JACKSONVILLE, FLA. — Don Barton, the mad genius behind the movie “Zaat” — better known to MSTies as the movie in episode 1005- THE BLOOD WATERS OF DR. Z, died here June 8 of complications from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. He was 83.
His hometown paper has his obit here.
Mr. Barton took a dim view of MST3k mocking his masterwork. I got an email from him a number of years ago, in which he insisted — as he has on many occasions — that Sci-Fi Channel, and later Shout!Factory, never had the proper rights secured to allow MST3K to do the movie and, later, sell the DVD. Everyone else I’ve spoken to who was knowledgable about this says he was wrong, but as far as I know he went to his grave convinced otherwise.
Update: I’m being told, by several people who sound like they know what they’re talking about, that I don’t have the facts exactly right, and in fact there were issues with the Scifi Channel getting the rights, which were settled out of court, and that there was not any issue with Shout. That is not what remember Barton telling me in his email to me, but my memory may be faulty and that was at least two hard drive crashes ago and I have long since lost my copy of the email. So, since I can’t prove it, I will give these people the benefit of the doubt.
