A Bucket of Blood is a campy, minor horror film from 1959, but it’s most interesting as window into beatnik culture. Turner Classic Movies will air A Bucket of Blood on May 13.
In 1959, the Beat Movement had been alive for a decade, but had just begun to be recognized by the mainstream culture. Beatniks, before the usage of that word, had been glimpsed in the 1950 classic noir D.O.A. and in 1957’s Roman Holiday. The word “beatnik”, usually a pejorative used by squares, was resisted by the Beat generation artists and thinkers. According to Wikipedia, the term was coined by Herb Caen in his San Francisco Chronicle column of April 2, 1958. Of course, the popular stereotype of a Beatnik stems from the character of Maynard G. Krebs (played by Bob Denver of later Gilligan fame) on TV’s Dobie Gillis (1959-63).
By 1959, beatnik consciousness was ripe for exploitation by low-budget movie wizard Roger Corman, who produced and directed A Bucket of Blood. The story is about a loser who covers a dead cat with plaster of Paris and is acclaimed as a talented sculptor. He embraces the hoax and starts hunting victims to cast into human “sculptures”; hence the horror and the bucket of blood.
“Beatnik” conjures up 20-somethings adorned in black turtleneck sweaters (and black leotards for women), berets, goatees and dark glasses; they’re in coffee houses snapping their fingers to applaud poetry and jazz. And they’re conversing in hip cat patter. Watch A Bucket of Blood and you’ll get a dose.
Can you dig it?
[Ubiquitous game show host Burt Convy, as a young actor, played Lou in A Bucket of Blood.]