A Bucket of Blood

“If You Bring In A Bucket Of Blood To Your Local Theater’s Ticket Booth, You Will Be Given One Free Admission.” Ah, the days when sensational marketing was an art in itself. The owner of this tagline is the 1959 low-budget masterpiece A Bucket of Blood, a twinkling gem in director Roger Corman’s immense oeuvre. The 60s drive-in icon has not been as prolific in recent years (his “niche” market monopoly more or less usurped by both Hollywood and Troma founder and amiable schlockmeister Lloyd Kaufman), but this early entry in his unmatched corpus of work showcases Corman’s creative ingenuity at its best.

The story is set in the Bohemian scene of the late ’50s, where affable loser Walter Paisley, a busboy at an artsy coffee shop, dreams of someday commanding the attention and money that he sees showered upon the beat poets, musicians, painters, sculptors and other local celebrities who frequent his place of employment. The film is quite skillfully shot in black and white, giving an eerie mood to the dingy indoor locations and ominous, shadowy exteriors. Corman excelled at merging “high” and “low” art, and this film embodies this spirit of combining genre conventions with an intelligent lampooning of the art world. Paisley is played to perfection by Dick Miller (Matinee, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School), who is alternatively sympathetic and creepy. After finding that sculpting is much harder than it looks, Walter is thoroughly dejected and seemingly doomed to refill the coffee cups of real artists. But when a humorous incident results in him accidentally stabbing a cat, he quickly covers the carcass in clay and then realizes that it’s his best work yet. When his boss reluctantly agrees to put the gruesome portrait on display, it attracts the attention of local patrons, who hail its “realism” and lifelike resemblance to an actual impaled cat. It’s not long before he’s the toast of the art crowd, but his dark secret is a tough one to keep, especially when he’s constantly being implored to produce human statues.

Corman finished shooting this film so fast, he reused the set for another film, which became the original The Little Shop of Horrors. A Bucket of Blood is most notable for its excellent writing and spot-on skewering of pretentious artists. As one poet observes of Walter, before he’s discovered, “Walter has a clear mind. One day something will enter it, feel lonely and leave again.”

A loose remake of Vincent Price’s House of Wax, and later remade by gore connoisseur Herschell Gordon Lewis (Blood Feast, 2000 Maniacs) as Color Me Blood Red and then again for a 1995 TV movie, A Bucket of Blood is as much a satire of beatnik culture as it is a horror film; Corman is often credited with pioneering the first mainstream films that relied on dark humor to keep his often macabre subject matter palatable, and this is definitely worth digging up if you can find it.

-Andy Gately, Dec. ‘04