So here's our next full film review of the year: Roger Corman's low-budget nasty, A Bucket Of Blood. It's from 1959, and was Corman's first attempt at comedy (that Wikipedia link there is full of great info and background, and you should definitely read it if you're interested). More importantly, the success of this film led to Corman's next production, probably his best-known film, Little Shop Of Horrors.
This is set in the world of the beatniks, and apparently is well-regarded as a fair, honest portrayal of the beatnik (though some of the jokes feel a little mean-spirited to me these days). It opens with a lengthy poem, recited over a saxophone, as the credits roll, but don't be fooled: The literary ambitions of that poem don't indicate that the movie is equally inaccessible.
Our protagonist, poor sweet-natured Walter the waiter, isn't particularly smart or creative, and sadly for him he's living in the beatnk world, which values smarts and creativity above all else. A series of accidents leads Walter down a dark path, and he learns he can exploit others to get acclaim and money for his "art". He's a sweet schlubby guy, with very little ambition in that direction, so it's a wild ride when we see him turn. (The screenwriter, Charles B. Griffith, also used that character arc to make Little Shop.)
In the long run, this movie is about artistic vampires: for centuries, artists have worried that the only way to make relatable, human art is to cannibalize their own lives and the lives of their friends and loved ones. (My first exposure to this concept is an essay by Neil Simon, wherein he tells us that he's always observing, never participating in life, since he's concerned more with getting things down to make his plays more real. He tells us that he worries his friends and family will complain about his use of their personal lives to further his career.) I can just imagine Griffith churning out these scripts, despairing that they'll always be low-budget triple-bill exploitation fare, wondering what he has to do to make the scripts more human, more real. It's, by this point, an old horror trope for an artist to sacrifice others for his continued efforts, sometimes quite literally like here or House Of Wax, but those stories rarely turn out well for the "hero" artists. Luckily, we know the ending of Griffith's story, and it's a lot happier than Walter Paisley's.
This movie has lapsed into the public domain, and if you want to spend the time, you should definitely feel free to watch the archive.org version embedded above, but the official DVD release linked down here is well-reviewed and will be a nice clean copy to own forever. I like to give you a buy link for everything I can, you know.
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