Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Beyond "B" Movie Review: Roger Corman's "Bucket of Blood" (1959)

   Now, it is pretty well a known fact that I am very passionate about a very few things.  It starts with my wife, and goes downhill from there.  Anyway, about 4 levels down it hits "B" movies, and that is enough said.

   I've spent years studying films (which in my case includes the experience of going to drive-in theaters; something becoming a dying craft) and even worked in the independent film world.  Shit, I even have a credit out there on a film called "Pieces," directed by the somewhat legendary Russo Brothers (they killed my score but I still got celluloid as a "sound editor," for what that is worth).  But I am not here to toot my own horn.  The point is that, if you are into that culture (B-movies and all that goes with it), you know for sure who the fuck Roger Corman is--anyone does at that point.  Somehow, this film escaped me.  Oh, I might have seen bad prints of it--parts, broken reels, or maybe I was just very high back then and forgot the whole thing, but I doubt it.  One thing for sure that I can tell you is that I just saw a clean (well, as clean as these go) print of it, and I can assure you this is highly unique.  Why?  Because Corman went after the Beatniks, and in a very savage manner of parody.  It's all there in this film.  It is a mind-blower.  I didn't have to do any drugs to watch it, for one thing.  And that was after I came out of watching a very good cut of "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?"  That is a hard act to follow, let me tell you.  But, in 66 minutes, it was eclipsed.

   If you view film seminars with Corman, or read him, one thing he talks about is how he kind of created a game with himself about how fast he could finish a movie.  This one was shot in 5 days, on 50K.

  Cut to the treatment (from Wikipedia, accurately):
 A Bucket of Blood is a 1959 American comedy horror film directed by Roger Corman. It starred Dick Miller and was set in beatnik culture. The film, produced on a $50,000 budget, was shot in five days,[2] and shares many of the low-budget filmmaking aesthetics commonly associated with Corman's work.[3] Written by Charles B. Griffith, the film is a dark comicsatire[2][4] about a socially awkward young busboy at a Bohemian café who is acclaimed as a brilliant sculptor when he accidentally kills his landlady's cat and covers its body in clay to hide the evidence. When he is pressured to create similar work, he becomes murderous.



   That leaves out a few salient details, and you can only get the feel from watching the thing.  It is available on netflix, and Corman's website (most probably).

  This is a straight-out attack on not only the Beat Generation, but nihilism, and general artistic a-holes, as only someone as venerable as Corman could do--and he wasn't even venerable when he did this film (1959).

  Overall, what with being a reasonably clean print, this is the best piece of trash I've seen in years, and I've seen a lot.

rde

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