Roger Corman’s A Bucket of Blood is one of my all-time favourite low-budget films. I hope Dopers who have seen it will post here, but I’ll clue in everyone else.
Walter Paisley is a busboy at a hipster hangout called The Yellow Door. He’s surrounded by artistic types, and wants to be an artist in the worst way. He has a lump of clay in his cheap apartment and he attempts to create a sculpture. It’s ludicrous. “Be a nose!” he shouts as he becomes frustrated at the futility of his efforts. (This is just one of many great lines inthe film!) He’s frustrated by his inability to create what he sees in his mind. His soup is boiling over. The landlady’s cat is yowling. He burns his hand on the pot, and knocks his head on the overhead lamp. He calms down a little bit and realizes the cat is stuck inside the wall. (How’d it get there? Who knows?) He explains to the cat that he is going to get her out, and jams a knife in the wall to cut a hole. “Yeow!!!” Oops. Yep, our poor schlub has impaled the cat (which is quite stiff when he pulls it out of the wall).
He hides his mistake by covering it with clay. Hey! Here’s a sculpture that actually looks like a cat! The hipsters down at The Yellow Door suddenly see him as a great artist. But he needs to create more!
Mayoleah (or Nayoleah – I don’t recall) is impressed by Walter. It gives her a warm feeling “deep in my pranah!” She gives Walter some heroin, but Walter is too thick to realize what it is. He’s followed home by Burt Convey. Burt confronts him in his apartment and asks Walter who his pusher is. Walter finally realizes that he is in possession of illegal drugs. “I thought ‘horse’ was expensive?.. Wasn’t that nice of Mayoleah to give me that expensive ‘horse’?”
Burty Boy pulls out a gun and scares Walter. Walter, convinced he is about to be shot, bashes our future game show host with a frying pan. Time for another sculpture. “What do you call it?” “Murdered Man.” And his fame grows…
Some of my favourite lines in the film:
“Life is an obscure hobo hitching a ride on the omnibus of art.”
“You’re just a simple farmboy. The rest of us are sophisticated beatniks.”
“Do another cat!”
“I don’t have another cat.”
“I don’t know, man. I’m too far out.”
“Didn’t you see me waving my Zen-stick?”
And then there’s the singer in the coffee house. Shortly after killing the cop, Walter walks guiltily through the frame as the guitarist sings, “Go down, you murder, go down!”
I would have done the ending better; but hey, low budget.
A Bucket of Blood is a truely enjoyable film with great lines, great characters, and some really good shots.
NOW YOU WILL WATCH IT!