Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) shows off his debut artistic creation, “Dead Cat,” at the Yellow Door in A BUCKET OF BLOOD
A BUCKET OF BLOOD (Roger Corman, 1959)
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Ave. at Second St.
Saturday, August 29, 9:00, and Tuesday, September 1, 7:15
Series runs through September 3
212-505-5181
anthologyfilmarchives.org
Writer Charles B. Griffith and producer and director Roger Corman skewer — and we do mean skewer — beatnik culture, the elitist art world, and their very own horror genre in the freaky-fun satire A Bucket of Blood. Inspired by Michael Curtiz’s 1933 The Mystery of the Wax Museum and André de Toth’s 1953 3D classic House of Wax and adding more than a dash of Macbeth, Griffith and Corman tell the lurid tale of one Walter Paisley (Dick Miller), a relatively simple-minded busboy at the Yellow Door, a smoky bohemian nightclub in San Francisco, where pre-Williamsburg hipster Maxwell H. Brock (Julian Burton) recites his poetry and hobnobs with his adoring fans. “I will talk to you of art, for there is nothing else to talk about, for there is nothing else,” Brock says over the opening credits, looking directly into the camera. “Swim on, you maudlin, muddling, maddened fools, and dream that one bright and sunny night some artist will bait a hook and let you bite upon it. Bite hard, and die!” Maxwell’s bloviating words impress Walter, who repeats them to himself as he is determined that he, too, will become an artist. Back at home, Walter is trying to make a clay bust of club hostess Carla (Barboura Morris, who later appeared in The Wasp Woman and The Trip), who he has a crush on, but he is interrupted by the meows of a cat trapped in the wall. In trying to free the cat, Walter accidentally stabs it to death, then decides to cover it in clay (leaving the knife in it) and show it off at the club so he can join the prestigious ranks of the art world. (No one quite gets the irony of his having killed a cat, hipster slang for a supposed cool person.) He is indeed celebrated by Maxwell, Carla, and most of the others, except for his boss, Leonard (Antony Carbone), who is suspicious of Walter’s sudden talent but doesn’t mind making a quick buck off his employee. Also keeping a close eye on things are undercover cops Art Lacroix (Peyton Place star Ed Nelson) and Lou Raby (game show host Bert Convy, billed as “Burt” Convy), who are looking to make some drug busts. Walter’s instant success goes straight to his addled little head, so soon he is creating disturbing statues of, well, let’s just say people start going missing in the neighborhood. Walter is determined to no longer be ignored, but it’s all liable to fall apart at any moment, like so much broken clay.
Shot in five days in black-and-white for $50,000 on existing sets (some of which would be used again for Griffith and Corman’s next comedy, the somewhat similarly themed Little Shop of Horrors), A Bucket of Blood suffers from the whirlwind production schedule and extremely low budget — Miller has since complained that there wasn’t enough time or money to prepare a proper finale, and he’s right — but it’s still a hoot, a playful stab at many of the genre conventions that Griffith (The Wild Angels, Eat My Dust!) and Corman (The Pit and the Pendulum, The Terror) established working for American International Pictures. This horror comedy is extremely creepy and very funny, with a superb lead performance by Miller, a distinctive, longtime character actor who would actually play men named Walter Paisley in several later films (including Joe Dante’s The Howling and Jim Wynorski’s Chopping Mall) as an homage to his triumph here. You can feel his every twisted emotion as he tries so hard to become an artist and capture Carla’s romantic attention and help them and others reach immortality. Photographed by Jacques R. Marquette and featuring a Twilight Zone–like score and pace (the Rod Serling series began the same year), A Bucket of Blood well deserves its cult status as a camp classic. A Bucket of Blood is screening August 29 and September 1 in Anthology Film Archives’ three-part tribute to American International Pictures, the first section of which continues through September 3 with such other cult faves as Ray Milland’s Panic in Year Zero!, Edward L. Cahn’s The She-Creature, and Corman’s X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes and The Tomb of Ligeia, with star Elizabeth Shepherd in person.
Andrei Tarkovsky’s final film, The Sacrifice, completed shortly before his death in 1986 of cancer at the age of fifty-four, serves as a glorious microcosm of his career, exploring art, faith, ritual, devotion, and humanity in uniquely cinematic ways. Made in Sweden, the film has many Bergmanesque qualities: Bergman’s longtime cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, shot the film; the production designer is Anna Asp, who won an Oscar for her work on Fanny and Alexander; Bergman’s son Daniel served as a camera assistant; and the star is Erland Josephson, who appeared in ten Bergman films as well as Tarkovsky’s previous feature, the Italy-set Nostalghia. Josephson plays Alexander, a retired professor and former actor living in the country with his wife, the cold Adelaide (Susan Fleetwood), his stepdaughter, Marta (Filippa Franzén), and young son, Little Man (Tommy Kjellqvist), who cannot speak after a recent throat operation. It is Alexander’s birthday, and the family doctor, Victor (Sven Wollter), has come to visit, along with the odd local postman, Otto (Allan Edwall), who explains, “I collect incidents. Things that are unexplainable but true.” Also on hand are the two maids, Maria (Guðrún Gísladóttir), who Otto believes is a witch, and Julia (Valérie Mairesse). Alexander states early on that he has no relationship with God, but when a nuclear holocaust threatens, he suddenly gets down on the floor and prays, offering to sacrifice whatever it takes in order for him to survive, leading to a chaotic conclusion that is part slapstick, part utter desperation. 
F. Gary Gray’s Straight Outta Compton comes barreling out of the gates with all the rage and fury of the 1988 title track, which kicks off with Dr. Dre declaring, “You are now about to witness the strength of street knowledge.” The energetic film follows the rise and fall, or creation and dissolution, of N.W.A, the seminal south L.A. hip-hop group that changed music forever. In the late 1980s, Ice Cube (O’Shea Jackson Jr.), Dr. Dre (Corey Hawkins), Eazy-E (Jason Mitchell), MC Ren (Aldis Hodge), and DJ Yella (Neil Brown Jr.) formed a rap group that sought to capture the sound and feel of what was happening on the streets of Compton, from drugs and gangs to racist cops and poverty. They were a smash hit, particularly their controversial song “Fuck Tha Police,” which set up confrontations with authorities as the band hit the road on a nationwide tour. But when Cube and Dre start questioning where all the money is going — Eazy-E and manager Jerry Heller (Paul Giamatti) seem to be doing a lot better than the rest of them — everything they have built up threatens to unravel. And once Suge Knight (R. Marcus Taylor) enters the picture, the violence level increases, and things start getting even more out of control.
