Roger Corman was the foremost gorilla filmmaker during the 20th century. As the old adage goes, Corman could get a project green lit on a pay phone, shoot the film in the booth, and produce it on the change left over from the call. In many respects, Corman has made a career out of producing one potboiler after another but, if you’ve never watched a Corman flick, the surprise which awaits is, though his prolific nature implies an aesthetic negligence, his films are almost always entertaining. This isn’t to say that he’s rolling out one masterpiece after another, aside from his Poe adaptations during the 1960’s, little of his catalogue can be viewed as more than fun B-movie silliness but nonetheless, how many other filmmakers can you think of that, once you sit down to watch on of their films, you sit easy knowing that you are almost guaranteed to be entertained for the duration of the movie?
A Bucket of Blood is one of Corman’s better B efforts. Of course, the plot is only a stone’s throw from the highly popular House of Wax which was released only six years before (a remake of the 1933 Mystery of the Wax Museum for those keeping tabs) but the signature of a Corman movie is a simple plot atop exaggerated characterization which makes for easy, fun viewing and this movie brings both of these to a Cormian peak.
Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) is a wannabe bohemian in Greenwich Village. As close as he literally comes to the beatnik crowd is the time he spends bussing their tables in a fashionable corner café, The Yellow Room, where his idol, Maxwell Brock (Julian Burton) is an effigy of Allen Ginsberg who, not only looks like the famed poet, but also ad-libs what he, and only he, believes to be fairly good beat poetry of the same caliber. Now, in the spirit of the film, these are the only two notable characters who are not typecast thus, we’ll move the plot along: Paisley accidentally kills his landlady’s cat Mrs. Surchart (Myrtle Vail¾that’s the actress, not the cat) and, to cover his guilt, literally, he encases the feline’s corpse in clay and, out of lonely desperation, takes it to the café where it is deemed a masterpiece. Of course, the in crowd wants more and Paisley doesn’t hesitate to accommodate them due to the amount of attention the makeshift sculpture has garnered for him but considering he hasn’t got an inch of authentic creativity running through him anywhere he is understandably perplexed at where his next “inspiration” will be coming from. Fortunately for him, he is spotted as an adoring fan, Naolia (Jhean Burton), plants a vile of heroin on him and undercover cop Lou Raby (Bert Convy) shortly thereafter arrives at Paisley’s apartment to arrest him and becomes his next masterwork. As critical demand continues to escalate, Paisley lures the femme fatale of The Yellow Room, Carla (Barboura Morris), the only one who fails to recognized his genius (not because she calls his bluff but because she was out of town when the “news” of the new hepcat began to circulate), and strangles her, thus readily providing a framework for his next piece. Predictably, Paisley is found out and he takes one for the name of art, however much of a non sequitur it may be, at the film’s climax.
The highlight of the film is Miller’s over-the-top acting as a young man with one hell of an inferiority complex who, at every turn, the chips fall for him, not due to anything Paisley does right mind you, but merely out of blind luck (not until the middle of the film do we see a deliberate, premeditated act of murder committed on his behalf). You can tell that Miller had fun playing the part and is reminiscent of Kevin Spacey’s depiction of another sympathy-inducing character in the role of Lester Burnham in American Beauty. Fun stuff.
Credit is also due to Corman for, not only making another signature film in only his style, but further adding another chapter to the then (and still somewhat) sparse genre of horror comedy on a meager budget of only 30K.
I will admit that, occasionally, there is something to a Corman film (see here the satire of the Beats¾all the way down to a Kerouac parody, the dark humor of the inversion of the insane artist cliché, the lengths one goes to in order to ensure one’s posthumous fame, etc.) but, by in large, his works serve as great escapism in the truest sense of the phrase. That is what Corman is known for, what he sets out to accomplish, and what he does best. I often wonder what he could have done if he would have applied himself but this is beside the point. So, with this in mind, the next time you decide you are in the mood for some fun, 1950’s style B-horror, go grab this, ahem, masterpiece and enjoy.
-Egregious Gurnow
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- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
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- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
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