Director Roger Corman is fast becoming a bit of a hero of mine. Whilst it would be a stretch to consider him a great director, it would appear that his great talent was being able to stitch together something fairly enjoyable from the most slender of resources. A Bucket of Blood, like much of his output, was made using the small change he found down the back of the sofa; apparently it was shot over a three day weekend because the rain meant that he couldn’t play tennis. His directorial style is probably best described as “efficient”; there’s no imagery or shots in this film that strike you as being particularly bad or good – Corman gets in, does what he has to do and gets out again.
I love the film’s lurid premise; Dick Miller plays Walter Paisley, a clumsy busboy who worships the beatnik poets that populate the club where he works. When he accidentally kills a cat, he covers it in clay to hide the evidence; when the result is hailed by the beatniks as a masterpiece, he is forced to kill again to keep up with demand for more work. As the plot would suggest, there’s a certain amount of satire aimed at beatnik culture, but I wasn’t prepared for just how savage that satire would be; Corman doesn’t just send up the art enthusiasts, he spits venom at them, and as the film goes on they degenerate into increasingly grotesque and ridiculous caricatures. Paisley doesn’t look any better; his adulation of the horrendous Maxwell Brock (who eats “soy and wheat-germ pancakes, organic guava nectar, calcium lactate and tomato juice and garbanzo omelettes sprinkled with smoked yeast” for breakfast) makes him look foolish – an accomplice to the inane pretension that surrounds him, as well as, more obviously, a murderer.
What would otherwise be a lightweight comedy of errors is made quite gripping by Corman’s obvious, barely disguised hatred of beatniks. Had it lasted longer than its 64 minutes A Bucket of Blood would probably have outstayed its welcome, but as it stands, it’s short, angry and pretty funny. Definitely worth a look.