A BUCKET OF BLOOD. American International, 1959. Dick Miller, Barboura Morris, Antony Carbone, Julian Burton, Judy Bamber, Ed Nelson, Bert Convy. Producer/director: Roger Corbin.

   I went to the local library sale twice last weekend. On Friday night it cost $5 to get in, and I spend $70. On Sunday afternoon they charged $5 a bag, and I bought four bags. Do you know how many paperbacks you can get into an ordinary plastic shopping bag? Even more amazing, do you know how many DVDs you can get into one? DVDs that sat there at four dollars apiece for two days and nobody wanted them until I came along on Sunday and took four shelves full in one swell foop? Well, four foops.

   This is one of them, and more than that, this the second half of a double feature DVD, the prime attraction being George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968), which I saw once and probably never again. Though perhaps I shouldn’t be too hasty. The version I saw I am sure was colorized, the worst idea that the ladies and gents in Hollywood ever had. The lighting is always wrong and the computers don’t really get it right anyway, what with swatches of color hovering over everything on the screen trying to match what the ladies and gents think is the right color, but (in my opinion) probably almost never is.

   But I digress. A Bucket of Blood was also filmed in black-and-white, and the DVD version is also in black-and-white, and very sharp black-and-white it was also. It was also filmed, or so I’m told, in five days. A small budget film, and of course it shows. It is also quietly hilarious, and somewhat to my relief, intentionally so, since one of the posters I’ve seen for this film says at the top: “You’ll be sick, sick, sick – from LAUGHING!”

   Unless they took a look at the film when they were done filming and decided to accept the inevitable: a bad movie that they could market only if they made everyone believe that that is the way it was done on purpose. But I don’t think so.

   Dick Miller, in probably the only starring role he ever had, but not the only one he played a fellow named Walter Paisley, is a busboy in a beatnik hangout who has a social problem. He’s laughed at, which of course is even worse than being ignored. He’s not only inept but two or three magazines short of a rack, and Dick Miller nails the role perfectly.

   The Yellow Door, where Paisley works, is one those places, by the way, where poets recite their wares to the sound of a single saxophone (uncredited jazz artist Paul Horn) along the lines of “Life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art,” to quote Maxwell Brock (Julian Burton), or “Where are John, Joe, Jake, Jim, jerk? Dead, dead, dead! They were not born, before they were born, they were not born. Where are Leonardo, Rembrandt, Ludwig? Alive! Alive! Alive! They were born!”

Maxwell Brock is perfect in the part. So is Barboura Morris as Carla, the girl that Walter loves but doesn’t have a chance with until he becomes an acclaimed artist. By mistake. After accidentally killing his landlady’s cat, hiding in a wall, Walter covers the dead animal with clay. A masterpiece, it is praised. One must only smile.

   And of course Walter is not content to be a one-shot wonder. Perhaps you can picture what comes next. If you remember The House of Wax with Vincent Price (1953), I am sure you will. There is, of course, a gag like this (literally) can last much more than an hour, and no, it doesn’t, clocking in at a mere 66 minutes. Just about perfect.

   Not to mention the other starring attraction, besides Alice the model’s nude back (Judy Bamber), that being, of course, an (uncredited) stage appearance of guitarist-folksinger Alex Hassilev at just about the same time he was becoming one of the founding members of The Limeliters. A good career move, that.