After opening its outdoor season, the educational platform “Kitas Kinas” (“Other Cinema”) continues its series of independent cinema screenings and is pleased to show Roger Corman’s “A Bucket of Blood” (1959, 66 mins.). “A Bucket Blood”, a staple of American underground cinema, is a cult horror comedy full of dark humour, offering a satirical look into art, the beatnik movement and a young man’s effort to earn the reputation of a genius artist: after accidentally murdering his landlady’s cat, he hides his tracks by covering the cat in plaster. Having become immediately famous, the unexpected artist faces pressure to keep on creating similar statues… so he decides to keep on collecting material for his work.
Corman’s lead in the film is Dick Miller, soon-to-become the darling of “Gremlins” director Joe Dante, portraying Walter Paisley, a nebbish busboy working in the elite beat poetry hangout known as The Yellow Door. Although Walter himself would love to be an artist, these dreams are seemingly unreachable, at least that’s the opinion of the café-goers clad in black.
This changes after the incident with the cat. Walter calls the plaster-covered dead cat quite simply, “Dead Cat” and gains recognition as a true artist, a micro-genius working in the realm of a new realism, starting death in the eyes. Although he can’t find any more cats for his creations, there’s more than enough people around him to serve this purpose.
The budget of this film was exceedingly small, approximately 50 000 dollars, and the filming took 5 days. “Chuck Griffith and I worked out the storyline, going from one beat coffee house to another on a Friday night on the Sunset Strip and the final stop was at about 2am at this one shop where our friend, soon to be actress Sally Kellerman, was waiting tables. She closed up and the three of us sat down and worked out the climax of the film together,” said Corman, the so-called “Pope of Pop Cinema”.The legendary UK-based cinema journal “Sight & Sound” calls “A Bucket of Blood” Corman’s best film. And what a compliment that is, seeing as he moved on to create cult classics such as “The Little Shop of Horrors” and “Death Race 2000”.
The film will be screened in English.
Entry is free of charge but visitors are welcome to donate. Recommended donation: 3€. Your contributions will be used to obtain screening licenses for upcoming films.
“Other Cinema” is an educational platform that introduces and overviews obscure films and their stories and personalities. The goal of this platform is to rescue unwittingly abandoned films from obscurity and review the most interesting manifestations of contemporary independent cinema, as well as to promote people’s interest in alternative cinema history and allow them to develop not only good but also bad taste.
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