Bucket of Blood

As the witching hour approaches on Saturday night and the night-life begins to crawl the streets The Strand Theatre will feature an 11 p.m. movie that was made for and satirizes late night films.

This particular work, 1959’s “Bucket of Blood,” is a revolutionary film that virtually created an entirely new movie genre: a comedy of horrors. Produced and directed by legendary maverick Roger Corman in his trademark style of “guerrilla film-making” and shot in his customary black and white, the movie also embraces Corman’s low-budget aesthetics of aggressive camera work, atmospheric,moody  lighting and ceaselessly roving cinematic eye.

One of the original independent film-makers, Corman has trained a plethora of Hollywood legends like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron and Ron Howard , just to name a few. Equally, Corman’s stable of working talent includes such iconoclastic actors as Vincent Price, Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Robert DeNiro Jr. and even William Shatner, among others. Ironically, Corman has become such a cinema icon that he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 2009, by the very Hollywood system he spent his life rebelling against.

“Bucket of Blood”, shot in five days and produced for $50,000, has become a cult-classic in the once underground world’s horror movies and Art- films. It was the first movie in a trilogy of comedic horrors Corman made with screenwriter Charles B. Griffith, the dean of black comedy. The trilogy’s second flick (1960 ), “Little a Shop of Horrors,” was shot practically on the same set and at the same time in a furious 2-day work schedule. This cinematic triple play ushered in a 1960’s revolt against the studio system of producing movies and led Corman to coin the catchphrase of low budget aesthetics. “Speed of production brings truth,” he said about his style.

It was, in fact, “Buckets of Blood” and its satires on art, beatniks and movies, along with Corman’s quirky, yet refined, film-making style  that caught the eye of Vincent Price, who went on to star in eight movies with Corman, based on the tales and poems of Edgar Allan Poe .

This movie could be subtitled “cast from life” as its twisted plot follows a young waiter- turned sculptor who climbs to fame through love, lust and murders for art in the beatnik subculture of Sunset Strip coffee-houses made famous in the 1950’s.

“I think there is always a political undercurrent in my films,” Corman once said, rejecting the title as king of the B-movies. “All my films have been concerned simply with man as a social animal.”

It was his aesthetics, working methods and teaching ethics, however, which catapulted him from outsider to insider in the world of film.  Corman is often praised and revered today for his unpolished raw, in-your-face style of filming and his “learn on the job method” of directing and producing quality cinema, whether they are low- budget classics or high -budget blockbusters. Ironically, it was these very working qualities and Corman’s insistence on independence that have elevated him into a rather reluctant iconoclastic icon of the silver screen, one who as “Bucket of Blood” demonstrates is not afraid of satirizing himself or his movie making methods in his prolific, creative life.

All in all, Corman has produced more than 300 films, directed over 50 movies and formed three separate independent production companies in his long, influential career.

“He is the father of redneck cinema,” said Quentin Tarentino, the most recent maven of independent movie magic.

If you have a burning passion for film, art, horror, or all or none of the above, but simply love to laugh in the face of death, then this movie is for you.

This preview does not express the opinion of the Strand Theatre.

Submitted by:  Terrance Aldridge