Anyway, after some very long expositional voice-over monologues, Dr. Z - who is never identified by that name in the movie - succeeds in turning into a man-fish by stripping down to his lumpy boxer shorts and immersing himself into an indoor tank full of icky, mad-scientist treated water. The elaborate level-and-pulley system he uses to dunk himself in the water shows that he has thought this through well, and is quite serious about being a man-fish. It's not the kind of thing one should take lightly, is what the movie seems to be saying.

He succeeds in turning into a man-fish, though he seems temporarily disheartened that his dreamed-of resemblance to a catfish wasn't achieved. These are the kindof disappointments that stop other mad scientists cold, wallowing in their own self-pity for weeks. But damn it if Dr. Z doesn't just pull himself up by his shin-fins and keep his eye on the prize, whatever that is. In no time he is swimming around mucky lagoons spraying ZaAt, a compound which will - what? Turn fish into half-men? Make them bigger, more aggressive? Give them opposable thumbs and a taste for Geno's Pizza Rolls? You'll have to ask him. In any case, he at least seems to have prioritized his work nicely with a large paper wheel which functions as his Franklin Day Planner: full of nice homemade graphics, notes to himself, and done in suitably large magic marker. His sketches of victims-to-be show that Dr. Z. most likely graduated from one of those matchbox art correspondence schools.

So once the spraying is done, he checks the wheel and moves on to his next two goals. First on his "to-do wheel" is to kill two former colleagues who doubted his work. Mad scientists, as you probably know, have famously thin skins and shaky ego boundaries. This murdering he does with great dispatch, though no particular elegance - just a couple of pimps slaps by his beclawed hand, and those who have wronged him go down hard. And probably a little embarrassed.

But he also wants a fish-lady queen. Yup, our man wants to spawn, baby. Hell, who doesn't? But rather than hitting Florida singles bars, where his fishy visage might not make him much of a chick magnet, he kidnaps a busty bikinied blonde and tries to make her into Mrs. Fish. Alas, he kills her by accident. These things happen, to be sure - ask Kevin sometime about some of his similar mishaps - but from here Dr. Z is really off his game, and the to-do wheel stands in mute irony as his plans go ker-flooey.

I forgot to mention - there are other humans in this film, or at least pale simulacrums thereof. There's a redneck sheriff working with a black scientist who is almost ridiculously patient with his racist innuendo; then two other bland jumpsuited white scientists who join the hunt for Fish-Guy halfway through the movie. (Note: people who habitually wear jumpsuits are always suspect, in my book.) The white guy just rides aorund on the runner of a truck sticking a microphone out; the white girl almost undresses but doesn't and is eventually captured by our buddy Dr. Z as his new FishLadyQueenHoneyBabe. In the end everyone's dead or dying, especially us.