Directed by: Roger Corman

Starring: Dick Miller, Barboura Morris, Antony Carbone, Julian Burton, Ed Nelson, Bert Convy

STORY

Walter Paisley is a painfully awkward busboy working at the Yellow Door, a coffeehouse filled with beatnik poets, artists and bohemian intellectuals. Walter desperately wants to be accepted by the colorful crowd he serves every night, particularly Carla, a beautiful artist he admires from afar. Unfortunately, Walter possesses enthusiasm for art but very little artistic talent.

Everything changes when Walter accidentally kills his landlady’s cat while trying to free it from a wall. Horrified by what he has done, Walter covers the dead animal in clay and presents it as a sculpture. Instead of discovering his secret, the Yellow Door crowd declares Walter a brilliant new artist. For the first time in his life, Walter is admired, celebrated and taken seriously.

There is only one problem: everyone wants to see what the newly discovered genius will create next.

Unable to sculpt and terrified of losing his newfound fame, Walter discovers an increasingly gruesome method of producing new “masterpieces.” As his subjects become considerably larger than cats, Walter’s rise through the beatnik art world becomes a wonderfully twisted combination of murder, horror and very black comedy.

Roger Corman turns the story into much more than a tale about a killer. A Bucket of Blood gleefully skewers artistic pretension, critics, celebrity, conformity and the sometimes absurd process by which one person is suddenly declared a genius. At the center of it all is Dick Miller, giving Walter enough vulnerability that somehow, even while his collection of corpses grows, we never entirely stop feeling sorry for the poor guy.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS

FIVE DAYS — THAT’S IT

Roger Corman was given approximately $50,000 and only five days to make A Bucket of Blood. He accepted the challenge and completed the picture on that remarkably tight schedule. It is a wonderful example of the speed, ingenuity and resourcefulness that helped make Corman one of the legends of independent filmmaking.

WELCOME TO THE BEAT GENERATION

Screenwriter Charles B. Griffith and Corman immersed themselves in the coffeehouse scene while developing the film. Griffith took Corman around Sunset Strip coffeehouses as research, and the resulting movie turned the contemporary beatnik art world into the setting for a horror comedy.

DICK MILLER FINALLY GETS THE SPOTLIGHT

Dick Miller had already appeared in numerous Corman productions, but Walter Paisley gave him one of his rare starring roles and became the character most closely associated with his career. Miller’s mixture of insecurity, innocence, desperation and increasingly homicidal behavior is a huge reason the movie remains so much fun.

WALTER PAISLEY REFUSED TO DIE

The name Walter Paisley became a running cinematic joke. Dick Miller would play characters named Walter Paisley in six additional movies, including The Howling, Twilight Zone: The Movie and Chopping Mall, as filmmakers who admired Miller and Corman continued paying tribute to A Bucket of Blood.

THE LIVING DEAD?

A Bucket of Blood originally carried the working title The Living Dead. The wonderfully memorable title audiences know today came later — and proved particularly appropriate for a movie in which Walter’s artistic creations are considerably more dead than his admirers realize.

FROM A BUCKET OF BLOOD TO A LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS

Corman and screenwriter Charles B. Griffith followed this film with another now-famous horror comedy, The Little Shop of Horrors. Corman was so pleased with how quickly A Bucket of Blood had been made that he decided to push himself even further, famously shooting the principal photography for Little Shop in only two days.

AINTOID: A VERY STRANGE ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN

American International Pictures encouraged theater owners to promote the movie with a giant tipped bucket appearing to drip red fluid. Exhibitors were even encouraged to create trails of the red substance leading toward the theater and combine the promotion with a Red Cross blood drive. The movie’s advertising tagline promised audiences, “You’ll die laughing!”

AINTOID: THE ART IS THE JOKE

The horror may provide the bodies, but the art world provides the joke. Walter’s admirers see exactly what they expect to see once he is proclaimed a genius. The same people who barely noticed the busboy suddenly analyze and celebrate everything he creates. Corman and Griffith use Walter’s increasingly horrifying sculptures to poke fun at artistic fashion, pretension and the power of reputation.

BEHIND THE CAMERA

Corman served as both director and producer, with Charles B. Griffith writing the screenplay. Jack Marquette handled the cinematography, Anthony Carras edited the picture and Dan Haller served as production designer. The production was made by Corman’s Alta Vista Productions