RIP!! Don Barton, creator of cult classic 'Zaat,' dies at 83!!!.

Don Barton, creator of cult classic 'Zaat,' dies at 83


By Matt Soergel Mon, Jun 10, 2013

Don Barton brought “Zaat” to life in the early 1970s, and while the movie about a giant radioactive walking catfish-human monster was quiet for decades, it never really went away.

Decades later it found new life as a cult classic, and even played again Saturday night at the 75th-anniversary celebrations for Marineland, where scenes were filmed.


drive-ins and movie houses, mostly in the Southeast. It was bootlegged and retitled several times, and Barton learned hard lessons about the cutthroat movie business. It had a renaissance, though, after being mocked in 1999 on TV’s “Mystery Science Theatre 3000,” which featured science-fiction movies generally thought of as bad. By June 2001, “Zaat” made it to theaters again, playing to two packed auditoriums at the now-gone St. Johns 8 Theater on the Westside.

That came after horror fan Ed Tucker, a “Zaat” lover since he was 6, reached out to Mr. Barton and eventually helped him re-release the film on DVD. “There’s no other movie like it,” Tucker said Monday. “Just the fact that you’ve got so much monster on screen, and the fact that it’s a 1950s movie done, in color, in the 1970s.”


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