For tonight’s October Challenge Review, I’m checking out the Roger Corman directed black comedy horror “A Bucket of Blood” from 1959. This was a turning point in the legendary producer/directors career. While he had was always a master of B-Movies, this was the first of a strong run of films which including the original “Little Shop of Horrors” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” in 1960, “Pit and the Pendulum” in 1961, “Tale of Terror” in 1962 and “The Raven” and “The Haunted Palace” in 1963. Despite being made in five days for $50k, its often considered one of Corman’s finest works. So let’s see if this is truly a work of art or just a feat of clay….
Walter Paisley Is Born!
A Bucket of Blood was written by Charles B. Griffith who would go on to pen two more of Corman’s cult classics “Little Shop of Horrors” and “Death Race 2000”. The movie stars Dick Miller as the slow, impressionable, busboy and wannabe artist “Walter Paisley”. Supporting cast includes Barboura Morris, Antony Carbone and Julian Burton.
The straight forward plot sees Walter desperately trying to become an artist so he can fit in with the crowd of Beatnik Hipsters at “The Yellow Door Cafe” and win the affections of cafe hostess “Carla” (Morris). His problem is he completely lacks talent and gets easily frustrated. One evening at home he hears his neighbours cat stuck in the wall and in attempting to free the pet Walter accidentally kills it. Feeling creatively inspired and desiring to cover up the accident he covers the cat in clay and presents it as a sculpture to Carla and his boss Leonard (Carbone). The “Sculpture” goes down well with Carla and the crowd at the cafe and encourage him to create more.
After Walter murders a police officer that was trying to arrest him for possession of heroin (Given to him by a fan at the cafe), he turns the corpse into a new “Sculpture”, gaining further accolades from the crowd at the cafe. Encouraged by their praise and afraid of being forgotten, Walter continues to murder people to turn them into even more macabre “Art”. This can’t go on forever of course, especially not with someone as dimwitted as Walter doing it. Leonard has already figured it out, but gaining a big cut of his sales he has so far kept quiet. When Leonard puts on a bit exhibition for Walter, things are bound to come to a head.
What is Art?
So first of all, I loved how well this movie sends up the pretentious and fickle nature of the beatnik art scene. As they say, the more things change, the more they stay the same and I can’t help but feel you could remake this film in the modern day and this side of it would work just as well now as it did then. The bohemian crowd at the cafe where Walter works initially look down their nose at him, much as they do anyone they consider mundane and not creative. But as soon as he presents his work to them, they (mostly) treat him like a superstar. Falling over themselves to hang out with him and offering large amounts for his work. They even greet the unimaginative, purely descriptive titles of his pieces (Such as “Dead Cat”) like the naming itself is a work of genius.
Every character here is a clever parody of the kinds of characters you would find in such a community. Leonard is both repulsed by the art, even before realizing what they really are. Yet he is overcome with greed when bids start coming in for it. After a man offers him $300 for “Dead Cat”, Leonard gives Walter just $50 as his cut and only does this as an excuse for Walter not to work as a bus boy anymore since he understandably creeps him out. Later Leonard remarks “I’m starting for feel responsible for this”.
Go Down You Murderer!
One benefit of the setting is that it provides a Jazz heavy soundtrack, which was actually pretty common in 1959 but I’m yet to find this a negative. A lot of the score mixes in the Jazz elements with standard horror elements and the result is a pretty intense, fast paced soundtrack. Mixed in with that are the diegetic tracks such as the folk track “The Ballad of Tim Evans” (The story of a man condemned for murder) played shortly after the first murder. All told, excellent use of music throughout.
Effects wise… well there aren’t any really outside of the clay statues (Which is more prop than effect) and the ending especially you can tell they didn’t have the time or budget to quite do it justice. Fortunately though the ending still works (And actually makes sense given Walter’s incompetence is an important theme of the story). The rest of the film didn’t really need effects. It’s actually very much designed from the ground up to work with the limitations that Corman had in place. This is why he is the master of the B-movies.
The King of the B’s
It’s very easy to dismiss B-movies and those that make them as lesser cinema/film makers. But that doesn’t do justice to just how clever and skillful those that make them have to be to create something good with so little money and in such a short period of time. Not to mention how in tune you have to be with the audiences to actually be successful. Corman has produced a lot of bad movies, usually the ones that take effects, musics and entire scenes from other movies. But even those are far better than they probably had any right to be. Between those though there are actually a lot of good movies and it’s no shock really to find many Marvel fans still consider his unreleased (But leaked) Fantastic Four movie to be the most accurate version of the team to date.
While my favourite Corman movie will probably always be “Battle Beyond The Stars”, this is definitely one of his best. While it’s not scary or even particularly unsettling, the satire on the art community/beatnik community was absolutely nailed and doing it with such a macabre story is in itself quite poetic. This is a strong 6.5/10. Oh and there is a literal bucket of blood in it, so the title isn’t completely random!
You must be logged in to post a comment.