#64 - A Bucket of Blood

A Bucket of Blood (1959)
Extremely Trashy
Directed by: Roger Corman. Written by: Charles B. Griffith.

Plot: A dorky guy (Dick Miller) working in a beatnik-y cafe accidentally kills his landlady's cat, I forget how. To cover it up, he covers it in clay and shows it at the cafe, gaining the respect of the flaky artists who frequent the joint. However, he must make more 'sculptures' and resorts to killing people and covering them with clay. Hilarity ensues.

Review: This movie is pretty much like a funny version of House of Wax, and is actually way more entertaining. It's got that painfully low budget goodness, complete with near inaudible sound and crappy picture quality. And shitty acting, but that's neither here nor there.

What gets me is that Little Shop of Horrors is basically just a rehash of this movie and yet it is vastly more successful. This movie never really got the same cult acclaim. Granted, this movie doesn't have a giant man-eating plant, but I actually thought it was better. Partially because I saw it before Little Shop. This movie would probably lose a lot if I had seen them the other way round.

But, you know, Dick Miller. I like Dick Miller in this, he makes me smile. He's just so dorky. It's cute.

Anyway, like Little Shop of Horrors, this does really suck as a horror flick. I mean... it's not scary. It's just kinda sad, but it does work as a comedy, particularly poking fun at beatniks. I fuckin hate beatniks, man, almost as much as I hate hippies (I'm a consumerist yuppy myself) and so this movie is funny to me. I laughed heartily.

Um.... Jesus, I wish I could find the review I wrote of this a few months ago. I remember it had a bunch of really good points but I wrote it in a haze and can't remember anything about it. Don't you hate that? I even know what book I wrote it in, too, but a bunch of pages fell out of it (it's a really old notebook) and it's not in there now. Fuck.

Whatever. Roger Corman is kinda the man. Yes, he made a lot of shitty movies, but the fact that he actually made as many good ones as he did is pretty amazing. It defies all logic. Wow! Yup. Okay, I'm going to stop now, this review sucks.

Favourite Part: The ending, in which I believe Walter Paisley (I love that his name is Paisley) goes home, covers himself in clay, and hangs himself (which seems really a little complicated, but whatever) and then the cops find him and I think they say something like, "He would have called it 'Hanging Man'". It's so dramatic and hilarious. I did laugh.

Other versions: Apparently there was a made-for-television remake in the nineties. Weird.

Sequels: None.


Click here to read my original review (July 7th 2007).

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