User:milesbogus on Sat, 19 Aug 2006 15:09:11 +0000

A Bucket of Blood
A Bucket of Blood Directed by Roger Corman and starring Dick Miller. This is a fullscreen version that clocks in at about 65 minutes. The picture is bearable and the sound is muddy. However this is quite a little gem....Walter (Miller) Paisley is a bus boy at the Yellow Door Cafe. This is apparently the cafe where all the town's beatniks, poets, artists, druggies, and civil war enthusiasts hang out. Everyone yells at Walter to clear their table. Then they turn to their friends to talk about how great being an artist is. This is Corman's satire of what I suppose was the fashion at the time. All Walter wants is to be accepted by these people (for some reason). A long winded poem by the poet Maxwell strikes a cord with Walter. So he goes back to his apartment to cook some beans and try working with some clay. Apparently Walter cannot multitask. He hears the nosy landlady's cat in the wall, puts down the clay, tries to find the cat, realizes it is in the wall and tries to cut it out with a knife. He stabs the cat, gets it out of the wall, freaks out, burns the beans, hits his head, then wraps the cat in clay. Wah-lah a sculpture called Dead Cat. The art scene loves it. He gets famous, kills, makes more 'art' and ends up in not a very good place. The great thing about this movie is that it is only 65 minutes. The story is straight forward enough and we have seen this theme in many other places. Dick Miller's performance is really entertaining. "Life is an obscure hobo on the bus...." Worth a look. -review by Miles Bogus www.choicegrinds.com

User:h-milch on Thu, 07 Sep 2006 00:29:41 +0000

Great movie. The scene when he stabs his neighbour's cat by accident is hilarious.

User:MadTricks on Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:04:41 +0000

User:matthow on Wed, 24 Jan 2007 19:21:10 +0000

What a bummer! This only gets 3 stars because of the poor audio/video quality, otherwise it would easily rate 4. The source looks like it was a kinescope. It's very soft and the audio is murky at best. It's a shame, too, because this is one of Corman's greats. Shot in 4 days (you've gotta love Roger)! Dick Miller's Walter Paisley is stuck as a waiter in a bohemian coffee house of pretentious beats and artists. He wants desperately to be as creative as his customers and accepted by them. This is an hilarious skewering of "with-it-ness" and should be remade about every 15 years just to keep that generation's pretentious boors on their toes. Imagine the possibilities.

User:Sculley3 on Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:49:09 +0000

Better than the basic horror films that made Corman a leader in the genre. This movie shows real depth for acting from Dick Miller. Though the character surrounding Dick were 2D stereotypes I felt the pain of wanting to fit in with the art crowd vibe that he was portraying.

User:roMancer on Sun, 26 Aug 2007 13:30:37 +0000

typical corman: ultra cheap, with a well-done script and good dialogue, at a quick pace. nice portrait of the 'art scene' with much parody comment on it, and some grotesque hitchcock-alike situations. a bitterly sarcastic story about the human need for contact. would get a 4 or 5 if it would just go a little deeper.

User:banzaidog on Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:32:25 +0000

A dark Roger Corman quickie, featuring Dick Miller and several other actors from the "Mighty Corman Art Players," as well as early film appearances by Ed Nelson and Burt Convy. Poor Walter Paisley just wants to fit in among the assorted poseurs at the coffee shop where he works. When he stumbles upon a unusual -- shall we say utterly unique -- sculpting technique in sculpture, Walter becomes an overnight sensation...with "horrifying" results. Lots of fun. And that's jazz saxophonist Paul Horn blowing during Mel Welles' "poetry."

User:renike on Sat, 06 Oct 2007 21:12:50 +0000

User:bud8282 on Fri, 08 Feb 2008 20:56:47 +0000

A GREAT film. If you like the Twighlight Zone you will love this. It is well filmed, goes at a good pace, & is well acted. A top movie. Do look out for the fake beard... the amazing fake beard that seems to act on is own... moving even when the actor it has latched itself onto is not. Cool :-)