A Quick Look: A BUCKET OF BLOOD (1959)

   A BUCKET OF BLOOD was one of Roger Corman's experimental pictures. Presumably assigned a title and told to run with it, Corman crafted a hysterical comedy all about murder. Dick Miller plays Walter Paisley, loser hanger-on to a group of beatniks. He desperately seeks their approval and takes up sculpting as a way to fit in. He's terrible at it, however, until he accidentally kills a cat and then covers the kitty corpse with clay. This creation is heralded as a masterpiece and Walter finds himself coating further grisly leftovers as he becomes the toast of the art world! In a sense, this is a comical take on HOUSE OF WAX/MYSTERY IN THE WAX MUSEUM, and the plot would later be tweaked to fit painting in the early gore flick COLOR ME BLOOD RED. The film is a sharp parody of the art world, as well, and probably does a better job of detailing the hypocritical motivations of the beat scene than any other film on the subject. Dick Miller didn't headline too many movies, sadly, but this one stuck with him. His numerous bit parts since the 80's have more often than not been named Walter Paisley! Corman would follow this triumph with two more black and white horror-comedies, CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA and the infamous THE LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS.

A Quick Look: WARNING FROM SPACE (1956 - color)

   WARNING FROM SPACE was one of the earlier Japanese experiments in genre pictures. Influenced by American films like WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, the film tells of creatures from another world who come to Earth in order to help prevent a cosmic catastrophe that will be caused by another planetary body crashing into ours. In order to move about on Earth, one of the Martians is camouflaged as a pretty young woman. Unfortunately, it gets a little pokey in the second half, but it's an interesting watch. One thing that did stand out to me was that the film was apparently planned to be in wide scope. The footage aboard the alien spacecraft was shot this way. Then, it must've been decided that the film should be released in academy ratio, because the rest of the movie is shot that way and the alien scenes are cropped! For whatever reason, it didn't make American release until almost a decade later, when it turned up as a television feature. Press stills featured gigantic starfish-like monsters wading through flooded cityscapes, but no such scene appears in the film itself -which features rather more benevolent Martians than the publicity images indicate.