chuck-reilly Review of A Bucket of Blood

A Bucket of Blood (1959)

"A Bucket of Blood" is first Black Comedy from Corman

[5/10 · 22 June 2016]

Before there was "The Little Shop of Horrors," there was "A Bucket of Blood" a year earlier. Dick Miller, the hungry flower-eater in the former film is the star of "A Bucket..." He plays Walter Paisley, an inept moronic busboy who works at a very hip beatnik coffee shop and dreams of becoming one of the artists who frequent the establishment. Through a quirk of fate, it doesn't take very long before Walter joins this select group of pretentious phonies. He accidentally kills his landlady's cat and then covers it with plaster to hide his boneheaded mistake. When this "masterpiece" somehow makes its way to the beatnik haunt, Walter is soon hailed as the next great sculptor of the 20th century. Carla (played by Barboura Morris) becomes his chief benefactor and enthusiastically encourages him to take up sculpture as a career. But for Walter to create more "great art," he needs more dead bodies. Future game-show host Bert Convy is unfortunately next on the list. The body count piles up until Walter is finally revealed for what he really is: not only a complete idiot, but a criminally insane one. "A Bucket of Blood" is played mostly for laughs by director Roger Corman, and with its shoestring budget, he really has no choice. Ed Nelson, later of "Peyton Place," shows up as a nosy cop investigating the demise of poor Mr. Convy. I don't think Ed ever wanted this one to pop up on his resume. Lead actor Dick Miller was assigned to mostly bit parts after this "classic" although he later appeared in the original "Terminator" as the fellow who sells firearms to the wrong guy. Ms. Morris, who had some potential as an actress, died relatively young. Of course, Corman went on to make a slew of biker movies and adapted a number of Edgar Allan Poe works that probably made that literary master roll over in his own grave. But longevity has a way of making one respectable. Corman is now hailed as a great innovator of the cinema and was recently featured on TCM. I guess if you can make a movie like "A Bucket of Blood" in less than a week and for $50,000, you deserve some notoriety. Yes, Corman was the king of the "B" movies in the 1960s. But he never made anything that came within a country mile of an "A" film. When all is said and done, Corman will probably be best remembered for being the first director to give Jack Nicholson a role.