering that the catfish-man looks quite like a slightly higher-budget version of the monster in It's Alive! by Larry Buchanan, it might not be all that original to begin with...

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