A Bucket of Blood (1959)

Directed by

Roger Corman

Genre

comedy film, horror film, comedy horror film

Country

United States

Runtime

1h 05m

Rated

NR

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 167 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A dimwitted busboy working at a beatnik cafe accidentally kills his landlady's cat and covers it in clay to hide the evidence. When his "sculpture" wins praise, he turns to murder to create more art.

darkly comiccampysatiricalmacabrequick-pacedlow-budgetgrisly

What happens

A Bucket of Blood is a 1959 American comedy horror film produced and directed by Roger Corman. It stars Dick Miller, Barboura Morris, Antony Carbone, Ed Nelson and Bert Convy, and is set in the West Coast beatnik culture of the late 1950s. The film, produced on a $50,000 budget, was shot in five days and shares many of the low-budget filmmaking aesthetics commonly associated with Corman's work. Written by Charles B. Griffith, the film is a dark comic satire about a dimwitted, impressionable young busboy at a Bohemian café who is acclaimed as a brilliant sculptor when he accidentally kills his landlady's cat and covers its body in clay to hide the evidence. When he is pressured to create similar work, he becomes a serial murderer. A Bucket of Blood was the first of a trio of collaborations between Corman and Griffith in the comedy genre, which include The Little Shop of Horrors (which was shot on the same sets as A Bucket of Blood) and Creature from the Haunted Sea. Corman had made no previous attempt at the genre, although past and future Corman productions in other genres incorporated comedic elements. The film is a satire not only of Corman's own films but also of the world of abstract art as well as low-budgeted teen films of the 1950s. The film has also been praised in many circles as an honest, undiscriminating portrayal of the many facets of beatnik culture, including poetry, dance, and a minimalist style of life. The plot has similarities to Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). However, by setting the story in the Beat milieu of 1950s Southern California, Corman creates an entirely different mood from the earlier film. A Bucket of Blood was released on October 1, 1959, by American International Pictures on a double bill with Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959). Later in 1960, the film played on a double bill with Circus of Horrors (1960) in Los Angeles. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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