(1959)
3.5
Robert Firsching
Roger Corman directed this very funny little film in about half a week on a shoestring budget. Dick Miller plays Walter Paisley, a nerdy waiter at a beatnik coffeehouse. He has pretensions of joining the ranks of the artists who scorn him and the women who fawn over them, but his art is sub-par. That is, until he accidentally kills a cat, covering it with clay in a frightened attempt to hide the act. But the artists whom he yearns to join are fascinated, pronouncing the cat (with a knife sticking from its corpse) a work of art. Walter becomes the latest enfant terrible of the java set, and it isn't long before the embittered former whipping-boy enhances his fame with more original "sculptures," this time involving human victims. Miller is terrific and Charles B. Griffith's script is a funny send-up of beatnik culture. Corman and Griffith re-teamed the following year for an even better low-budget horror-comedy, The Little Shop of Horrors.
cast-crew for A Bucket of Blood on AllMovie
A Bucket of Blood (1959)
