After simple busboy Walter Paisley (a fine turn by cult favourite Dick Miller) accidentally kills his landlady's cat, he coats it in clay and takes it to the cafe where he works; when the artists that congregate there see his creation, they proclaim him a genius sculptor, much to his delight. Walter's desire to remain popular leads him to create bigger sculptures, the man turning to murder to make this possible.
A wry swipe at pretentious art snobs and their bohemian lifestyle, A Bucket of Blood opens in a haze of cigarette smoke, as pompous poet Maxwell (Julian Burton) spouts meaningless words to an adoring crowd of sycophants (including wannabe Walter) while cool jazz saxophone notes drift in the background. Director Roger Corman is clearly having a laugh at the expense of the then popular beatnik scene, exposing the supposedly cool proponents as self-important pseudo-intellectual buffoons.
The story takes its cues from horror classics Mystery of the Wax Museum and House of Wax but Corman's darkly humorous approach to the macabre-but-admittedly-silly premise is refreshingly different: watching Walter pulling the wool over the eyes of his new elitist friends is a lot of ghoulish fun.
A wry swipe at pretentious art snobs and their bohemian lifestyle, A Bucket of Blood opens in a haze of cigarette smoke, as pompous poet Maxwell (Julian Burton) spouts meaningless words to an adoring crowd of sycophants (including wannabe Walter) while cool jazz saxophone notes drift in the background. Director Roger Corman is clearly having a laugh at the expense of the then popular beatnik scene, exposing the supposedly cool proponents as self-important pseudo-intellectual buffoons.
The story takes its cues from horror classics Mystery of the Wax Museum and House of Wax but Corman's darkly humorous approach to the macabre-but-admittedly-silly premise is refreshingly different: watching Walter pulling the wool over the eyes of his new elitist friends is a lot of ghoulish fun.