grizzledgeezer Talent and good looks rarely go together. Dick Miller had the bad luck to combine a blue-collar face with a blue-collar voice, and suffered for it throughout his career. Such people are rarely successes in "leading" roles. Charles Bronson comes to mind, but he's barely a good actor. Miller is genuinely talented.His Walter Paisley (at one point the character wears a cravat with a paisley pattern) is played absolutely straight. He never winks at the camera or steps outside the character. He's a pathetic creature we sympathize with, even when doing horrible things. It is a finely nuanced, essentially perfect performance. That is not an exaggeration.Charles B Griffith's excellent script combines pointed satire, solid laughs, and genuine wit. Griffith did a lot of work for Roger Corman, and this is surely his best. The lesson to be learned is that you can't make a good movie from a bad script, but not even Roger Corman can ruin a good story.Griffith would go on to pen "The Little Shop of Horrors", which Dick Miller passed on, because he didn't want to do another film where he played a serial killer. This didn't help his career much, and today he's best-remembered as Mr Futterman in "Gremlins" and its sequel, as well as one of Lawrence Woolsey's cronies in "Matinee!". He is a beloved actor, and there aren't many actors, living or dead, who can claim that distinction.

framptonhollis Comedy and horror are two polar opposite feelings, and yet, in cinema, they often intertwine, especially in the countless, low budget films of Roger Corman."A Bucket of Blood" is one of the most acclaimed Corman movies, which are often looked upon as being pure camp despite the fact that a few of them are of genuine quality, and I can assure you, "A Bucket of Blood" IS of genuine quality! It is not so much a horror film as it is a comedy that just happens to feature a lot of murder...it's hilarious, dark, and satirical. It twists a twisted plot into a ingenious and clever little black comedy filled with fun characters, quotable lines, dark wit, and so on and so on. The plot itself is a combination of tragedy and terror, but is manipulated easily enough to become an awkward and wildly funny farce! If you can appreciate the film's humor, it is more than likely that it will soon grow on you and you'll fall deeply in love with it like I did! It's 65 minutes of amusingly demented entertainment!

Hollywoodshack ..this film. I was often a fan of Dick Miller and his ensemble of characters in American International films, many who also were in Wasp Woman, War of the Satellites, and Little Shop of Horrors. But this was a gross disappointment. Corman tries a tepid effort to build sympathy for Miller as the main character, a waiter in a beatnik coffee shop who feels teased and rejected by the "in crowd" giving him some bizarre motive to plaster over a cat he stabbed by mistake, leaving the knife in! Why wouldn't everyone get suspicious about his sculpture with a knife sticking out of it? He kills a detective (Burt Convy) and plasters him over. Where is the missing persons bureau and a citywide search to find out what happened to him? And using a pizza pan..lethal force for sure. It's no wonder most of Convy's career remained on Match Game and Hollywood Squares quiz shows. What an embarrassment to anyone's resume.

Nick Retzlaff his movie made by Roger Corman in 1959 starts off with a guy doing poetry in an old coffee shop. The main character is a busboy named Walter, played by Dick Miller. Also there's an undercover cop that hangs out out at the coffee shop, as a way to scope out criminals.Walter tries to do sculptures at but doesn't quite know what to do. Until he tries to get a cat out of his wall but ends up killing it. He decides to sculpt over the cat and tries to put it in the coffee shop. The people seem to like the sculpture even though it doesn't seem to stink. Also the cat would be heavy even with clay on it. Everyone at the coffee shop seems to like it but the undercover cop is suspicious about it.This woman at the coffee shop gives Walter a little tube of something and he takes it with him. A guy then follows him to his home and tells him he's an undercover cop. Also that he's under arrest for position of heroine since that's what was in the tube. Walter ends up killing him since he doesn't want to go so he kills him.The owner of the coffee shop finds out Walter's first sculpture was fake when it falls. He tries to call the cops but the buyer gives him a lot of money for it. Walter then shows the owner and this girl he likes his new sculpture. Which is the cop guy just sculpted over and the girl suggests a collection of his sculptures. Walter then is happy when he gets money for his sculptures and that he's an artist, even though he murdered someone.Walter then kills a woman at his home after a fight they had at the coffee shop then sculpts over her as well. All the coffee shop people like him and like more sculptures. So he ends up killing a random guy for another sculpture.Walter then one night asks the girl she likes to marry him but she refuses. He then asks to sculpt her after his collection exhibit show and she find out they're fake and people. After Walter chases the girl the people at the art show find out the sculptures are people as well. The undercover cop and some of the coffee shop people chase Walter and try to find him.At the end he hears the voices of the people he murders and at his home he still hears them. So he ends up hanging himself as his greatest work and to stop. This movie seems pretty good for a Roger Corman movie and it's mostly a black comedy.