Director: Roger Corman
Writer: Charles B. Griffith
From: Chilling
Watch: archive.org
An aspiring artist working as a busboy finds success when he starts crafting sculptures from the people he accidentally kills.
Dick Miller, one of the core member’s of Roger Corman’s troupe of actors, plays Walter Paisley, a dim but well-meaning busboy at a hip coffee shop with ambitions of becoming a real artist. He wants to be a sculptor, but he just can’t get the clay to take the shape he wants. He’s alternately bullied and patronized by the Beatnik clientèle at the coffee shop who are all obsessed alternately with getting high and their own bad art.
One night in Walter’s apartment, after he’s failed once again to mold the image he wants, he hears the landlady’s cat in the wall. He tries to cut a hole for the cat to escape, but accidentally stabs it instead. In a state of fear and grief, he encases the cat’s corpse—knife and all—in clay and then presents it at the coffee shop the next day as his new sculpture. He becomes an instant hit.
Complications inevitably arise: a bullying cop tries to arrest Walter for possession on a set-up, Walter’s boss figures out how Walter is making his sculptures and is torn between trying to stop Walter and profiting off of him as much as possible, and Walter becomes more confident in his hopes of winning the heart of the only woman who’s always been his friend.
The movie moves at a nice clip, which, at barely over an hour would be difficult not to do, but Corman is an efficient filmmaker, and not just in regards to plot. While the movie lacks stylistic flair, it has pathos and characters who change throughout the piece in response to their situation. Walter evolves from a well-meaning victim of circumstance that you fear is going to receive some unjust punishment to someone corrupted by vanity, hubris, and entitlement. You don’t feel bad at the conclusion of the film, you feel bad when Walter moves from innocent bumbling to bitter vindictiveness.
Also, the movie’s portrayal of Beatniks is interesting. Ginsberg’s “Howl” was published in 1956 and went to trial for obscenity in 1957, the same year Kerouac’s On the Road was published. And in 1959, the same year this movie came out, Burroughs’ Naked Lunch was released. Beatniks were having their cultural moment, but also their moment of fear as the latest target for moral panic. Exploitation films from the period were using them as go-to monsters conflating them with bikers, junkies, and murderers.
Corman takes an interesting stance in A Bucket of Blood by not portraying the Beatniks that way. In fact, he probably hits closer to the mark by showing them as self-important wankers playing at being artists so that squares would buy them drinks. Although several of the characters are drug users, the cops are portrayed as more villainous and threatening than anyone who’s carrying or using. Imagine that in a movie today!
Unsurprisingly, this is a big recommend. I’ve seen it so many times on various horror host shows. For this watchthrough, I went with the Cinema Insomnia version. Mr. Lobo has to work off his tab at the coffee shop as a busboy and accidentally bores one of the customers to death. He tries to dispose of the body by running it through a coffee grinder, but the “new brew” he’s developed becomes super popular and he has to provide more. He puts together a fun presentation and, since the movie’s so short, the host segments get to run as long as they need for the jokes to play out.
This movie is in the public domain and you can find a copy of it on archive.org here.
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