A Bucket of Blood [Olive Signature] [Blu-ray]

Director: Roger Corman Roger Corman

Overview

A fine example -- perhaps the best available -- of "B"-movie overlord Roger Corman's "Weekend Wonders" from the producer/director's early career (see also the original Little Shop of Horrors), this horror-comedy was also the first of beloved actor Dick Miller's dozen-odd portrayals of the character Walter Paisley. A geeky waiter and busboy at a happening Beatnik café, Walter is intensely jealous of the swinging social lives of the artistic types who hang there. A bizarre twist of fate changes everything; when Paisley accidentally kills his landlady's cat, his frantic attempts to hide the body lead him to encase it in a layer of clay, creating a morbid sculpture -- which is eventually discovered and hailed as an artistic triumph by the unwitting Bohemian art crowd. (When asked what he's named the piece, the befuddled Walter stammers, "Uhh... Dead Cat?") Beset by numerous requests for similar "truthful" works, the moronic Paisley is forced to find inspiration -- a matter which is readily solved when a nosy undercover cop tries to slap a heroin-possession charge on him and finds himself on the business end of a cast-iron skillet. Before long, the creative urge prods Walter to narrow the competition by whacking his peers with various blunt or sharp implements, and the demand for more sculptures just keeps growing. Miller's tour-de-force performance, writer Charles B. Griffith's hilarious "Daddy-O" dialogue, and Corman's emphasis on the story's more lurid aspects raise this bargain-basement production (ultra-cheap even by Corman's standards) to classic status.

Product Details

Release Date:	09/24/2019
UPC:	0887090601900
Original Release:	1959
Rating:	NR
Source:	Olive
Region Code:	A
Presentation:	[B&W, Wide Screen]
Sound:	[Dolby Digital Mono, DTS 5.1-Channel Surround Sound]
Language:	English
Time:	1:06:00
Sales rank:	13,049

Special Features

"Creation Is. All Else is Not"- Roger Corman on A Bucket of Blood; Audio commentary by Elijah Drenner, director of That Guy Dick Miller; Archival audio interview with screenwriter Charles B. Griffith; "Bits of Bucket"- visual essay comparing the original script to the final version of the film; Essay by Caelum Vatnsdal, author of You Don't Know Me, But You Love Me: The Lives of Dick Miller; Rare prologue from German release; Super 8 "digest" version; Theatrical trailer; German theatrical trailer; Gallery of newly-discovered on-set photography

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Dick Miller	Walter Paisley
Barboura Morris	Carla
Anthony Carbone	Leonard De Santis,Actor
Ed Nelson	Art Lacroix
Julian Burton	Brock,Haolia,Naolia
John Brinkley	Will
John Herman Shaner	Oscar
Judy Bamber	Alice
Myrtle Vail	Mrs. Surchart
Bert Convy	Lou Raby
Lynn Storey	Actor
Myrtle Domerel	Mrs. Surchart
Alex Gottlieb	Singer
Bruno Ve Sota	Art Collector
Fred Katz	Composer

Technical Credits

Charles B. Griffith

Roger Corman	Director,Producer
Samuel Z. Arkoff	Executive Producer
Charles B. Griffith	Screenwriter
James H. Nicholson	Executive Producer

Editorial Reviews

Roger Corman directed this very funny little film in about half a week on a shoestring budget. Dick Miller plays Walter Paisley, a nerdy waiter at a beatnik coffeehouse. He has pretensions of joining the ranks of the artists who scorn him and the women who fawn over them, but his art is sub-par. That is, until he accidentally kills a cat, covering it with clay in a frightened attempt to hide the act. But the artists whom he yearns to join are fascinated, pronouncing the cat (with a knife sticking from its corpse) a work of art. Walter becomes the latest enfant terrible of the java set, and it isn't long before the embittered former whipping-boy enhances his fame with more original "sculptures," this time involving human victims. Miller is terrific and Charles B. Griffith's script is a funny send-up of beatnik culture. Corman and Griffith re-teamed the following year for an even better low-budget horror-comedy, The Little Shop of Horrors.

All Movie Guide - Robert Firsching