A Bucket of Blood

Miller is Walter Paisley, a simple-minded man with high aspirations who works in a beatnik coffee shop, The Yellow Door, as a busboy. He desperately wants to fit in, but finds himself usually the butt of jokes from some of the more pretentious bohemian crowd. The main reason for Walter's desire to be in the 'in crowd' is Carla, played by Barboura Morris, who I just saw in another Corman movie, The Wasp Woman (1960). Carla also works at The Yellow Door, and is really the only one that treats Walter with respect and kindness.

One night while at home, Walter is struggling with some clay, trying to create a bust of Carla, but his efforts are in vain. After accidentally killing his landlord's cat with a knife, Walter tries to hide what he did by covering the cat, and the protruding knife, with clay and inadvertently creates his first work of art, aptly titled 'Dead Cat'. Walter soon gains acclaim for his sculpture, and his career as an artist is born. The pressure of coming up with new pieces leads him to use human models creating grisly, realistic, highly detailed sculptures of figures in death throes. Soon Walter becomes the talk of the community, with fame and fortune sure to follow...or does it?

I really enjoyed this movie, which is basically an update of one of my favorite movies, House of Wax (1953) starring Vincent Price. The beatnik angle played nicely off the more gruesome elements of the movie, providing levity in this dark psuedo comedy. What I really liked was the beatniks were shown in different fashion, some being played for comedic effect, while others being played a little more seriously. There wasn't a sense of trivializing the movement, but more of poking a little fun at it. Some other actors I recognized were Ed Nelson, whom I recently saw in Night of the Blood Beast (1958) and perennial 70's TV favorite and host of many a game show, Bert Convy, looking so very young I almost didn't recognize him. Along with Dick Miller's performance, I also really enjoyed the barrel-chested beat poet character Maxwell H. Brock, played by Julian Burton. He delivers some truly interesting poetry in eloquent fashion.

The film has a short run time, at 66 minutes, which tended to keep the pacing snappy. Corman really shows why, even though his movie may have been made cheaply, they didn't always have to look cheap, with his professional direction and ability to keep things interesting by drawing out great performances from his actors. The case does mention a trailer for A Bucket of Blood included, but I found none. What I did find was an excellent copy of the film on this DVD, well worth getting if you enjoy black humor.

Cookieman108