A BUCKET OF BLOOD

dMYD DVD

Starring Dick Miller
Trailer

M

  Having spent his entire career being told that he’s not capable of it, Roger Corman knows damn well what art is, and he’s about to tell you in an easy to swallow sixty-two minutes of stabbings and beatniks and possible beatnik stabbings. Time does funny things to film, it warps the celluloid and loses the negatives, but in the case of A Bucket of Blood the extra decades take the cheapness and shallow nature of sixty years ago and twist them into a simplistic fable of art and identity. And all the best fables are simple.

  The film’s real-life journey to critical acceptance mirrors its plot: Corman was an infamous cannibal of sets and actors, happy to reuse costumes and contracts in an effort to produce or direct his customary thousand films a month. When Walter Paisley starts his sculpture-centric kill-spree he’s Corman himself, carving nasty images from everyday items and throwing them at the cultural elite, in this case a burgeoning jazz-café of freaks, loud mouths and Hemingway-wannabes all delicately skirting the drain of caricature.

  There’s a frightening pyramid of levels going on here; Walter’s role as a blood-drenched Anthony Gormley stands as the next logical step for an art world that’s always been in thrall to death and violence, from the gore-fest biblical apocalypi of the Renaissance to whatever haemoglobin-slick viciousness Tarentino’s been dreaming up this year, and his ascension to king of the freaks despite his law-dodging stands as a frightening reminder of the freedom that can come with ‘genius’. The fact that Corman paints the whole thing in the form of a B-Movie wraps it in a sheen of outdated comedy and approachableness that makes it more broadly accessible than say, Synecdoche New York, a remarkable feat for a film that’s only a year older than Gary Old Man.

  But again, it’s another movie about art, an artwork about art eating itself munching on art and burping up some sweet art for afterwards, a spiritual grandfather to that clever-fest Banksy thing from two minutes ago. People are getting bored of this; it’s no coincidence that The Artist’s been the hardest best-picture sell to audiences for thirty years – aside from the whole lip-stitched issue it’s yet another example of Hollywood commenting on itself, talking or not-talking about how hard it is to be creative and the terrible burden of being able to do entertaining things really well. It’s no wonder the world’s been more turned on the past two years by soldiers blowing up everywhere and a delightful monarch bumbling over his words; they’re both more interesting to someone who isn’t creative than the umpteenth writer whining about his words. Despite A Bucket of Blood being brilliant, it’s still another film about films, and if there’s one thing Corman can do it’s EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD.