A Bucket of Blood (1959)

Genre: Horror, Comedic, Serial Killer

Source: My own Collection

Grade: A


So last night I decided to dig around through my own DVDs for something to watch and review,and there I found one of my Roger Corman DVDs budget packs that I had bought a few mouths prier,which countained four of his movies on it, so A Bucket of Blood being one of them I  thought well this should be interesting, plus it had a short running time 66 minutes to be exact,the short running time appealed to me only because I was tired that night, and I`d have to say I really felt like watching a good ole Roger Corman movie.

Well The plot was really not too bad, especially for a dark comedy. The film is about a man who kills his landlady's cat by accident . he then covers the cats corpse in clay and passes it off as his own artwork.with fame he begins to kill people and use their body's in various clay sculptures.
I also noted this had a strong influence from 1953s House of Wax, which starred Vincent Price who later became a favorite of Roger Cormans.
The film had many great colorful characters in it such as Walter Miller the crazy "artist" and bus boy who turns homicidal that was played perfectly by Dick Miller, next there was Brock a heavily bearded poet who drew most of his humor from Irony, and then there was Leonard Walters stern artsy boss who was played by Roger Corman regular Antony Carbone ( Last Women on Earth, Creature from Haunted Sea).

So as you may have noticed that this film had a really decent cast. Dick Miller in his only staring role, ever other role hes done has been a supporting role, sadly. Leonard Walters as jerkish, mean art dealer/ coffee house owner, and then was Julian Burton as the bearded poet, who was a pretty funny character and well played by Burton, the only other thing of significance that he was in was Cormans "Masque of The Red Death", sad he was an impressive actor.
Ah and then there was the cheap sets, that were reused a year later in Cormans "Little Shop of Horrors", which should really not come as a surprise to anyone even remotely familiar with Roger Corman and his film making techniques.  And The music soundtrack was completely composed of saxophone music, at first that might sound weird, but it actually was really fitting.

So all in all I`d have to say I thoroughly enjoyed this movie, i`ts defiantly one of my new favorite Corman movies. Everything from its dark humor, gritty murders, and colorful characters Bucket of Blood is a thoroughly enjoyable movie that I would recommend to anyone interested in this type of movie.