A Bucket of Blood

Directed by Roger Corman, A Bucket of Blood follows a dimwitted busboy (Dick Miller’s Walter Paisley) as he becomes an art sensation after he begins creating sculptures made out of real people (and animals). It’s a workable premise that is, for the most part, employed to one-note and repetitive effect by Corman, as the filmmaker, armed with a script by Charles B. Griffith, delivers a sluggish, lackadaisically-paced endeavor that’s been suffused with obvious (and less-than-subtle) attributes – which, when coupled with certain far-from-enthralling elements (eg the ongoing emphasis on beatnik-related happenings), ensures that the picture becomes less and less interesting as it progresses. And while Miller offers up as compelling and sympathetic a turn as one might’ve anticipated, A Bucket of Blood, even at just 65 minutes, suffers from a whole surfeit of lulls and lackluster stretches that cumulatively cancel out its positives – with the end result a misguided satire that could only have worked as a short film (and probably not even then).

** out of ****