Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema Rewind. This is Rob Lamb,
Speaker 1: and I know some of you are wondering, Hey, it's
Speaker 1: a Friday, why are we doing a rewind episode? Or
Speaker 1: you might be wondering, hey, didn't you say you were
Speaker 1: going to do the one hundred and ninety ninth Weird
Speaker 1: House Cinema selection today and it was going to be
Speaker 1: the glorious virtual reality film from nineteen ninety five, Virtuosity. Well,
Speaker 1: we've had some technical issues pop up and we're going
Speaker 1: to have to delay that episode until next week, so
Speaker 1: you have a little more time to watch Virtuosity ahead
Speaker 1: of our episode. In the meantime, we're going to unleash
Speaker 1: an episode from the vault here. This is going to
Speaker 1: be our twenty twenty four episode on a Bucket of
Speaker 1: Blood Seth Nicholas Johnson joined me on this recording to
Speaker 1: discuss this excellent nineteen fifty nine Roger Corman beat Nick
Speaker 1: horror comedy. Let's jump right in.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 1: My co host Joe was out on holiday leave at
Speaker 1: the time. Of this recording, so I turned a former
Speaker 1: Weird House guest host and former producer on the show,
Speaker 1: Seth Nicholas Johnson of the podcast Rusty Needles Record Club, Seth,
Speaker 1: welcome back.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me, happy to be here.
Speaker 1: Before we get into the movie and the movie selection here,
Speaker 1: what have you been up to on Rusty Needles Record Club.
Speaker 3: Well, I believe just yesterday we recorded our Best Albums
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty three list, which is always fun. Not
Speaker 3: only do I enjoy making that list every year, but
Speaker 3: I also enjoy hearing everyone else's lists, like my co
Speaker 3: host Scott's. When he was making his list, I gotta say,
Speaker 3: despite the absolutely absurd amount of music that I consume
Speaker 3: every year, and how all of my spare money goes
Speaker 3: into listening to music and going to concerts and all
Speaker 3: that stuff, I still hadn't heard probably two thirds of
Speaker 3: his top ten list, which is amazing to me because
Speaker 3: we're close friends with very similar taste in music, and
Speaker 3: yet there's just so much wonderful music in the world
Speaker 3: that I love this time of year, the Decembers and Januaries,
Speaker 3: and you get to catch up on everyone's favorites of
Speaker 3: the year. List, you're pretty much guaranteed gold from everyone.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess when you fill your
Speaker 1: life with music, there are so many different corners of
Speaker 1: your life. You have different musical tastes occupying, and yet
Speaker 1: not all of them are gonna come up in conversation,
Speaker 1: even with close collaborators or friends. You know, there's gonna
Speaker 1: be some hidden gems in there as.
Speaker 3: Well, exactly. So, yeah, it's a great time for music,
Speaker 3: and yeah it's a fun show if there are any
Speaker 3: music fans in the audience.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, the movie for this week is a
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine Roger Korman directed and of course produced
Speaker 1: beat Nick horror comedy, know, I guess, a black comedy
Speaker 1: if you will, titled A Bucket of Blood starring Dick Miller.
Speaker 1: This was your pick, Seth, This was not one that
Speaker 1: was really on my radar. How do you zero in
Speaker 1: on this one? What's your history with the film?
Speaker 3: Well, basically, I have a real love for what's known
Speaker 3: as gray market DVDs. They're not quite black market DVDs.
Speaker 3: They are legal, but just barely. You know, those kind
Speaker 3: the kinds of things you find in a store or
Speaker 3: online called like drive in Cult Classics thirty two movie
Speaker 3: collection or the Classic Sci Fi Ultimate Collection Volume two.
Speaker 3: So if it was Ultimate, I'm not sure why there's
Speaker 3: a volume two, but hey, the Tales of Terror two
Speaker 3: hundred Classic horror movies. Like I buy these collections often ultimately,
Speaker 3: just because I'm a big fan of creativity overcraft. And
Speaker 3: when I'm watching let's call it a typical Hollywood film,
Speaker 3: it usually follows the same beats and has the same structure,
Speaker 3: and it's just not very interesting to me because you
Speaker 3: can predict where everything's gonna go, and it's whatever. It's boring.
Speaker 3: So by just taking a step outside of that blueprint
Speaker 3: for filmmaking, you end up in some weird corners. And
Speaker 3: even if it's a bad movie, as long as it's interesting,
Speaker 3: that's kind of enough for me. So by going down
Speaker 3: the B movie routes, that's at least my reasoning for
Speaker 3: why I love B movies and old movies and bad
Speaker 3: movies is that you can't really predict where it's going,
Speaker 3: which makes them far more interesting than the typical Hollywood
Speaker 3: film these days. And uh yeah, yeah, so that's why
Speaker 3: I went down that route. And then in one of
Speaker 3: these collections, I actually dug through my DVDs and I
Speaker 3: found the exact disc where I discovered this. This was
Speaker 3: called Horror Classics and then it has the title here
Speaker 3: four movies over four hours.
Speaker 1: Well, that's reasonably cut down because I was thinking one
Speaker 1: of the things about these, especially DVD releases, and they're
Speaker 1: still putting them mount and some of them are, you know,
Speaker 1: are very nice, and some of them are higher budget affairs.
Speaker 1: But yeah, sometimes it's like four movies, and to your point,
Speaker 1: other times it's like fifty movies. Yes, and you can
Speaker 1: sort of do the algebra in your head. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: the quality of those four films is now spread out
Speaker 1: over like fifty titles. Here're going to be a number
Speaker 1: of neglected films and forgotten films in this lot.
Speaker 3: Well, for example, here's what's on this disc which I
Speaker 3: was looking at the dates on it, and I purchased
Speaker 3: this in two thousand and three from Platinum Disc Corporation
Speaker 3: from Lacrosse, Wisconsin. So that's fun. But here's what was
Speaker 3: on this disc. Horror Hotel, A Bucket of Blood, the
Speaker 3: Devil's Hand, and I Bury the Living. I've actually seen
Speaker 3: all four of those and they're actually not bad. But
Speaker 3: I think that's the point though, is that usually when
Speaker 3: you're watching these, it's a real roll of the dice
Speaker 3: what the quality is going to be, because the reason
Speaker 3: why people put out these gray market DVDs is because
Speaker 3: it costs them very little. Either these are public domain
Speaker 3: films or films that have just like the lowest licensing
Speaker 3: fees ever, and so it's just a cheap way for
Speaker 3: someone to make a quick buck, so they just you know,
Speaker 3: I think shovel wear is a term for it when
Speaker 3: it's applied to video games, but it's just it's nothing.
Speaker 3: It's cheap nothing. So usually it's garbage. And every once
Speaker 3: in a while you find a gem, and this a
Speaker 3: Bucket of Blood is one of those very rare gems
Speaker 3: in these piles of public domain and low licensing fees
Speaker 3: movies on these gray market DVDs. And when I saw
Speaker 3: it the first time, I immediately knew that it was
Speaker 3: just a cut above the rest, and that it was
Speaker 3: a movie that I was going to share with people
Speaker 3: and show to people. And I think, more to the point,
Speaker 3: I am an art school kid, you know, my college
Speaker 3: degrees and the fine arts and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: So when I see things like beat nicks and cafes
Speaker 3: and gallery showings and all those things. It just feels
Speaker 3: very at home to me, and the lampooning of it
Speaker 3: feels very direct and personal in a charming and fun way.
Speaker 3: So I think that's another reason why I latch onto
Speaker 3: it so directly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, there's an authenticity to this film, right,
Speaker 1: it feels like it's commenting on actual people and culture.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the films of this caliber have that feeling of
Speaker 1: like having been written by an alien, acted by aliens,
Speaker 1: Like this is just a rough approximation of what human
Speaker 1: beings are like. But there's real humanity in this even
Speaker 1: though at the same time, of course it is a
Speaker 1: horror film, horror comedy, a satire. It's not attempting to
Speaker 1: adhere very closely to the contours of life, but it's
Speaker 1: commenting on those contours for sure.
Speaker 3: And some of those comments are still pretty valid. So, like,
Speaker 3: this movie was made in the nineteen or sorry, late
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties, I think it's fifty nine, and there's one
Speaker 3: joke in here in particular where I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that still hits home. It was all the beatniks were
Speaker 3: like waking up and they're like flop house and they're
Speaker 3: all sitting around to breakfast, and our protagonist walks in
Speaker 3: and the head beatnik offers him breakfas And I wrote
Speaker 3: this down because I loved it so much. He offers
Speaker 3: him soy and wheat, germ pancakes or go. He pronounces
Speaker 3: it organic, but it's organic organic guava nectar, calcium lactate
Speaker 3: and tomato juice and gorbonzo omelets sprinkled with smoked yeast.
Speaker 3: And I thought to myself, that's one hundred percent a
Speaker 3: meal I run into in my little vegan cafes that
Speaker 3: I go to. Like like, no over exaggeration, no like
Speaker 3: playing it up for giggles. That's a real meal that
Speaker 3: I have eaten in a standard typical twenty twenty three
Speaker 3: or I guess twenty twenty four now vegan cafe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah. I was excited when I realized this
Speaker 1: was going to be a beatnik movie because I was
Speaker 1: recently reflecting to sort of, you know, casually want doing
Speaker 1: something else, like around the house or something that I
Speaker 1: don't think Weird House Cinema had featured a proper beatnik movie,
Speaker 1: and this is a perfect one. Yeah, yeah, it hits
Speaker 1: all the right notes, and there's not a note like.
Speaker 1: It's not just casually beaten it. It's not like, Okay,
Speaker 1: we kill a couple of beat Nicks off in the
Speaker 1: first couple of minutes. It's devoted to commenting on beatnik culture,
Speaker 1: right right for sure. Now, for anyone out there you're
Speaker 1: not familiar with the term beatnik or you're only loosely
Speaker 1: familiar with it. Roughly speaking, these were members of the
Speaker 1: beat generation and more specifically followers of kind of an
Speaker 1: anti materialistic bohemian lifestyle. You know, to varying degrees that
Speaker 1: people are aligned with any given social movement. This would
Speaker 1: have been the late fifties, early sixties, you know. Icons
Speaker 1: like Alan Ginsberg are generally associated with this scene. They
Speaker 1: were pre hippies, though many of them would go on
Speaker 1: to become hippies.
Speaker 3: It's also I love when the mainstream bastardizes subcultures. I
Speaker 3: find it so funny every single time a lot of
Speaker 3: eighties films when they're trying to identify and focus on
Speaker 3: the punk scene, hilarious hippies. Yeah, yeah, Honestly, it's all
Speaker 3: of the subcultures. Whenever the mainstream focuses on a subculture,
Speaker 3: whether it be rave kids in their early two thousand anything, anything,
Speaker 3: It's always ridiculous and always fun. Hackers, the film Hackers was.
Speaker 3: It was a great version of that. They're all good.
Speaker 3: Any any mainstream version of a subculture is lampoon worthy
Speaker 3: in itself, and this is one of them for sure.
Speaker 3: But I think they're they're pretty accurate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you always always paying with a broad brush.
Speaker 1: But given that they get to devote the whole film
Speaker 1: to Beatnicks, you have like these different caricatures of Beatninks.
Speaker 3: Very true.
Speaker 1: Now you mentioned the different subcultures across different decades. You know,
Speaker 1: especially given that this film ultimately has a has a
Speaker 1: simplistic but effective format, you know, you could easily apply
Speaker 1: it to a different subculture like every decade, or even
Speaker 1: every five years. And indeed, there's at least one seemingly
Speaker 1: bad remake of this film from nineteen ninety five that
Speaker 1: updates it for like gen X hipsters instead of Beatnicks.
Speaker 3: I've seen it. I've seen. Yeah. The main reason I
Speaker 3: watched it is, I believe years ago I was on
Speaker 3: like IMDb trivia or something for this movie Bucket of Blood,
Speaker 3: and while I was there, one of the Pieces of
Speaker 3: Trivia was like, Will Ferrell plays a bit part in
Speaker 3: the remake of this film, and so I had to
Speaker 3: hunt it down and see it just to see what
Speaker 3: it was like. Because one of the things this movie,
Speaker 3: A Bucket of Blood, is clearly lacking as a budget,
Speaker 3: Like it's clearly like a bottom of the barrel Roger Korman.
Speaker 3: We have twelve dollars and five days, let's just make
Speaker 3: a movie. And so because of that, you know, it
Speaker 3: suffers from the things that do suffer without a budget.
Speaker 3: But then I watched the remake, and I think if
Speaker 3: I remember correctly, I may not. I think it was
Speaker 3: a Showtime original movie, like Movie of the Week kind
Speaker 3: of thing. So it still had a rock bottom budget,
Speaker 3: and it was not improved with an increased budget, because
Speaker 3: I don't believe they actually increased the budgets. And so
Speaker 3: I think the original is all you need.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, The remake has Anthony Michael Hall, and I
Speaker 1: think David Cross also shows up in it at some point,
Speaker 1: but I have not seen it. I just watched a
Speaker 1: clip of it and that was all I need.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yes, that's correct, that's correct. If you're going to
Speaker 3: watch one, I recommend the original.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's go ahead and listen to a
Speaker 1: little bit of the trailer audio on this one, so
Speaker 1: folks can get a taste of what we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about here.
Speaker 4: The artist, the poet, the figure muddle who loves to
Speaker 4: show it.
Speaker 1: Do you suppose he could be physically attracted to No man,
Speaker 1: he ain't the type.
Speaker 4: You don't get enough vitamin e. All these are beat
Speaker 4: All these you'll meat him a bucket of blood. Let
Speaker 4: us make the see crazy. Don't enjoy yourself where the hilarious,
Speaker 4: enjoy the horrifying in a bucket of blood. Now you're
Speaker 4: gonna shoot me, don't chir Come to the land of
Speaker 4: living dreams, where realists dream of the unreal water. You've
Speaker 4: done something to me, something deep down inside of my praana.
Speaker 4: Oh what I want to be with you, Your creative
Speaker 4: beat nicks at their bodiest, the creative urge at its
Speaker 4: most primitive. IM deeply moved, And I shall compose a poem.
Speaker 4: Love is art, Art is love. It's the weirdest and
Speaker 4: the wildest.
Speaker 3: I don't want to make statues anymore.
Speaker 4: I want to get married to you.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, if you want to go out and
Speaker 1: watch this film before we discuss it anymore here and
Speaker 1: get into some spoilers and so forth. Well, luckily you
Speaker 1: don't have to go and get that bargain bin four
Speaker 1: to fifty forgotten horror films because it's widely available digitally.
Speaker 1: I watched this one on Prime and the film Detective
Speaker 1: Studio put out a very nice blu ray of the
Speaker 1: picture if you want to go physical media on it,
Speaker 1: So you got plenty of options.
Speaker 3: For sure, it's public domain, so you can find it
Speaker 3: on YouTube, you can find it, you know, playing at
Speaker 3: a gas station, pump, anywhere anywhere. Really that there's a screen.
Speaker 1: That would be great. I wish they showed movies like
Speaker 1: this gas station.
Speaker 3: They should. You know, there's a couple of really good
Speaker 3: restaurants where they'll do that just project public domain old films,
Speaker 3: like on the walls while you eat. There was a
Speaker 3: Burger place in Atlanta that did that that I really like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know the place. All right. Let's get into
Speaker 1: the people involved in this film. We mentioned already that
Speaker 1: this is Roger Corman picture directed and produced Corman of course,
Speaker 1: towering name in American bet cinema, and this is a
Speaker 1: film that's often mentioned in highlights of his directorial output.
Speaker 1: Even though I never it wasn't really on my radar.
Speaker 1: I think it was probably because it had kind of
Speaker 1: has this grotesque title bucket of Blood, that puts a
Speaker 1: lot of ideas into your head. And I do have
Speaker 1: to stress there is no bucket of blood that I remember.
Speaker 1: There's maybe a pan of blood, but it's not always
Speaker 1: filled up. No, Yeah, it's not nearly as grizzly as
Speaker 1: it implies. Obviously, you know, they're trying to get the
Speaker 1: teens into the drive in here.
Speaker 3: This is perhaps a movie title first situation, and perhaps
Speaker 3: even a poster first. Did you see the poster for this? Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's wonderful. It's like a page out of Mad magazine.
Speaker 3: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it clearly doesn't have a monster, so that
Speaker 1: might have been a And then I never really was
Speaker 1: drawn into it before, just because it was it was
Speaker 1: clearly not a monster film. It's talking about a bucket
Speaker 1: of blood. And I ended up moving on to the
Speaker 1: next thing. And there are a lot of things to
Speaker 1: move on to in Roger Corman's filmography, but yeah, this
Speaker 1: one stands out because it's actually, you know, a darkly
Speaker 1: satirical horror comedy, and it kicks off a loose trilogy
Speaker 1: of Corman directed in Charles B. Griffith's scripted black comedies. Again,
Speaker 1: this was fifty nine A Bucket of Blood, followed up
Speaker 1: by nineteen sixties The Little Shop of Horror, which I
Speaker 1: think everyone is familiar with to some degree or another,
Speaker 1: and then nineteen sixty one's Creature from the Haunted Sea.
Speaker 3: All classics, all wonderful films.
Speaker 1: Excellent. Yeah, I haven't seen Creature from the Haunted Sea,
Speaker 1: but now now I'm interested to check it out.
Speaker 3: I mean Roger Corman, I mean, I don't think he's underrated,
Speaker 3: but perhaps people think of him mostly as someone who
Speaker 3: had a lot of content, But he also had a
Speaker 3: lot of quality. I have to say, like I think
Speaker 3: think for his limitations in budget and time, he made
Speaker 3: amazing pieces for what resources he had. If he had
Speaker 3: more resources, actually who knows. Maybe he worked well under pressure,
Speaker 3: But for the amount of money that he worked with
Speaker 3: and the amount of time that he spent on them,
Speaker 3: they're actually remarkable films.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean, just just discussing films that have
Speaker 1: been covered on Weird House in the past, that Joe
Speaker 1: and I've talked about like nineteen fifty seven's Not of
Speaker 1: This Earth very cheap, but the fact that the movie
Speaker 1: is so cheap and you can still find things to
Speaker 1: talk about, that there's still things that stand out and
Speaker 1: are memorable and demand bad remakes decades later. It's commendable.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that you want to rewatch them and you
Speaker 3: want to share them with your friends. That's really telling
Speaker 3: when you when you just finished watching one hundred and
Speaker 3: ninety nine other bad horror movies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you know, a film like nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: four's Mask of the Red Death, you get to see
Speaker 1: what Corman was capable of when he did have a
Speaker 1: bigger budget backing him up right and did go for
Speaker 1: like a stylistic picture.
Speaker 3: That's a great example. Yeah.
Speaker 1: This picture though, is again nineteen fifty nine. It's coming
Speaker 1: on the heels. I think five different pictures that he
Speaker 1: directed in the previous year in fifty eight, including Teenage Caveman,
Speaker 1: and eight pictures from fifty seven, including Not of This
Speaker 1: Earth and Attack of the Crab Monsters. So he's kind
Speaker 1: of entering a new dimension here. You know, he directed
Speaker 1: a lot of different things. We think of him, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of monster films, but he did westerns, he
Speaker 1: did crime, he did dramas, and of course he did
Speaker 1: black comedies and satires as we see in this picture.
Speaker 1: Now the screenwriter again as Charles B. Griffith, who of
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty through two thousand and seven American screenwriter, best
Speaker 1: known for his work with Corman, which also included some acting.
Speaker 1: And you know, as is often the case in the
Speaker 1: Corman camp, you know, it's like you're just called on
Speaker 1: to do different things. He worked on such films as
Speaker 1: Not of This Earth from fifty six Attack of the
Speaker 1: Crab Monsters fifty seven The Little Shop of Hers. He
Speaker 1: also directed six films, including fifty nine Forbidden Island, seventy
Speaker 1: nine's Up from the Depths in nineteen eighty nine's Wizards
Speaker 1: of the Lost Kingdom too.
Speaker 3: I actually like that one. That one's an MST three
Speaker 3: K one, and I like that one quite a bit.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I haven't.
Speaker 5: I haven't watched that MST three K episode yet, but
Speaker 5: yeah's I want to say, that's perhaps the second Netflix
Speaker 5: season perhaps, And yeah, that was actually a good one.
Speaker 3: I like that one.
Speaker 1: This has some sort of crazy lion creature or something
Speaker 1: in the sky.
Speaker 3: I want to say that sounds about right. That sounds
Speaker 3: about right. Mostly it was that kind of like comedic
Speaker 3: relief and small child traveling across medieval Europe kind of situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, getting into the cast here, this
Speaker 1: film is all about Walter Paisley, and we're gonna have
Speaker 1: a lot to say about the character of Walter Paisley
Speaker 1: as we proceed here. But Walter Paisle was played by
Speaker 1: the great Dick Miller, who lived nineteen twenty eight through
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. We've talked about him before on Weird House
Speaker 1: cinema legendary character actor from the Bronx who made his
Speaker 1: way to California in the mid fifties. He's trying to
Speaker 1: make it, go at it as a writer, but then
Speaker 1: he meets Roger Corman. Roger Corman didn't need writers, he
Speaker 1: needed actors, so he started using him on pictures as
Speaker 1: early as nineteen fifty five as apache Woman, in which
Speaker 1: I believe he plays two different Dick parts. So it's like,
Speaker 1: get in there, Dick, we need you in the background
Speaker 1: here and okay, now wipe the makeup off. We need
Speaker 1: you in this scene as well. And from that point
Speaker 1: on he ends up showing up in other Corman pictures
Speaker 1: such as Not of This Earth and he Not of
Speaker 1: This Earth is a great example where he comes in.
Speaker 1: He brings a lot of energy and creativity to the role.
Speaker 1: I think he had libs some stuff. He takes something
Speaker 1: that could just be a thankless, little extra role, this
Speaker 1: guy's it's going to be killed by the alien menace
Speaker 1: and makes it something memorable. And so it's no surprise
Speaker 1: that Corman finally casts him in the lead. He cast
Speaker 1: him in the lead in a crime drama titled Rock
Speaker 1: all Night, and this kicks off a whole string of
Speaker 1: roles in Corman pictures. It becomes an icon of genre cinema,
Speaker 1: popping up later on in memorable roles in such pictures
Speaker 1: as Grimlins, The Tales from the Crypt, Demon Knight, the Terminator.
Speaker 1: Of course, he has that great small role as the
Speaker 1: guy that's running the gun shop that the Terminator goes into.
Speaker 1: So wherever he pops up, he's always a treat. And
Speaker 1: while many film goers I think tend to associate him
Speaker 1: with kind of snappy working man roles, you know, like
Speaker 1: a terminator, just what you see here, Pal Bucket of
Speaker 1: Blood casts him as a likable but ultimately dim witted,
Speaker 1: outcast who desperately wants to belong. So if you're not
Speaker 1: used to seeing him outside of those sort of working
Speaker 1: man roles, you might be a little surprised at the
Speaker 1: ultimately the depth that they get into here with this character.
Speaker 1: It's also the first of several characters named Walter Paisley
Speaker 1: that he ends up playing, right.
Speaker 3: I was going through his IMDb recently because this is
Speaker 3: something that I had heard but never really paid much
Speaker 3: attention to, And yeah, I found about a dozen other
Speaker 3: times he played someone named either Walter Paisley, Walter Walt
Speaker 3: or something Paisley.
Speaker 1: Like.
Speaker 3: I saw these two cop films he was in where
Speaker 3: he played like Sergeant Paisley back to back, and yeah,
Speaker 3: it seems like that was that. I have to assume
Speaker 3: that it's everyone paying homage back to this film, but
Speaker 3: I guess it could also be that there was some
Speaker 3: sort of inside joke where that's something happened even pre
Speaker 3: this film with the name Walter Paisley, and even this
Speaker 3: film is homage to some other inside joke about the
Speaker 3: name Walter Paisley. But at least in cinema on screen,
Speaker 3: this is the birth of the name Walter Paisley that
Speaker 3: he then played that. I guess just the name because
Speaker 3: it can't be the same role because again and again
Speaker 3: and again, all the different Waltz and Walter's and Walter
Speaker 3: Paisley's he plays, like, for example, the garbage man in
Speaker 3: the Burbs. I believe that's a Walter Paisley. I may
Speaker 3: be getting this one wrong, but so he kept working
Speaker 3: with Joe Dante over and over. Joe Dante loved to
Speaker 3: put him in any movie he ever did. I think
Speaker 3: the show Let's see It was called Erie Indiana, and
Speaker 3: I believe his role was in that episode. He would
Speaker 3: sneak around and whenever someone loses something, like they lose
Speaker 3: a sock in the dryer, they lose the capital, their pen, whatever,
Speaker 3: it's because Walter Paisley is sneaking up and stealing it.
Speaker 3: Because it's a big part about like the American economy
Speaker 3: where they need to ensure that people are still buying
Speaker 3: new things. So Walter Paisley is sneaking around and stealing
Speaker 3: people's belongings when they think that they lose them. Really remarkable. Oh,
Speaker 3: I bring that up because Joe Dante produced that series.
Speaker 3: That's the connection there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, I remember Erie Indiana. I remember liking it,
Speaker 1: but I haven't really revisited it since it originally aired.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like X Files for kids, with definitely
Speaker 3: some like Twilight Zone for kids mixed in there. It
Speaker 3: was a fun series.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, all right, Well, yeah, Dick Miller the star
Speaker 1: of this picture, and I think it's a pretty solid performance.
Speaker 1: He's awkward and likable in the early goings, not just
Speaker 1: socially awkward, but like physically bumbling in a very effective manner.
Speaker 1: Like there's an early scene where he is frustrated he
Speaker 1: goes to kick like a milk carton on the street
Speaker 1: and falls. It's great.
Speaker 3: No, he's very believable, and especially when you compare him
Speaker 3: to like you said, his more like workman type characters
Speaker 3: later where he's kind of like gruff and you know
Speaker 3: what was he in chopping mall and I remember now correctly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a janitor who gets murdered by the robots.
Speaker 3: Exactly like that, that kind of role. I think most
Speaker 3: people associate him with just kind of like that, like
Speaker 3: grumpy old man and part of the body counts basically,
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, this is a true character. It's it's
Speaker 3: quite good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And eventually this is a character that darkens somewhat.
Speaker 1: It is titled a Bucket of Blood, and he's able
Speaker 1: to push that portrayal to the dark side a bit
Speaker 1: as well, you know, not to the degree that somebody
Speaker 1: who specializes in that sort of thing. But then that
Speaker 1: sort of actor wouldn't be necessarily be able to manage
Speaker 1: the lovable and likable aspects of the character as well.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know it would it would take a
Speaker 1: special actor to really nail both of those, and I
Speaker 1: think Dick Miller does a pretty darn good job here
Speaker 1: for sure, all right. Other members of the cast, Carla
Speaker 1: is the only beat Nick in the film that is
Speaker 1: nice to him early on, and as such, this is
Speaker 1: the woman of his dreams. She's played by Barbara Morris,
Speaker 1: who lived nineteen thirty two. From nineteen seventy five, she
Speaker 1: appeared in several Corman films, beginning in fifty seven with
Speaker 1: a trio that included Rock All Night. She's also in
Speaker 1: fifty eight Teenage Caveman. She's in fifty nine's The Wasp Woman,
Speaker 1: and later on she appeared in Corman's nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 1: LSD movie The Trip, which is pretty amusing. That's the
Speaker 1: Dennis Hopper and his crew. Bruce dern is in it
Speaker 1: as a guy that's here to guide you on your trip.
Speaker 1: And then she pops up in nineteen seventies The Dune,
Speaker 1: which horror one of her final roles. That's a film
Speaker 1: that's been covered on Weird House as well. Not much
Speaker 1: to say here, she's a likable, effective performance. Absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 1: then we have we should mention that the central setting
Speaker 1: for the whole picture is the beat Nick bar. I
Speaker 1: guess it's more of a coffee shop type of situation,
Speaker 1: coffee house beat Nick coffee house called the Yellow Door.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like that that typical coffee house
Speaker 3: that you picture in your mind. Where has it a
Speaker 3: little stage for like an open mic night type situation.
Speaker 3: It's got you know, locals art hanging around the walls.
Speaker 3: It's it's that general purpose local art scene.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's interesting that it's it's presented.
Speaker 1: It's it's presented well, you believe that this is a
Speaker 1: real place, but it's presented seemingly simultaneously, like from an
Speaker 1: inward view as well as an outside view, because it
Speaker 1: feels authentic. But then also there's this whole element of
Speaker 1: like not one but two undercover cops have been assigned
Speaker 1: to this place to track of the Beatnick heroin trade.
Speaker 3: And going like twenty four hours, we see them like
Speaker 3: trade off, you know, Yeah, my shift's done, your turn?
Speaker 1: Yeah, there was there really that much heroin action going
Speaker 1: on at your average like you know, small coffee house
Speaker 1: in the late fifties. I don't know, but anyway, the
Speaker 1: guy that runs the place is this character. Leonard decentis
Speaker 1: played by Anthony Carbutten, who lived nineteen twenty five through
Speaker 1: twenty twenty the immoral owner operator of the Beatnick coffee
Speaker 1: house here. He appeared in various TV and film projects,
Speaker 1: including several Corman pictures. He pops up in sixty one's
Speaker 1: The Pit and the Pendulum, which of course stars Vincent Price.
Speaker 3: Those were such great films. I love that run of
Speaker 3: all the Poe films. Oh that's so funny.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I really like him in this picture, I think,
Speaker 1: you know. So he's initially just another Beatnick jerk who
Speaker 1: doesn't give Walter a chance. He's also Walter's boss, and
Speaker 1: he's of course a mean boss who tells Walter he
Speaker 1: has to do his job and so forth, quit staring
Speaker 1: into the stars, quit talking to the customers. But he
Speaker 1: ultimately becomes like the one person who knows the terrible
Speaker 1: truth about what's going on, and he has to wrestle
Speaker 1: with that, and we'll get into how he wrestles with
Speaker 1: it and what sort of choices he makes based on
Speaker 1: that knowledge.
Speaker 3: It's fun as an audience that we can see his
Speaker 3: motivation very clearly, but no one else can. Fun.
Speaker 1: All right, We also have Ed Nelson popping up in
Speaker 1: this one. Ed Nelson lived nineteen twenty eight through twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: He was the star of fifty eights The Brain Eaters,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about on We Your House before. He
Speaker 1: was a frequent Corman actor. In this he plays one
Speaker 1: of those two undercover cops, Art Lacroix. And I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what flavor Lacroix he would be, because he'd be
Speaker 1: one of the less drinkable flavors. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: because he has a very rough exterior. He's at first
Speaker 1: you think he's like the sleazier of the beat Nicks,
Speaker 1: and then you realize, oh, he's an undercover cop.
Speaker 3: And he is dressed like an undercover cop, like a
Speaker 3: big goofy hat a fur jackets like he's He's definitely like, hello,
Speaker 3: fellow kids, I'm.
Speaker 1: Here, all right. So we have a lot of beat
Speaker 1: Nicks hanging out in there, and we do have kind
Speaker 1: of like a lead beat Nick, your your head beat Nick.
Speaker 1: This is the poet Maxwell, played by Julian Burton of
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirty two through two thousand and six, mostly
Speaker 1: a TV actor, perhaps best known for this film. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's the lead pompous beat Nick poet and ultimately the
Speaker 1: taste maker at the Yellow Door. If he says something
Speaker 1: is good, it is good and everyone falls in line.
Speaker 1: I thought this character was a constant delight. He does
Speaker 1: a lot of poetry performances, either officially or sort of
Speaker 1: unofficially off mic because it's also just how he speaks
Speaker 1: to everyone, and it ultimately plays an essential role in
Speaker 1: both the plot and also just sort of the texture
Speaker 1: of the film.
Speaker 3: It's it's note perfect, pitch perfect for someone who is
Speaker 3: both very pompous and yet like not phony, like he
Speaker 3: does kind of back up what he's say. He's just
Speaker 3: like a typical blow hard artist that really really buys
Speaker 3: into their own their own scene and their own message
Speaker 3: and their own intentions, and it's it's perfect, it's perfect.
Speaker 3: I've met dozens of men just like Maxwell for sure.
Speaker 1: And of course there's a hypocrisy to him as well, as.
Speaker 3: We'll get out, of course, because that is a part
Speaker 3: of art, absolutely.
Speaker 1: All right. Moving on to the art direction on this film,
Speaker 1: it's worth pointing out because it's Daniel Holler born nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine. He's come up on the show before because
Speaker 1: he went on to direct nineteen seventies The Dunwich Horror
Speaker 1: and he also did production design on Mask of the
Speaker 1: Red Death, so he worked with Corman a lot and
Speaker 1: went on to went on to direct a number of
Speaker 1: pictures as well.
Speaker 3: I don't want to give away probably what he spent
Speaker 3: most of his time and money on, but yeah, you
Speaker 3: can tell well, I bet most of his time went
Speaker 3: into but we'll talk about that later.
Speaker 1: Because he couldn't take the same shortcuts that Walter did. Right,
Speaker 1: Very true, very true, all right. Music wise, the score
Speaker 1: is attributed to Fred Katz, who of nineteen nineteen through
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, and fittingly, there's a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of sacks, a lot of delirious beatnicked sacks that you've
Speaker 1: heard and if you watch the films of this caliber,
Speaker 1: you've heard it before. You know, the Sacks is drizzling.
Speaker 1: There's like implied or overt drug use. It is supposed
Speaker 1: to be the soundtrack of getting high in the late fifties.
Speaker 3: And we have matching Stoner characters. We just really convey
Speaker 3: that really lets you know what's happening behind the scenes
Speaker 3: right here. But the Hayes coat is stopping them from
Speaker 3: overtly telling you.
Speaker 1: I was, yeah, you're referring to there's a there's a duo,
Speaker 1: like the comedic duo of Stoner's. And I was constantly
Speaker 1: floored by the humor because I it was not connecting
Speaker 1: with me, And I wasn't sure how much of it is,
Speaker 1: like the cultural distance, how much of it is like
Speaker 1: the fact that they had to be a little careful
Speaker 1: in how they they treated this humor, because you know,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to be high all the time and they're
Speaker 1: sort of drifting in and out of the room, blasted
Speaker 1: out of their skulls. But I found very little that
Speaker 1: they did was actually like overtly funny. I felt like
Speaker 1: I was missing the joke.
Speaker 3: I mean, they were definitely the Beavis and Butt Head
Speaker 3: of the fifties or perhaps the Cheech and Chong of
Speaker 3: the nineteen fifties, and yeah, all of their slang and
Speaker 3: goofiness never really did much for me. But I did
Speaker 3: notice one point that I was like, oh, that's clearly
Speaker 3: a joke that they're making, which was like someone said
Speaker 3: something and then one of the stoner beat nick says, oh,
Speaker 3: what did he say so? And the other one goes,
Speaker 3: didn't you hear him? He's like, nah, I'm too far out.
Speaker 1: Ah. Oh yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3: That's good of course.
Speaker 1: Hours now, one final note on the saxophone music, though
Speaker 1: the credited SAXOPHONEI ist here and we see him on
Speaker 1: screen is Grammy nominated Paul Horn, who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 1: through twenty fourteen. Were you familiar with Paul Horn.
Speaker 3: Only by name? I can't say I'm too familiar with
Speaker 3: specific saxophone jazz.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wasn't either, But this guy apparently was a
Speaker 1: pretty big deal. He went on to become a pretty
Speaker 1: big deal. He got into the early New Age music scene,
Speaker 1: particularly with a nineteen sixty nine album called Inside. Sometimes.
Speaker 1: I think it's on like Spotify as Inside the taj
Speaker 1: Mahll because it was apparently recorded inside the taj Mahll
Speaker 1: and I was listening to part of it before we
Speaker 1: came in to record this, and it's pretty good stuff.
Speaker 1: It's like it's got that thing soothing, you know, very
Speaker 1: obviously inspired by traditional Indian music and utilizing traditional Indian instruments.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's quite good. And apparently it was a
Speaker 1: big hit in like the new age scene, and he
Speaker 1: went on to doing albums for what is it Wyndham Hill,
Speaker 1: you know, the big new age music label of the day.
Speaker 3: I mean it matches this movie perfectly. It's a lone
Speaker 3: saxophone wailing into the night is the sound of like
Speaker 3: open mic nights at at a little coffee shop. So yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it's perfect for this beatnik styled film.
Speaker 1: Well, let's let's get into the plot a little bit. Now,
Speaker 1: this is not one that we're going to necessarily do
Speaker 1: like a blow by blow or beat by beat if
Speaker 1: you will, if you want to get cheeky, you account
Speaker 1: of what happens, and then to a certain extent, we
Speaker 1: don't have to go beat by beat because the formula
Speaker 1: you can pretty much guess at everything once we lay
Speaker 1: out the initial steps.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's basically five chunks of escalation, escalates one
Speaker 3: after the other after the other, both in severity and
Speaker 3: I suppose in motivation, but I suppose we should tell
Speaker 3: the people what we're talking about before we start getting into
Speaker 3: those five steps.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, it's the late fifties. You've got this
Speaker 1: beatnik hang, You've got this this coffee house. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of poetry going on, visual arts, obviously smoking, and
Speaker 1: also obviously some drug use going on. They're very clear
Speaker 1: about that. The police are interested in this in this
Speaker 1: place for that very reason. And you see, you know,
Speaker 1: the typical interactions between you know, we have the you know,
Speaker 1: the tastemaker Maxwell, and we have his hangers on. We
Speaker 1: have the stoner duo, who are not artists and barely
Speaker 1: seem to know really what's going on in their immediate vicinity,
Speaker 1: but you know, they're they're there, they're there to hang out,
Speaker 1: they're part of the scene. And in the midst of
Speaker 1: all of this we have we have Walter Uh And
Speaker 1: Walter just works at the coffee shop. He's going around
Speaker 1: like busting the tables and so forth, bringing coffee out
Speaker 1: to folks, but he's constantly distracted because he is ultimately
Speaker 1: even though he works here, he is an outsider to
Speaker 1: the actual scene. Uh. He is a loner. He desperately
Speaker 1: wants to belong somewhere, and this is the primary culture
Speaker 1: that he is apparently exposed to. So he wants to
Speaker 1: be a part of what he sees here, and he
Speaker 1: sees that the main thing he needs to do is
Speaker 1: he needs to become an artist.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think most people become artists in real
Speaker 3: life because they have affinity for it or perhaps some
Speaker 3: sort of innate talent. Walter, as we see, doesn't really
Speaker 3: have either of those things. It's like you said, it's
Speaker 3: just logically he wants to be a part of this
Speaker 3: social group, and the way to do that is to
Speaker 3: be a popular artist amongst this social group.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Unfortunately they're not they're not looking to let anybody in.
Speaker 1: Certainly they're not looking to let him in. They're very
Speaker 1: that everyone, with the exception of Clara, are pretty pretty
Speaker 1: clear on this right that that he does not belong.
Speaker 1: He's only here to pick up the coffee mugs and
Speaker 1: so forth. So that's part of it. But he doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to be drawn to the creative side of art
Speaker 1: so much. He's drawn to the prospect of social belonging
Speaker 1: and ultimately fame. But he doesn't put the time in,
Speaker 1: and perhaps part of that is he doesn't know how
Speaker 1: to put the time in. You know, he's he's I
Speaker 1: guess exposed to this like very poetic vision of what
Speaker 1: creativity is that Maxwell is spouting the idea that, like,
Speaker 1: you know, creativity is just something that like the artist
Speaker 1: breathes in and out, and it's not implied that it's
Speaker 1: something that imployed, that takes work and dedication, that you
Speaker 1: may fail at a lot before you get somewhere. And
Speaker 1: so he also doesn't know how to fail. He doesn't
Speaker 1: know how to set goes. He doesn't have any of
Speaker 1: these tools, and he's also probably you know, supposed to
Speaker 1: be picking up a lot of additional myths about creativity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll see this a little bit later when we
Speaker 3: watch him attempting to make art on his own early on,
Speaker 3: where he's trying to sculpt a bust of Karla, the
Speaker 3: woman who's nice to him, and while he's doing it,
Speaker 3: you can just see his anger and like he's trying
Speaker 3: to like punch at it and jab at it. He's
Speaker 3: like pianos, pian knows and he doesn't know, he doesn't
Speaker 3: know how to actually do these things. He isn't going
Speaker 3: through the steps. He just wants instantaneously, like he said,
Speaker 3: to like breathe out the art and it exists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's hitting that. I've heard it called the creative
Speaker 1: cliff and and I. And it's interesting because I think
Speaker 1: you know everyone out there, you know, myself included, I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've had this experience. We've all had those b
Speaker 1: and O's moments of the things we're working on where
Speaker 1: you just you you can't do make the thing happen,
Speaker 1: and and it's frustrating, and ultimately you know you have
Speaker 1: to you have to stop, you have to come back.
Speaker 1: But but again, he hasn't been trained any of that.
Speaker 1: He hasn't been told any of that. He hasn't been
Speaker 1: picking up on a culture that that that that that
Speaker 1: that says that that is a part of the the
Speaker 1: of being a creative person and engaging in creative endeavors.
Speaker 1: So he just gets super frustrated, uh and and doesn't
Speaker 1: know how to move forward.
Speaker 3: Poor guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we have to stress that he is at
Speaker 1: least initially a very likable guy. He's you know, he's
Speaker 1: he's supposed to be a bit dim witted. He's supposed
Speaker 1: to still, you know, be a nice guy. He wants
Speaker 1: to make friends. Nobody else is letting him in or
Speaker 1: giving him a chance except maybe Carla, and uh yeah.
Speaker 1: At the same time, all he's exposed to is this
Speaker 1: culture of there is only art. You know. Maxwell's constantly
Speaker 1: talking about this in his poetry, like nothing else has
Speaker 1: value except art. Everything else serves art. And these are
Speaker 1: the ideas that take on literal weight and end up
Speaker 1: festering in his increasingly troubled mind.
Speaker 3: If he had just grown up in a different neighborhood,
Speaker 3: maybe this entire movie would be aimed to him wanting
Speaker 3: to become a baseball player or wanting to become a chef.
Speaker 3: It was just, you know, this happened to be the
Speaker 3: scene that he was in, and so this is what
Speaker 3: he needed to do.
Speaker 1: Oh and the chef is a great idea, because there's
Speaker 1: your instant template for a cannibal movie. Yes, yeah, different
Speaker 1: Walter Paisley wants to be a fine chef, doesn't have
Speaker 1: the skills and ends up committing murder and cannibalism.
Speaker 3: I can, and I bet I have seen that film.
Speaker 1: So yeah, let's get to the point, because he's trying
Speaker 1: to create. He wants to create, and he's failing. He
Speaker 1: can't make a nose does not manifest out of the clay. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the landlady, the nice but also nosy land lady, who
Speaker 1: gets checking in on him, has a cat, a beloved
Speaker 1: cat that has somehow climbed into the wall, and he's
Speaker 1: got several things going and frustrated with the art, he's
Speaker 1: trying to cook some sort of dinner, and then it's
Speaker 1: clear that the cat is stuck in the wall, so
Speaker 1: he does what a rational person does. He decides to
Speaker 1: stab the wall to free the cat, and of course
Speaker 1: murders the cat in the process.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's important to keep this in mind. The first
Speaker 3: death was not human, and the first death was an accident.
Speaker 3: I think it's also very important that something you'll read
Speaker 3: a lot in oh, how to write a screenplay, movies
Speaker 3: or books and things like that, where it'll be like,
Speaker 3: the save the cat moment is something that gets brought
Speaker 3: up often. You can look at the movie Alien for example,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera, And yeah, saving the cat is
Speaker 3: a big thing for a protagonist to do, to show
Speaker 3: that they are likable, and that they are caring and
Speaker 3: empathetic towards other creatures, et cetera, et cetera. This is
Speaker 3: the opposite. We start our film with killing a cat accidentally.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's trying to save it. He's trying to do right.
Speaker 1: But if the hideous fumble, the cat doesn't suffer mine
Speaker 1: just not too grotesque or anything. But he's left with
Speaker 1: this dead cat, and something clicks in his head, right,
Speaker 1: he realizes this is the opportunity. You know, He's got
Speaker 1: Maxwell's poetic drivels running around his head and he realizes, Okay,
Speaker 1: there is something I can do here, and then you
Speaker 1: can probably guess what it.
Speaker 3: Is, yeah, if you haven't caught on. Basically, he traces
Speaker 3: the cat by covering the dead cat with clay, turning
Speaker 3: it into a sculpture, which suddenly makes him hyper realistic
Speaker 3: in his sculptures. That's something, I mean, how do you
Speaker 3: get that kind of anatomy? You know, it's difficult to
Speaker 3: really replicate the exact force and ratios of body parts
Speaker 3: of a living creature, but he's got it overnight.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, So he brings this this hideous sculpture in
Speaker 1: which is just you know, supposed to be a dead
Speaker 1: cat covered in clay, and then there's a knife sticking.
Speaker 5: Out of it.
Speaker 3: I love that he didn't remove the knife.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he just left the knife in there. And you
Speaker 1: know it first, you know, he brings us in, and
Speaker 1: you know, Carla takes a look at it, and and
Speaker 1: also decantist takes a look at it, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's grim. And Desanta's is pretty quick to
Speaker 1: want to just dismiss it. But Carla's nice and she's like,
Speaker 1: I think you might have something here. And eventually Desanta's
Speaker 1: is like, Okay, we'll put it in the corner. We'll
Speaker 1: see if anybody buys it. It can go in the
Speaker 1: corner of the coffee house and we'll just see what happens.
Speaker 1: He doesn't seem to expect much, but of course, you
Speaker 1: know what's going to happen. It catches on. People are
Speaker 1: noticing this cool hyper realistic sculpture of a dead cat.
Speaker 3: It's very telling and very accurate of the art scene.
Speaker 1: Well, that's you want to walk us through the escalation
Speaker 1: of these of these crimes each won a different artistic
Speaker 1: creation by our protagonist Walter Paisley.
Speaker 3: Yeah, almost an anti hero he's the subject for sure,
Speaker 3: So we'll tell you now. Basically there's a rapid escalation
Speaker 3: and his motivation changes from death to death to death
Speaker 3: to death to death to moving on. So yeah, first
Speaker 3: one is a cat and it's an accident, so perhaps
Speaker 3: out of just desperation, he makes this statue and it's beloved.
Speaker 3: Oh no, positive reinforcement. That's the worst thing anyone could
Speaker 3: have done to Walter Paisley after accidentally killing something. So
Speaker 3: he's very excited. He's he's he's uncloud nine. All the
Speaker 3: other Beatniks are really proud of him for making a
Speaker 3: this beautiful piece of art that Maxwell has said is good,
Speaker 3: you know, So now everyone else is to say it's
Speaker 3: good too.
Speaker 1: I should add. They like it so much that there's
Speaker 1: this one lady who comes up to him at the
Speaker 1: coffee house and she just can't put it into words
Speaker 1: how beautiful the work is. So she gives him a
Speaker 1: whole lot of heroin.
Speaker 3: Yes, she gives him a vial of heroin, and he
Speaker 3: doesn't even know what it is. She just wanted to
Speaker 3: be a part of this creation, and she thought that
Speaker 3: the way she could do it. First, she tries to
Speaker 3: go home with him, but he is very confused and
Speaker 3: doesn't really understand what's happening. And then she goes, well,
Speaker 3: I have to contribute. I have to be a part
Speaker 3: of this, So then she gives him Heroin. Now, as
Speaker 3: we've mentioned, there are two undercover cops who are on
Speaker 3: constant rotation at this one coffee house. One of them
Speaker 3: sees this handoff and follows Walter home. He interrupts Walter
Speaker 3: in his house and goes, hello, Walter, and he's like, oh,
Speaker 3: I know you. You come down to the store. How
Speaker 3: are you come on in? Come on in, you know,
Speaker 3: let's be friends or ray someone came to see me
Speaker 3: at my house. And he's like, I'm an undercover cop.
Speaker 3: I saw that you were handed Heroin. I'm gonna have
Speaker 3: to take you in. He's like Heroin. He's like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that the little jar there's gonna be. He's like, you
Speaker 3: know horse and he's like, oh, it wasn't that nicerver
Speaker 3: to give me that.
Speaker 1: Nice horse, that nice expensive horse.
Speaker 3: Yes, And so he doesn't get it. He definitely doesn't
Speaker 3: get it. Now, the undercover cop is frustrated, so he
Speaker 3: tries to convince him and try to get what he
Speaker 3: wants from him. So he pulls out his gun and
Speaker 3: he's like, look, Walterrott, don't make me use this. I'm
Speaker 3: gonna have to. He's like, oh, no, you're gonna shoot me.
Speaker 3: He's like, no, I'm not gonna shoot you. I'm just
Speaker 3: saying i'm a cop. I'm arresting you. Let's go. And
Speaker 3: he's like, no, I don't want you to shoot me.
Speaker 3: And so he was cooking at the time, and he
Speaker 3: was holding like almost like a crape pan, let's say.
Speaker 3: And so if you haven't seen a crape pan, it's
Speaker 3: like a frying pan, except the edges are very, very low,
Speaker 3: very a very shallow frying pan. And so Walter seemingly,
Speaker 3: at least in his own mind for sure, in self defense,
Speaker 3: swings this pan at the cop and we don't see
Speaker 3: it on but later we will see just cleaves his
Speaker 3: head right down the middle with this with this very
Speaker 3: slim pan. So, first death was an animal and it
Speaker 3: was an accident. Second death undercover cop quote unquote self defense.
Speaker 3: Let's let's see where this keeps going. So obviously there's
Speaker 3: the pattern here. So he covers this undercover cop in clay,
Speaker 3: and I suppose we'll kind of let this part happen.
Speaker 3: So the first person to realize what Walter is doing
Speaker 3: is Leonard, the guy that owns the the the art house,
Speaker 3: the coffee shop at the yellow door. And he sees
Speaker 3: it because I believe the cat statue tips over and
Speaker 3: just a little piece of fur is poking out, and
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, you hack, fraud, you weirdo. What do
Speaker 3: you do in trying to cover a dead cat and
Speaker 3: clay and put it in my coffee house? This is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: So he's about to like go tell it to Walter
Speaker 3: and get mad at him when someone comes in, let's
Speaker 3: call it a square patron comes in and it's like,
Speaker 3: I need that cat sculpture. I'll pay you ten times
Speaker 3: what you ask for. It's getting I must have it.
Speaker 3: I must have it. And at first he's like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna sell you a dead cat covered in clay.
Speaker 3: He's I'll double it, and he's like, oh no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I can't do that. I'll triple it. And you see it.
Speaker 3: You see it Leonard's eye that he's like, oh, this
Speaker 3: is money, this is absolutely money. Fine, I won't give
Speaker 3: it to you today, but yes, we'll do it. Because
Speaker 3: I'm sure, he goes through his mind. He's like, all right,
Speaker 3: it's just a dead cat. It's fine, it's fine. Then
Speaker 3: Walter brings in his next piece, which he has named
Speaker 3: Murdered Man, and it's the undercover cop covered in clay,
Speaker 3: and Leonard is the only one who puts two and
Speaker 3: two together and understands what's happening, what has escalated. Everyone
Speaker 3: else thinks it's a wonderful sculpture. How did you capture
Speaker 3: that look of agony on his face?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: Your realism? Oh this is so wonderful. I remember there's
Speaker 3: one point where someone's like, oh, how did you do
Speaker 3: this so quickly? He's like, oh, you know, I just
Speaker 3: put some clay on and fixed it up. No, no
Speaker 3: big deal. He's like, must have taken you forever. It's like, no,
Speaker 3: it doesn't take me too long. Like, okay, right, because
Speaker 3: you're just putting a facade on this, you're not actually
Speaker 3: sculpting anything. So everyone loves it except Leonard. Leonard feels ill.
Speaker 3: Leonard does not want to be a part of this,
Speaker 3: and he doesn't know what to do because on the
Speaker 3: one hand, money and on the other hand, is he
Speaker 3: like an accessory at this point? And so he's trying
Speaker 3: to de escalate this whole situation. He's like, you know what, Walter,
Speaker 3: why don't you maybe try some free form you know,
Speaker 3: forget this human figure thing. No, no, nobody, nobody can
Speaker 3: do that anymore. Just just just free form abstract things.
Speaker 3: No more humans, no more death and destruction. Okay, And
Speaker 3: everyone else is like, what he's so good at this,
Speaker 3: clearly let him lean into this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like Maxwell comes to his defense. It's like, don't
Speaker 1: tell him how to do his art.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's wonderful, and uh so there we are now
Speaker 3: now now because of this new statue and and the
Speaker 3: first cat statue, the whole place is a buzz and
Speaker 3: Leonard has even in an attempt to just kind of
Speaker 3: I guess h a to keep Walter away from him
Speaker 3: a little bit. He has I guess fired is the
Speaker 3: right wrong way to put it, but he has given
Speaker 3: him an advance for his sculptures and said just just
Speaker 3: go just leave, don't don't don't make any more statues
Speaker 3: for now, Okay, just just relax.
Speaker 1: Yeah, going on's a little sabbatical here, and he's clear
Speaker 1: he's not. He's like, yeah, don't don't make any more
Speaker 1: art just yet, because again money, but also yeah, he
Speaker 1: knows that what then what another piece would mean? And
Speaker 1: he's probably, you know, juggling around this idea is like,
Speaker 1: am I an accessory to murder at this point? And
Speaker 1: then also you can imagine he's telling himself but hey,
Speaker 1: nobody else has to know that. I know, I can
Speaker 1: just be as surprised as everyone else when this eventually
Speaker 1: blows up. But I can make a little bit of
Speaker 1: money in the meantime.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean, you know, the Yellow Door is not
Speaker 3: a huge money making endeavor like the Beats and but
Speaker 3: Head characters. I think they often say they have no
Speaker 3: money and they're just hanging around. Yeah, I think there's
Speaker 3: there's a lot of just people lurking there that aren't
Speaker 3: actually giving Leonard any money. So moving on, the next
Speaker 3: time we see Walter Paisley, suddenly he's got a little
Speaker 3: money in his pocket. He has two successful sculptures. He
Speaker 3: comes into the Yellow Door not as an employee but
Speaker 3: as a guest. He's he's bought a fancy new beat
Speaker 3: nick outfit. He's walking around like a little walking stick
Speaker 3: that he refers to as his zen stick, which is
Speaker 3: just remarkable, and everyone's just fawning over him. Maxwell invites
Speaker 3: him down to be his special guest, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 3: and this is all wonderful. Walter is having the best
Speaker 3: time of his life. This is anything and everything he
Speaker 3: ever wanted. He's getting it. But then an artist's model
Speaker 3: who is often a part of the scene named Alice,
Speaker 3: who's been out of town for the past week or two.
Speaker 3: She says, she comes into the hangout and then like
Speaker 3: everyone's fawning over Walter, and she's confused because she's like
Speaker 3: what no, no, no, no, I'm awesome. You guys are awesome.
Speaker 3: He's not awesome. He's just the bus boy. And they're like, no, no,
Speaker 3: he's an artist now. And he's like, no, y'all, y'all
Speaker 3: are putting me on, Like this is just a joke
Speaker 3: for my benefit, Like he's just the bus boy. He
Speaker 3: get him out of here. Walter doesn't like this. He
Speaker 3: was just on the top of the mountain. He's not
Speaker 3: gonna come down. So, like I said, she's an artist model.
Speaker 3: He's mad at her. But she goes on home and
Speaker 3: he follows her and he's like, I'd love to hire
Speaker 3: you to be an artist model so I can make
Speaker 3: another sculpture. And she's like, well that is my job. Fine,
Speaker 3: let's do it. And he's like, yeah, let's do it now. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So she goes to his place and now Walter is
Speaker 3: definitely crossing a line because you can see where this
Speaker 3: is going. He kills her. He strangles her with a scarf,
Speaker 3: and this one's just personal spite, like there's no self defense,
Speaker 3: there's no accident. He is doing this because because Alice
Speaker 3: was mean to him, and now he is he needs
Speaker 3: a body for the arts. You know, it's it's very funny.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this. This movie came out from
Speaker 3: the same writer director right before Little Shop of Horrors.
Speaker 3: Many similarities. This situation here specifically is where it's like,
Speaker 3: I gotta kill someone, well you're mean, I guess, I
Speaker 3: guess you'll do. It's that same situation of a of
Speaker 3: a of a ne'er do well, kind of nebish guy
Speaker 3: just being like I need bodies. Here we go.
Speaker 1: And so now now he's going in cold blood. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a character that she's not hateable, No, she's but
Speaker 1: she's not supposed to be one hundred percent likable. So
Speaker 1: you know, we're accelerating through that gray zone into like, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's clearly he's a murderer at this point, but he
Speaker 1: hasn't attempted to murder anyone that we really like yet.
Speaker 1: And you know, especially in a genre picture like I
Speaker 1: guess we were more forgiving of that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: Like the threshold of the uncrossable transgression is is maybe
Speaker 1: a little a little farther out in.
Speaker 3: A movie like this, but we still a room to escalate.
Speaker 3: So we continue, and once again Leonard is like stop,
Speaker 3: you have to stop, please stop, this is terrible. Stop stop, stop,
Speaker 3: But he just keeps on doing his thing, and he's
Speaker 3: he's he's really like kind of like hitting the thesis
Speaker 3: on the head at this point, because they threw like
Speaker 3: a big celebration for him where he got very drunk,
Speaker 3: and he's just kind of like lamenting and feeling kind
Speaker 3: of sad, and he starts like walking home alone by himself,
Speaker 3: and he literally says the phrase, I gotta do something
Speaker 3: before they forget. Yeah, it's just this this moment where
Speaker 3: it's like, yeah, that's a kind of all he has
Speaker 3: and all he wants is this moment of being in
Speaker 3: the spotlight and being admired. I don't want to put
Speaker 3: too many parallels here, but there's definitely some modern social
Speaker 3: media parallels there of things of just like I just
Speaker 3: got to do something for the gram. I just got
Speaker 3: to put something up on TikTok. It doesn't really matter
Speaker 3: what it is. I just need to stay in the
Speaker 3: spotlight for another minute. And kind of like we were
Speaker 3: saying before, where it's like he's not trying to get
Speaker 3: notoriety by being good at something. He's not trying to
Speaker 3: get notoriety because like he particularly loves making art, he
Speaker 3: just wants to be famous. And so again there's some
Speaker 3: social media parallels there of like just wanting fame for
Speaker 3: fame's sake, to fit in be a part of a
Speaker 3: social scene. And just like he said, I gotta do
Speaker 3: something before they forget, I just need to go. I
Speaker 3: just need to do. And so here's here's where he
Speaker 3: crosses yet another line, a further escalation. He's walking home
Speaker 3: drunk from the yellow door, and he sees like a
Speaker 3: construction worker, perhaps like making a furniture in like a
Speaker 3: little like outdoor kind of like alleyway workshop kind of thing,
Speaker 3: and he just kills the man. He cuts off his
Speaker 3: head with a like circular saw. Again, this is all
Speaker 3: Hayes code, so we don't see anything. There's like no
Speaker 3: violence in any of this. And he makes a bust.
Speaker 3: It's just the man his head that he covers in
Speaker 3: clay and like sticks on a stick. And if that's
Speaker 3: our hey, that happens all the time. But no, Leonard
Speaker 3: once again knows exactly what that is. And he's flipping out.
Speaker 3: He doesn't know what to do. You see him just
Speaker 3: acting like a like a very conflicted, you know, weirdo.
Speaker 3: And but he's like, all right, we're going to set
Speaker 3: up an art show because I got a cash in
Speaker 3: on this owl.
Speaker 1: That's his logical conclusion. Not this is the point where
Speaker 1: I call the police or even like set opposite and
Speaker 1: like convince everyone, Like now I realize what's up. He's like,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and do that art show.
Speaker 3: Well, we can't exactly. This has a shelf life, and
Speaker 3: I need to get my money quick. Because he mentions
Speaker 3: this and this is actually very accurate. He gets a
Speaker 3: fifty percent cut of the sales of the pieces, and
Speaker 3: in fact we do see him take advantage of Walter
Speaker 3: early on. The dead Cat was originally being sold I
Speaker 3: believe for one hundred, and so Walter would have gotten fifty,
Speaker 3: and he would have gotten fifty. But the when he
Speaker 3: was like, no, I'm not going to sell. I'm not
Speaker 3: going to sell. I believe it went all the way
Speaker 3: up to five hundred. But when he paid Walter, he
Speaker 3: still only paid him fifty dollars. So Leonard is a
Speaker 3: villain here and he is taking advantage of Walter, but
Speaker 3: he really needs this money. So he's going to do
Speaker 3: an art show and it's going to bring in everybody,
Speaker 3: and so they do it. They bring him this big
Speaker 3: art show. Got a dead cat, got a dead cop,
Speaker 3: got a dead art model, got a dead construction worker's
Speaker 3: head on a stick, all covered in clay, and everyone's
Speaker 3: loving it. There's an art critic there saying, oh, I'm
Speaker 3: going to write this up and all these pieces are
Speaker 3: going to be worth ten times what they are now.
Speaker 3: And everyone's loving it. This is a great time. And
Speaker 3: at this point Walter Paisley is so you know, living
Speaker 3: his dreams, that he does something that he's wanted to do,
Speaker 3: which is to attempt a romantic relationship with Carla. She's
Speaker 3: the only one that's ever been nice to him. He's
Speaker 3: got to go and show her his feelings. He's at
Speaker 3: the peak of his career that perhaps he'll that he
Speaker 3: ever will be, he needs to do this now. So
Speaker 3: he confesses his feelings and she's like, nah, we can
Speaker 3: be friends, but I just don't see you that way.
Speaker 3: Typical trying to let him down, easy situation, and you
Speaker 3: see something kind of change in him, and he goes, yeah,
Speaker 3: how about I do a sculpture of you, Carla?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And now he's really crossed that line, Like
Speaker 1: now he's in the in the unredeemable area here because
Speaker 1: he's decided, well, if you're not going to be my partner,
Speaker 1: you are going to be my art.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. So it went from accident to self defense to
Speaker 3: personal spite with a stranger, random killing of a stranger.
Speaker 3: Now it's personal killing of someone that he knows well
Speaker 3: and has affection for. There's only one place you can
Speaker 3: go after this, and I bet you can guess what
Speaker 3: it is. So ultimately, I believe at the event someone
Speaker 3: think bumps into oh no no. I believe they see
Speaker 3: a fingernail poking out of the Alice sculpture and they're
Speaker 3: trying to figure out what it is. Then someone knocks
Speaker 3: over one of them and it cracks open and like
Speaker 3: so that the cat is out of the bag. Everyone
Speaker 3: knows and they are trying to go get Walter. Walter's like,
Speaker 3: I got to get out of here, so he runs home.
Speaker 3: I guess I want to put this delicately because it's
Speaker 3: not a nice thing that happens. He puts a little
Speaker 3: bit of clay on his face, covers himself, just a
Speaker 3: little bit in clay, and he hangs himself and that
Speaker 3: is the end of the film. And I believe Maxwell
Speaker 3: says like, oh, it's his final piece, you know, And
Speaker 3: that's it. That's the whole movie. And it's very straightforward,
Speaker 3: very simple escalation, but just delicately done, and all the
Speaker 3: pieces kind of fit together in a real nice, a
Speaker 3: nice little you can you can feel the growth. It's
Speaker 3: it's almost like breaking bad in a way. You're okay
Speaker 3: with this character at first, and you just see them
Speaker 3: getting worse and worse and worse, and by the end
Speaker 3: you're like, no, I'm not with them. They're making they've
Speaker 3: made too many bad decisions against people. I like, I'm
Speaker 3: not in at all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, this is like a lot of these
Speaker 1: the pictures of this time period like, this is a
Speaker 1: very short run time sixty five minutes, so everything is
Speaker 1: very economically presented, like beat to beat. You can follow
Speaker 1: it very easily. There's not a lot of wasted motion.
Speaker 3: Here, absolutely, Robert. I must tell you about something that
Speaker 3: I attempted back when I believe I was in college
Speaker 3: at the time. I wanted to make a full length
Speaker 3: animated remake of this film by myself. At the time,
Speaker 3: I was really into rotoscope animation. There's a studio called
Speaker 3: Flat Black Films who did things like Waking Life and
Speaker 3: Scander Darkly stuff like that. Loved that animation style, and
Speaker 3: I decided I was going to make a rotoscoped film
Speaker 3: of this film A Bucket of Blood. So I started it,
Speaker 3: and I immediately realized how long it would take by
Speaker 3: myself to rotoscope an entire feature length film. But I
Speaker 3: did plan it all out, and the idea and all
Speaker 3: of the work I put into is still sitting there.
Speaker 3: In my first ten minutes of this film finished, i'd
Speaker 3: called it another Bucket of Blood. And my favorite part
Speaker 3: about this was that because it is black and white,
Speaker 3: I had the opportunity to do whatever I wanted with
Speaker 3: the color palette, and so I made each character within
Speaker 3: a completely different hue of a color palette that had
Speaker 3: a deeper meaning tied into like the representation of the
Speaker 3: color and what that color can mean in like the
Speaker 3: greater world. So, for example, Maxwell, because he was like
Speaker 3: the head of the whole yellow door scene, I made
Speaker 3: him purple because he was regal and the purple is
Speaker 3: often a royal color associated with that. Leonard because he
Speaker 3: runs the yellow door, his whole huge color palette was yellow.
Speaker 3: And also because he's quite a cowardly character, he won't
Speaker 3: actually take any action, won't do anything. Walter was completely
Speaker 3: in shades of green because not only was he green
Speaker 3: in terms of inexperience, he also had a bit at
Speaker 3: the green eyed monster he was. He was very envious
Speaker 3: of others and wanted to have what others had, et cetera,
Speaker 3: et cetera, et cetera. Like these, all all these things
Speaker 3: happened for like all the central characters, they all had
Speaker 3: a color coding that kind of like showed their future
Speaker 3: intentions and also perhaps said something about their personality. And
Speaker 3: I'm very sorry to say that I finished about oh
Speaker 3: five minutes of this five to ten minutes, and I
Speaker 3: was like, I will never do anything else. If I
Speaker 3: dedicate my time to this, this will absorb my entire
Speaker 3: life for the next five years if this is what
Speaker 3: I focus on. So so yes, I'm sad to say
Speaker 3: I never I never finished it, but I used some
Speaker 3: clips in like animation reels that I used to like
Speaker 3: get real animation jobs.
Speaker 1: Oh that's good. It's a great idea for a project.
Speaker 1: I guess you didn't have a B and No's moment,
Speaker 1: but you had this moment that Walter never has, where
Speaker 1: where you realized how much work it would take and
Speaker 1: what it would take out of you, and what the
Speaker 1: returns would be based on this investment.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and in some ways. Rodoscoping, if folks don't know,
Speaker 3: is an animation style used with tracing over source film panels.
Speaker 3: So that being the case, I was well aware that
Speaker 3: my animation style was pulling off what Walter Paisley was
Speaker 3: doing in the film as well, that I was instead
Speaker 3: of applying clay to the figures, I was putting a
Speaker 3: layer of pixels over everyone. It was a fun project,
Speaker 3: but that's for when you're you know, in your twenties,
Speaker 3: and you have nothing but free time, and you think
Speaker 3: that you know every art project is achievable because you
Speaker 3: have infinite time in this world. Then you have to
Speaker 3: get jobs, you know.
Speaker 1: Looking back on Walter's creations like the first one is
Speaker 1: kind of an interesting stopping point because there are artists
Speaker 1: who use and have used animals and dead animals and
Speaker 1: adversity to varying degrees. They're actually as part of the
Speaker 1: work as we see with Walter, or of course as
Speaker 1: inspiration anatomical studies. I'm, of course very much opposed to
Speaker 1: any kind of animal cruelty based artwork, but just the
Speaker 1: idea of like a dead animal being used in the
Speaker 1: art is not completely out of bounds.
Speaker 3: A very famous one is Damien Hurst. Damien Hurst, he
Speaker 3: has done that with sharks, He has done that with gosh.
Speaker 3: I think there are other animals as well. His shark
Speaker 3: piece is the most famous. But you're absolutely right, and
Speaker 3: these are highly applauded, highly famous and well respected artists.
Speaker 3: Damien Hurst is one of the most popular modern artists
Speaker 3: in the world and he has done this. He displayed
Speaker 3: a dead shark in a tank and was like, that's
Speaker 3: my art.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And of course there are artists who have also
Speaker 1: used either anatomical fluids or parts or even cadavers to
Speaker 1: different degrees human cadavers. But of course one of the
Speaker 1: key rules is you were not allowed to make that
Speaker 1: cadaver yourself health and you need in any kind of
Speaker 1: fluids or parts you use, it needs to be above board,
Speaker 1: It needs to be consensual and above board.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, I remember the body Works is like a
Speaker 3: museum piece where they did that as well. And another
Speaker 3: thing too that the artists who use these human or
Speaker 3: animal bodies death as as like the palette, they're not
Speaker 3: lying to you. They're not pretending that it's not a
Speaker 3: dead body. They are saying this is this, that's part
Speaker 3: of the message. They're not They're not hiding a dead
Speaker 3: body inside of a clay exterior.
Speaker 1: Now another interesting theme that I like, we get, we get,
Speaker 1: we get to see a little bit of this, reflections
Speaker 1: of it, perhaps in the like you know, the third act,
Speaker 1: I guess you know where Walter is concerned about what's
Speaker 1: next and you know, how am I gonna again we
Speaker 1: talked about this, how you know, I've got to put
Speaker 1: up something else. I've got to stay in the conversation.
Speaker 1: And at the same time, like fear that they're going
Speaker 1: to find him out, he's going to realize that he's
Speaker 1: a fraud. So we have that interesting texture that he is,
Speaker 1: I guess quite literally a fraud and there is this
Speaker 1: dark secret and people don't know the dark secret of
Speaker 1: how he's creating the art and it's not based in
Speaker 1: his sculpting talent that has come out of nowhere, and
Speaker 1: so you know, it gets into that whole like fear
Speaker 1: that I think even very successful artists have that like
Speaker 1: they're going to see through me, They're you know, they're
Speaker 1: going to they're going to to to realize the insecurities
Speaker 1: that I have about my creations.
Speaker 3: Imposter syndrome for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then also, you know, getting back to what you said,
Speaker 1: this idea of like how do I follow it up?
Speaker 1: Like what is the next thing that I have to do?
Speaker 1: And with Walter, like his pieces of art are literal crimes,
Speaker 1: they're literal, you know, traumatic experiences that you know, we're
Speaker 1: still taking a lot out of him. And yeah, we
Speaker 1: can sort of like roughly compare that to any creative
Speaker 1: process where it's like you put all this work into something,
Speaker 1: you know, you lose something in making it, Maybe you
Speaker 1: don't even love the thing when you're done with it. Anymore.
Speaker 1: But it's done, and then there is either the overt
Speaker 1: demand or just the pressure you feel to like you've
Speaker 1: got to do something else. Now you've got to go
Speaker 1: perhaps go through all of that again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, no, very understandable, very believable, And if folks
Speaker 3: are curious, this version of a story has been told
Speaker 3: multiple times in other lampoonings of the art world. There's
Speaker 3: a really great one called Art School Confidential, where a
Speaker 3: series of murders are taking place around like an art
Speaker 3: school campus and then like the paintings of the dead
Speaker 3: bodies are the remnants from the from the killer. And
Speaker 3: then there's an episode of CSI I remember where people
Speaker 3: were killing people and then the artist would then kind
Speaker 3: of like that like bodies exhibit, they would like plasticize
Speaker 3: them where they were just like standing on the street frozen,
Speaker 3: and that was like their art. Like this idea because
Speaker 3: when you think about like what are the extremes of
Speaker 3: where art can go, this is a logical slippery slope
Speaker 3: conclusion is like murder. Murder can be the thing because
Speaker 3: because there are also versions of this. There was an artist,
Speaker 3: for example, that his art piece was to be shot.
Speaker 3: He stood in a gallery and got shot by a
Speaker 3: gun and that was his art piece that day. So
Speaker 3: so you know, there are versions of this in the
Speaker 3: real world, and so it's it's fascinating. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then of course you also have the various Wax
Speaker 1: Museum pictures where Atoy was some version of this as well.
Speaker 1: It's like the hideous secret behind these these wax doubles
Speaker 1: as that of course they're dead bodies that the wax
Speaker 1: master is covered up in wax.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it's an interesting concept that can be approached
Speaker 3: multiple boys.
Speaker 1: Now, I'd say with the ending of the film, it like,
Speaker 1: like you said, it's it's a pretty dark ending, but
Speaker 1: it also happens really fast. It has that kind of
Speaker 1: quick wrap up feel that you find in a lot
Speaker 1: of especially like crime pictures of the time period, but
Speaker 1: even like very you know of superheroe, horror, sci fi things.
Speaker 1: It's like Enemy's Dead roll credits. So it's all very
Speaker 1: sudden and it's very much in keeping with the time period.
Speaker 1: But I found myself wondering again, he's just hanging up there,
Speaker 1: He's got some clay just smeared on him. What if
Speaker 1: they'd gone in a different direction, and what if Walter's
Speaker 1: final creation his own death was beautiful. What if it
Speaker 1: had been transcendent? What if it had been sublime? It
Speaker 1: would have been really in keeping with the feel of
Speaker 1: the film. But I can't help but imagine what that
Speaker 1: would have I guess it would have skewed the message
Speaker 1: of the film and perhaps an undesirable direction. But it
Speaker 1: might have also been just a little less dark in
Speaker 1: that regard.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure absolutely, And you know, there is also gosh.
Speaker 3: I suppose a fetishization is perhaps too extreme of a term,
Speaker 3: but you know, when artists die young, that is always
Speaker 3: a thing that occurs where people will then give a
Speaker 3: deeper embrace to their work, quite often for good reason,
Speaker 3: because it's wonderful art. But it is just, you know,
Speaker 3: it's a trope. It's a trope that if an artist
Speaker 3: dies young, their work is embraced even more so what
Speaker 3: would have happened the year after this? Would there have
Speaker 3: been artists that were really inspired by his work? Could
Speaker 3: there have been a bucket of blood too, where it
Speaker 3: was another artist in like art school who was studying
Speaker 3: Walter Paisley and then becomes a copycat murderer. I think
Speaker 3: that's the easiest idea in the world. It would have
Speaker 3: been wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, the the cult
Speaker 1: of the the the the young artist that has we've
Speaker 1: tragically lost, but also just like the idea, like the
Speaker 1: cult of the young artist. I was listening to an
Speaker 1: MPR piece before this recording, and uh, the expert, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I don't I don't have the information in front of me.
Speaker 1: I can't remember what the expert's name was, but he
Speaker 1: was talking a bit about like this this myth, like
Speaker 1: the basic myth that, like real creativity, it comes young
Speaker 1: and it comes strong, you know, And it's the sort
Speaker 1: of creative myth that ends up having a negative impact
Speaker 1: on a lot of us. And you can imagine that
Speaker 1: sort of myth impacting the fictional Walter Paisley as well, Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not a natural talent, then I must
Speaker 1: be lost. There's nothing I can do. And that's not
Speaker 1: the case.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, No, it's for such a silly throwaway movie.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of thought that went into it, and
Speaker 3: a lot of thought you can have afterwards about its
Speaker 3: implications and it's greater effect. And yeah, in many ways,
Speaker 3: like I said that, the mirroring of our modern world
Speaker 3: and how perhaps it's not that different from how it
Speaker 3: was in the fifties. Comparing social media to the beatnick
Speaker 3: world of the nineteen fifties a lot of similar aspects,
Speaker 3: which is fascinating.
Speaker 1: I think my final thought well on this film would
Speaker 1: be I was really expecting someone to say daddy O
Speaker 1: at some point, and no one ever did. And it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder I've never researched when daddy oo enters
Speaker 1: public usage or becomes a sonociated with Beatnicks. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: going on faulty information here.
Speaker 3: That's a great point. I actually own a couple of
Speaker 3: Beatnik comics from around this era. There's a comic artist
Speaker 3: I love named John Stanley, and he tried to make
Speaker 3: a whole series just about goofy Beatniks in the nineteen
Speaker 3: fifties and it was only popular enough to make two
Speaker 3: issues and then it was canceled. And the thing I
Speaker 3: remember in their slang is they use the word reat
Speaker 3: all the time r ee t to mean like correct, right,
Speaker 3: you know. And I remember, you know, in the twenty
Speaker 3: twenties being like huh, all right, like you know better
Speaker 3: than I do. But yeah, I thought you'd be saying
Speaker 3: things like daddy. Oh but no, no, no, they had
Speaker 3: their own slang.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating seeing those little like time capsules.
Speaker 1: All right, Seth, Well, this has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on the show to discuss a bucket
Speaker 1: of Blood from nineteen fifty nine. Yeah, a lot to
Speaker 1: chew on with this one. Tell folks out there where
Speaker 1: they can find Rusty Needles Record Club and how they
Speaker 1: can get in touch with you.
Speaker 3: Absolutely so. Rusty Needles Record Club is a weekly podcast,
Speaker 3: new episode every Friday, and it's a podcast in the
Speaker 3: style of how podcasts used to be. Remember the old
Speaker 3: days folks like around, like let's say two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: when people made podcasts just for fun and didn't put
Speaker 3: ads in them and just kind of like, yeah, they
Speaker 3: were personal and simple and very niche. That's that's what
Speaker 3: Rusty Needle's Record Club is. It's a two thousand and
Speaker 3: four style podcast. And if you like music and you
Speaker 3: want to expand your musical horizons, or perhaps you just
Speaker 3: don't have anyone around you that you can have those
Speaker 3: kind of conversations with, you can at least have like
Speaker 3: a parasocial relationship with me and my co host Scott
Speaker 3: as we talk about music. Our goal of the podcast
Speaker 3: is to listen to every single album ever made, and
Speaker 3: so far we're doing great. It's we are progressively moving
Speaker 3: towards that direction. So if you want to join us,
Speaker 3: just look up Rusty Needles Record Club anywhere you listen
Speaker 3: to podcasts. We're available everywhere, and yeah, you'll find it.
Speaker 3: It's easy, that's it. I join us if you feel like.
Speaker 1: It, all right. As for Weird House Cinema, of course,
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast
Speaker 1: with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want
Speaker 1: a nice list of all the films we've covered so
Speaker 1: far in the show, including I guess three episodes with
Speaker 1: you now seth because during Joe's Brintal leave we covered
Speaker 1: two films I think right. If you want to find
Speaker 1: all of those, well, you can find a nice list
Speaker 1: at letterboxed dot com. It's L E T T E
Speaker 1: R B O x D dot com. Our username is
Speaker 1: weird House. There's a nice list there. Dive in there
Speaker 1: find something you've never seen before, or find something you
Speaker 1: want to revisit. It's a great tool to use. And yeah,
Speaker 1: in general, I'll just ask everyone out there, Hey, if
Speaker 1: you've never rated and reviewed the podcast one of the
Speaker 1: many platforms where you can get it, why don't you
Speaker 1: do that? That could help us out. Another thing, if
Speaker 1: you listen to this on Apple on Apple device, just
Speaker 1: maybe pop in and make sure that you're still still subscribe,
Speaker 1: you're still getting downloads. That also helps us out in
Speaker 1: the long run. Thanks as always to our excellent producer
Speaker 1: JJ for helping put together the show here and if
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with me and or Joe,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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