BUCKET OF BLOOD

title: BUCKET OF BLOOD

year: 1959

cast: Dick Miller, Bert Convy

producer/director: Roger Corman

rating: ****

This is a classic Roger Corman film about a busboy at a coffee shop... name of Walter Paisley... who quotes the pretentious, long-winded "house poet" and aspires to be an artist. He lives in a small apartment and lives a lonely life. This is icon Dick Miller at his best; especially since he's usually a side character or a tough guy as A BUCKET OF BLOOD is black comedy way ahead of its time, and it even says something about wannabe artists who live their lives quoting talented and/or pretentious artists without having a creative outlet of their own. Perhaps the covering of dead bodies in clay represents those who COVER other artists without trying to create for themselves. But it's more than representation of ideas or symbolism; Roger Corman's best directorial effort is liken to a body count horror flick that may not be scary, but it pays off in random kills, each strategic and important for the tight story that never meanders: leading the viewer's suspense into deliciously evil anticipation. Those who lose their lives for Walter Paisley's sculptures more than deserve it. The best scenes are in his own personal payback to those who thought of him as a failure. Corman regular Anthony Carbone is both effective and hilarious as he, halfway through, catches onto Walter's methods, and reacts against and alongside our anti-hero's newfound talents.

EXPLORERS

year: 1986

cast: Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix

rating: *1/2

Joe Dante was a good director before this movie, and River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke were good actors after. There in-between lies a science-fiction fantasy about three dull young boys who build a spaceship out of garbage and with some kind of computer creating a forcefield around it, they fly around. There's plenty of tricks but no magic. Joe Dante seems as if he were trying for another "Gremlins", but perhaps without Steven Speilberg producing, doing a Speilbergian film doesn't quite work. It's at least somewhat entertaining until the bottom falls out and the spaceship (named after the Bruce Springsteen song "Thunder Road") graduates past crashing into drive-in theaters and goes to another planet inhabited by big silly looking monsters. Then all goes to hell; that which wasn't heaven to begin with.