A Bucket of Blood (1959)

One thing about the movie A Bucket of Blood is that there's no blood in it. At least, maybe not more than a trickle. Oh, there's a cat stabbing, a head severing, a strangulation, and some narcotics cop gets killed but I can't remember how, exactly. Anyway, all of these get turned into "statues" or sculptures by Walter Paisley (Dick Miller), a semi-mentally impaired nebbish that must be the OTHER Seymour Krelboin.

Paisley works in a beatnik coffee shop for swinging cats and their dames, who are all hip, and who give readings of bad poetry over saxophone solos and bongo beats. It is made apparent to everyone that Walter isn't one of them, but he's tolerated because he serves them coffee and vegetarian food.

But Arnold has a secret.

In a scene that gives the nod to Poe, his black kitty gets "trapped behind the wall." I never quite got how this happened, but, to free him, the rocket scientist Walter uses a knife. He accidentally plunges the knife into the cat, thus rendering it a little meowing member of the Choir Invisible. Now Paisley wants very badly to be accepted by his beatnik artsy friends at the coffee house, so he has been molding clay. He puts the body of the cat in the clay, knife and all, and takes it with him to work, telling his beatnik boss it's just a piece of art. Bingo! He becomes a smashing success. But a dead cat isn't enough. So when a narcotics dick comes calling, threatening Arnold because some chickadee gave him a vial of "horse," Arnold freaks when he sees a gun...Bingo! A full-bodied "statue. Afterward, an arrogant model that's agreed to pose for him...well, you rather get the idea.

There's a little trickle of blood here and there, a few plop-plops into a bucket. On the whole, though, the title is an exploitation gimmick, and what we have here is simply a dark, seedly little story of a mentally-deranged killer and an unlikely crime. But, I don't suppose a completely impossible one. Stranger things have occurred, in other words.

At one point Walter, full of himself, affects the whole beatnik look and demeanor, ordering beatnik food at the beatnik's joint. Laughable. The climax, denouement, whatever, has the one sympathetic female running from him, as cops chase him down. Not to give it away, but the ending aims for a final shock. But doesn't quite live up to the effort. Just as the title of this damn movie A Bucket of Blood, keeps us wondering, the whole time: Well, where is it? Where the hell is that titular bucket of blood we've all been waiting and yearning for the entire sixty-five minutes of this damnable piece of drive-in sleaze? I don't know. I. Just. DON'T. KNOW.

Dick Miller's performance is on the money, though. He comes across as a little slow, a little naive, and a lot socially awkward. The bearded hippie poet that welcomes Arnold with open arms is interesting too (played by Julian Burton), as well as Carla (played by AIP stock player Barboura Morris). The thing reminds me of that old episode of "Tales from the Crypt" the television show (based on a Tales from the Crypt story, which, as I don't have to tell you, first appeared in the comic publication Tales from the Crypt, probably just a few years before this movie was made), wherein actor Tim Roth can only paint masterpieces of people he's murdered.

Walter finds he likes to kill and mumbles the absurd poetry of Maxwell H. Brock (Burton) while doing so, going on and on about how creation is a graham cracker in God's mouth or something. Corman used the sets later for the much funnier and more grotesque classic satire Little Shop of Horrors (which of course went on to an extended life as a musical and movie with Rick Moranis and Steve Martin) primarily because he didn't want to waste anything.

Dark, slow, and bloodless, A Bucket of Blood is still worth watching because all stories about nerdy killers who hide the evidence of their crimes by turning them into sculptures are, well, worth it. And it's only one hour and five minutes out of your life, right? Surely a hep cat like you isn't going to get hung up on a little thing like time, right? After all, we're all just graham crackers in God's gooey gob. RIGHT. AM I RIGHT?

Two and a Half Buckets. Dry as a bone (projecting out from a statue, maybe).

A Bucket of Blood (Public Domain) full Length