A Bucket Of Blood!

A Bucket of Blood is one of those movies I've avoided for several years for reasons I'm not at all quite certain of. I have to be in the mood for grisly movies and perhaps that by itself kept from picking this up and enjoying it despite owning the movie a few times on those mammoth collections of horror. But I have now finally watched it through and enjoyed it immensely.

The reason this one works so well is Dick Miller pure and simple. I knew Dick Miller was an actor that fans adored for his offbeat performances, but I'd only seen a few of his performances and now realize what all the fuss is about. He's adorable as mentally-deficient waiter and wannabe artist in a Beatnik coffee house who by chance stumbles across a means to make statues which capture the attention of the mavens of the artistic community he is so eager to join.

We see immediately that he's in trouble as his desires to be recognized and even celebrated override his fundamental morality and he commits horrible cold blooded crimes in the service of his "art". All the while others learn of his methods and still support him for their own avaricious reasons, puncturing the inflated notions they profess as part of a special breed.

This is a damn good and pretty savage satire which doesn't hold back as death and art and truth and love are all put on trial. What the verdict is will have to wait, but with touches of Edgar Allan Poe dripping from the proceedings you can probably guess how it all ends -- jot well.

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