A BUCKET OF BLOOD
US, 1959, 66 minutes, Black and white.
Dick Miller, Barboura Morris, Antony Carbone, Julian Burton, Bert Convy.
Directed by Roger Corman.
A Bucket of Blood is essential viewing for anyone interested in the history of B-budget American film-making. Roger Corman emerged in the 1950s as a master of this kind of film, with a whole range of genres, films made often in five days, as this one was. The next year he made the original Little Shop of Horrors. He went slightly more upmarket during the 1960s with a series of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, especially with Vincent Price. During the 1970s he made some much more ‘respectable films’ including The Red Baron. Corman was a strong producer, introducing many talents like Francis Ford Coppola and Jonathan Demme to film-making.
Dick Miller, who stars in this film, was a regular in Corman’s films as well as those made by his protégés.
The film was remade in colour and at greater length in 1995 with Anthony Michael Hall and Justine Bateman in the central roles.
1.The work of Roger Corman? Small budget, in a hurry? Yet defining aspects of the genres that he worked in?
2.The black and white photography, basic? The musical score?
3.The sensationalist title – any relevance to what actually happens on screen?
4.The credibility of the plot? The beatnik café, the inhabitants of the café and their art, pretensions? The world of art and the comments on art? The busboy, his sculptures – and the ironic responses to his works of art?
5.The club, Maxwell and his utterances? Leonard and his running of the club? Carla and her relationship with Leonard, her love for artists? The other members of the club – especially the soldier dressed in Civil war garb …?
6.Walter Paisley, Dick Miller’s screen presence, the busboy, feeling neglected, living alone, harassed by his landlady? Infatuated with Carla? Jealous of the artists? Looked down on? Going home, wanting to sculpt, his frustration? The cat, its death, making the sculpture? The response of everybody at the club? A work of art? The police coming and accusing him of having drugs, his having accepted them from the woman, being innocent, murdering the agent? Making a sculpture? The response? The girl, killing her, another sculpture? Leonard and his patronage, Carla and her admiration? His going to the factory and killing the worker? Another sculpture? The build-up to the exhibition? Everybody praising him? His declaration of love for Carla, her rejection of him? His pursuing her? The statues and the plaster coming free, the discovery of the truth?
7.The characters, the range of people at the club? Corman’s irony with them? Their pursuit of Walter, finding him hanged? The comment on the work of art?
