A Bucket Of Blood

While only marginal as a horror film, Roger Corman's A BUCKET OF BLOOD excels as both a black comedy and a cagey send-up of the fifties beatnik scene and gives the great Dick Miller his most memorable role. Dense, naive coffee house busboy Walter Paisley (Miller) greatly admires the establishment's bohemian regulars but is incapable of garnering their approval. While trying his hand at sculpting one evening in his hovel of an apartment, Walter accidentally stabs and kills the landlady's cat while trying to free it from inside a wall. Getting nowhere with his work, he decides to cover the feline's corpse with clay and passes it off as his first creation. "Dead Cat" is an immediate hit, even earning kudos from his idol, the resident monologist, Maxwell Brock (Julian Burton). Walter accidentally finds the subject of his next creation in the form of an undercover narc (Bert Convy!) whom he brains over the head with a frying pan after the latter tries to arrest him for his accidental possession of "horse." With "Murdered Man" now done, Walter decides to expand his repertoire with a rendering of the female form and a bust.

Charles B. Griffith's hilarious, endlessly quotable beat lingo and poetry (the latter delivered with the perfect mixture of sincerity and pomposity by Burton) is a highlight, as is the lazy, self-important bohemians going on about trivialities like the merits of wheat germ bagels and garbanzo omelettes (sprinkled with smoked yeast!). However, it is Dick Miller who really shines here, doing a remarkable job of relating the hurt and desperation Paisley experiences trying to gain acceptance. He very accurately captures the self-deprecating speech and mannerisms of a lonely, wounded child. While A BUCKET OF BLOOD may be regarded as a black comedy, it is actually a very credible dramatic performance and the humor would definitely not work as well if Miller had adopted a more cartoonish approach. Of course, this is also the role that made him a legend among cult film fans and one he has "reprised" several times over the years. Fred Katz's marvellously quirky score would also be re-used the following year in Corman's equally wonderful THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, which co-stars Miller, and is very similar in a number of ways. Barboura Morris (as the one person who treats Walter with kindness and becomes the object of his obsession), Antony Carbone, Ed Nelson, and Bruno VeSota also appear. (By John Charles)