Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Lidia Draper Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

Gary The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Edgar Allan Pooh " . . . it will leave crumbs all over the floor." A BUCKET OF BLOOD takes this one step further, with a story line which can be summarized as "If you give a Rat a kiss, he'll want to strangle you and pose your naked corpse for the whole wide world to titter at." When A BUCKET OF BLOOD is about half full, "Maxwell" the Beatnik Poet Laureate proclaims "One of my greatest innovations in Modern Verse is my elimination of Clarity." Certainly this constitutes a prophetic paraphrase of the Prime Directive under which America's first KGB-installed Game-Show-Host-in-Chief currently operates: "One of my greatest innovations in statesmanship is the elimination of Common Sense." Seen in this light, A BUCKET OF BLOOD portends that "Mad Vlad," Red Commie Czar of our beleaguered USA Homeland, is about to make a lewd display of 80 million or so traitorous Quisling fellow traveler "Core Supporters" stripped down to their birthday suits, and left twisting in the wind for the whole world to see. To parody a Real Life rhyme-smith who preceded the Beatniks by a century or two, "Ask not for whom A BUCKET A BLOOD DRIPS: it drips for YOU!!"

classicsoncall If you're cruising through the cable channel listings and see this title pop up, how can you give it a pass? Especially when the station presenting it is Turner Classics - they know an awful lot about movies, don't they? This turned out to be another Roger Corman directed, shoestring budget film that's just off-kilter enough to make it a minor cult classic.I thought Dick Miller was perfect for the role of Walter Paisley, trying hard but never succeeding in the beatnik art world until he produces an eye catching sculpture courtesy of his landlady's dead cat. It was pretty convenient that when feline Frankie was pulled out from behind the wall, rigormortis had already set in after only the couple of seconds it took to break through it. I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to wonder how the cat got in there in the first place.Well the Yellow Door Café got it's new artistic wunderkind and it wouldn't take long for the astute viewer to figure out how Walter would make an even bigger splash on the beat scene. If the murders weren't so gruesome, this story could have been an episode on any number of anthology shows of the era like 'The Twilight Zone', 'Thriller' or even 'Way Out', though the better venue might have been 'Tales From the Crypt' a few decades down the road.

utgard14 Cult favorite Dick Miller has his finest hour here as beatnik murderer Walter Paisley. Directed by Roger Corman with a script by Charles Griffith, it's a brilliant little dark comedy. Walter Paisley is a simple-minded busboy at a café frequented by beatniks who desperately wants to be an artist. Despite his seeming lack of talent, he soon finds acclaim as a sculptor. The problem is his sculptures are actually just dead bodies encased in plaster. The cast includes Ed Nelson, Bert Convy, Anthony Carbone, and beautiful Barboura Morris. Julian Burton's turn as a pompous beat poet is terrific. But the movie belongs to Dick Miller, who's such a treat to watch. Given that it's Corman, the whole thing was shot on the quick and cheap, which shows in the production (look at that obviously stuffed cat they used for the kitty death scene). A lot of the laughs come from the many jabs at the pretentious art-house types. It's a timeless bit of satire since, while the trends and styles may have changed, these types are still around today. This one is often spoken of as the warm-up before Corman and Griffith's classic Little Shop of Horrors (also featuring Dick Miller). But I think it's just as funny as that film, if maybe not as creative.

tnrcooper Awkward and possibly mentally challenged, Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) is desperate for love and respect. He works at a hipster cafe frequented by impossibly pretentious people and yearns to fit in. He is rejected as staid and hopelessly straight by its patrons and is largely viewed with pity. One day, he stumbles across a devilish way to make realistic sculptures, something he can't do ordinarily and his work is a big hit at the cafe. Walter's never had adulation and regard like this before and he realizes this is his ticket to popularity. How fully he realizes this becomes dreadfully clear as the film goes on. This is a pitch black satire of the cluelessness of hipsters. The cafe's owner Leonard de Santis (Anthony Carbone, who looks remarkably like Humphrey Bogart) realizes what a monster Walter is but doesn't intervene right away. Walter is a remarkable mix of slow and lonely and this makes him ripe for the the depredations to which he increasingly succumbs. In this day and age a decent attorney would claim that Walter was not fully responsible for his actions because of his low IQ, but I don't imagine that claim would have held up as well in 1959.In any case, Walter's fame grows as he continues to lose it. The hipsters don't smell a rat. Corman obviously takes great glee in mocking this. The clueless hipster is most perfectly embodied by Maxwell (an excellent, stentorian Julian Brock), a beard-wearing, abstract poet who is so enchanted by Walter's "work" that he holds a party in his honor and writes a poem for him!The beautifully ironic thing about this film is that the one character who most sees through Walter's inability as a sculptor is the most cold-eyed and callous character, Alice (Judy Bamber). She questions Walter's ability and by that time he is so well-regarded that his adoring fans savage HER for her lack of sophistication! That she and the relatively cool- headed cafe owner Leonard are the only ones who see through Walter is hilarious. Corman apparently shot this film in 5 days and for $50,000 and it's only 66 minutes long, but what a punch it packs! A scabrously funny script, some excellent acting, and no happy ending. If you like your comedy dark, this is one for you.