Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.
Speaker 2: My co host Joe was out on holiday leave at
Speaker 2: the time of this recording, so I turned to former
Speaker 2: Weird House guest host and former producer on the show,
Speaker 2: Seth Nicholas Johnson of the podcast Rusty Needles Record Club. Seth.
Speaker 2: Welcome back.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Before we get into the movie and the movie selection here,
Speaker 2: 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, all of my spare money goes into listening
Speaker 3: to music and going to concerts and all that stuff,
Speaker 3: I still hadn't heard probably two thirds of his top
Speaker 3: ten list, which is amazing to me because we're close
Speaker 3: friends with very similar taste in music, and yet there's
Speaker 3: just so much wonderful music in the world that I
Speaker 3: love this time of year, the Decembers and Januaries, and
Speaker 3: you get to catch up on everyone's Favorites of the
Speaker 3: Year list. You're pretty much guaranteed gold from everyone. I
Speaker 3: love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess when you fill your
Speaker 2: life with music, there are so many different corners of
Speaker 2: your life. You have different musical tastes occupying, and yet
Speaker 2: not all of them are going to come up in conversation,
Speaker 2: even with close collaborators or friends. You know, there's gonna
Speaker 2: 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 2: All right, Well, the movie for this week is a
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty nine Roger Korman directed and of course produced,
Speaker 2: beaten in carror comedy or you know, I guess, a
Speaker 2: black comedy if you will, titled A Bucket of Blood
Speaker 2: starring Dick Miller. This was your pick, Seth. This was
Speaker 2: not one that was really on my radar. How do
Speaker 2: you zero in on this one? What's your history with
Speaker 2: 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 collection,
Speaker 3: or you know, 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, then Tales of Terror two
Speaker 3: hundred classic horror movies. Like I buy these collections often
Speaker 3: ultimately just because I'm a big fan of creativity overcraft.
Speaker 3: And 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, just because
Speaker 3: you can predict where everything's gonna go, and it's whatever.
Speaker 3: It's boring. So by just taking a step outside of
Speaker 3: that blueprint for filmmaking, you end up in some weird corners.
Speaker 3: And even if it's a bad movie, as long as
Speaker 3: it's interesting, that's kind of enough for me. So by
Speaker 3: going down the B movie routes, that's at least my
Speaker 3: reasoning for why I love B movies and old movies
Speaker 3: and bad movies is that you can't really predict where
Speaker 3: it's going, which makes them far more interesting than the
Speaker 3: typical Hollywood film these days. And uh yeah, yeah, so
Speaker 3: that's why I went down that route. And then in
Speaker 3: one of these collections, I actually dug through my DVDs
Speaker 3: and I found the exact disc where I discovered this.
Speaker 3: This was called Horror Classics, and then it has the
Speaker 3: title here, four movies over four hours.
Speaker 2: Well, that's reasonably cut down because I was thinking one
Speaker 2: of the things about these, especially DVD releases, and they're
Speaker 2: still putting them out, and some of them are, you know,
Speaker 2: or very nice. Some of them are higher budget affairs. But yeah,
Speaker 2: sometimes it's like four movies, and to your point, other
Speaker 2: times it's like fifty movies. Yes, and you can sort
Speaker 2: of do the algebra in your head. It's like, okay,
Speaker 2: the quality of those four films is now spread out
Speaker 2: over like fifty titles. Here're going to be a number
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, I mean, there's an authenticity to this film, right,
Speaker 2: It feels like it's commenting on actual people and culture.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the films of this caliber have that feeling of
Speaker 2: like having been written by an alien, acted by aliens,
Speaker 2: Like this is just a rough approximation of what human
Speaker 2: beings are like. But there's real humanity in this even
Speaker 2: though at the same time, of course, it is a
Speaker 2: horror film, horror comedy, a satire. It's not attempting to
Speaker 2: adhere very closely to the contours of life, but it's
Speaker 2: commenting on those contours for sure.
Speaker 3: And some of those comments are still pretty valid. So,
Speaker 3: like this movie was made in the nineteen or sorry,
Speaker 3: late nineteen fifties. I think it's fifty nine. And there's
Speaker 3: one joke in here in particular where I was like, yeah,
Speaker 3: that still hits home. It was all the beat Nicks
Speaker 3: were like waking up and they're like flop house, and
Speaker 3: they're all sitting around to breakfast. And our protagonist walks
Speaker 3: in and the the head beatnik offers him breakfast. And
Speaker 3: I wrote this down because I loved it so much.
Speaker 3: He offers him soy and wheat, germ pancakes or go.
Speaker 3: He pronounces it organic, but it's organic organic guava nectar,
Speaker 3: calcium lactate and tomato juice and gorbonzo omelets sprinkled with
Speaker 3: smoked yeast. And I thought to myself, that's one hundred
Speaker 3: percent a meal I run into in my little vegan
Speaker 3: cafes that I go to. Like, no over exaggeration, no
Speaker 3: like playing it up for giggles. That's a real meal
Speaker 3: that I have eaten in a standard typical twenty twenty
Speaker 3: three or I guess twenty twenty four now vegan cafe.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I was excited when I realized this
Speaker 2: was going to be a Beatnik movie because I was
Speaker 2: recently reflecting to sort of you know, casually want doing
Speaker 2: something else, like around the house or something that I
Speaker 2: don't think weird how cinema had featured a proper beatnik movie,
Speaker 2: and this is a perfect one. Yeah, it hits all
Speaker 2: the right notes, and there's not a note like it's
Speaker 2: not just casually beaten it. It's not like, Okay, we
Speaker 2: kill a couple of beat Nicks off in the first
Speaker 2: couple of minutes. It's devoted to commenting on beatnik culture,
Speaker 2: right right for sure. Now, for anyone out there you're
Speaker 2: not familiar with the term beatnik or you're only loosely
Speaker 2: familiar with it. Roughly speaking, these were members of the
Speaker 2: beat generation, and more specifically followers of kind of an
Speaker 2: anti materialistic bohemian lifestyle. You know, to varying degrees that
Speaker 2: people are aligned with any given social movement. This would
Speaker 2: have been the late fifties early sixties. You know, icons
Speaker 2: like Alan Ginsberg are generally associated with this scene. They
Speaker 2: were pre hippies, though many of them would go on
Speaker 2: 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 kids in their early two thousands, anything, anything,
Speaker 3: it's always ridiculous and always fun. Hackers, the film Hackers
Speaker 3: was it was a great version of that, So they're
Speaker 3: all good. Any any mainstream version of a subculture is
Speaker 3: lampoon worthy in itself, and this is one of them
Speaker 3: for sure. But I think they're they're pretty accurate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you always they always paying with a broad brush.
Speaker 2: But given that they get to devote the whole film
Speaker 2: to Beatnicks, you have like these different caricatures of Beatninks.
Speaker 2: Very true. Now you mentioned the different subcultures across different decades,
Speaker 2: you know, especially given that this film ultimately has a
Speaker 2: has a simplistic but effective format, you know, you could
Speaker 2: easily apply it to a different subculture like every decade
Speaker 2: or even every five years. And indeed, there's at least
Speaker 2: one seemingly bad remake of this film from nineteen ninety
Speaker 2: five that updates it, for like gen X hipsters instead
Speaker 2: of Beatnicks.
Speaker 3: I've seen it. I've seen it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: The main reason I watched it is I believe years ago,
Speaker 3: I was on like IMDb trivia or something for this
Speaker 3: movie Bucket of Blood, And while I was there, one
Speaker 3: of the pieces of trivia was like Will Ferrell plays
Speaker 3: a bit part in the remake of this film, and
Speaker 3: so I had to hunt it down and see it
Speaker 3: just to see what it was like. Because one of
Speaker 3: the things this movie, a Bucket of Blood, is clearly
Speaker 3: lacking as a budget, Like it's clearly like a bottom
Speaker 3: of the barrel Roger Korman. We have twelve dollars and
Speaker 3: five days, let's just make a movie. And so because
Speaker 3: of that, you know, it suffers from the things that
Speaker 3: do suffer without a budget. But then I watched the remake,
Speaker 3: and I think, if I remember correctly, I may not.
Speaker 3: I think it was a Showtime original movie, like Movie
Speaker 3: of the Week kind of thing, so it still had
Speaker 3: a rock bottom budget and it was not improved with
Speaker 3: an increased budget, because I don't believe they actually increased
Speaker 3: the budgets, And so I think the original is.
Speaker 2: All, you know. Yeah, yeah, the remake has Anthony Michael Hall,
Speaker 2: and I think David Cross also shows up in it
Speaker 2: at some point, but I have not seen it. I
Speaker 2: just watched a clip of it and that was all
Speaker 2: 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 2: All right, well, let's go ahead and listen to a
Speaker 2: little bit of the trailer audio on this one, so
Speaker 2: folks can get a taste of what we're going to
Speaker 2: be talking about here. The artist, the poet, the figure
Speaker 2: muddle who loves to show it. Do you suppose he
Speaker 2: could be physically attracted to No, man, he ain't the type.
Speaker 2: You don't get enough vitamin E.
Speaker 3: All these are beat All these.
Speaker 2: Your meat him a bucket of blood.
Speaker 3: Let us make the see.
Speaker 2: Enjoy yourself where the hilarious, enjoy the horrifying in a
Speaker 2: bucket of blood. Now you're gonna shoot me, don't chir
Speaker 2: Come to the land of living dreams, where realists dream
Speaker 2: of the unreal water. You've done something to me, something
Speaker 2: deep down inside of my praana. Oh what I want
Speaker 2: to be with you? Your creative beat nicks at their bodiest,
Speaker 2: the creative urge at its most primitive. Irime deeply moved,
Speaker 2: And I shall compose a poem, Love is art, Art
Speaker 2: is love. It's the weirdest and the wildest.
Speaker 3: I don't want to make statues anymore.
Speaker 2: I want to get married to you. All right. Well,
Speaker 2: if you want to go out and watch this film
Speaker 2: before we discuss it anymore here and get into some
Speaker 2: spoilers and so forth, well, luckily you don't have to
Speaker 2: go and get that bargain bin four to fifty forgotten
Speaker 2: horror films because it's widely available digitally. I watched this
Speaker 2: one on Prime and the film Detective Studio put out
Speaker 2: a very nice blu ray of the picture if you
Speaker 2: want to go physical media on it, So you got
Speaker 2: plenty of options. For sure.
Speaker 3: It's public domain, so you can find it on YouTube.
Speaker 3: You can find it, you know, playing at a gas station,
Speaker 3: pump anywhere anywhere. Really that there's a screen.
Speaker 2: That would be great. I wish they should movies like
Speaker 2: this gas station. They should.
Speaker 3: You know, there's a couple of really good restaurants where
Speaker 3: they'll do that just project public domain old films, like
Speaker 3: on the walls while you eat. There was a burger
Speaker 3: place in Atlanta that did that that I really liked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know the place, all right, let's get into
Speaker 2: the people involved in this film. We mentioned already that
Speaker 2: this is Roger Corman picture, directed and produced. Corman of
Speaker 2: course towering name in American bet cinema, and this is
Speaker 2: a film that's often mentioned in highlights of his directorial output.
Speaker 2: Even though I never it wasn't really on my radar.
Speaker 2: I think it was probably because it had kind of
Speaker 2: has this grotesque title bucket of Blood, that puts a
Speaker 2: lot of ideas into your head. And I do have
Speaker 2: to stress there is no bucket of blood that I remember.
Speaker 2: There's maybe a pan of blood, but it's not always
Speaker 2: filled up. No, Yeah, it's not nearly as grizzly as
Speaker 2: it implies. Obviously, you know they're trying to get the
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, but it clearly doesn't a monster So that might
Speaker 2: have been a reason that I never really was drawn
Speaker 2: into it before, just because it was it was clearly
Speaker 2: not a monster film. It's talking about a bucket of blood,
Speaker 2: and I ended up moving on to the next thing.
Speaker 2: And there are a lot of things to move on
Speaker 2: to in Roger Corman's filmography, but yeah, this one stands
Speaker 2: out because it's actually, you know, a darkly satirical horror comedy,
Speaker 2: and it kicks off a loose trilogy of Corman directed
Speaker 2: in Charles B. Griffith's scripted black comedies. Again, this was
Speaker 2: fifty nine A Bucket of Blood, followed up by nineteen
Speaker 2: sixties The Little Shop of Horror, which I think everyone
Speaker 2: is familiar with to some degree or another, and then
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty one's Creature from the Haunted Sea.
Speaker 3: All classics, all wonderful films, excellent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't seen Creature from the Haunted Sea, but
Speaker 2: 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: for his limitations in budget and time, he made amazing
Speaker 3: pieces for what resources he had. If he had more resources, actually,
Speaker 3: who knows. Maybe he worked well under pressure, but for
Speaker 3: the amount of money that he worked with and the
Speaker 3: amount of time that he spent on them. They're actually
Speaker 3: remarkable films.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean just just discussing films that have
Speaker 2: been covered on Weird House in the past that Joe
Speaker 2: and I've talked about, like nineteen fifty seven's Not of
Speaker 2: This Earth very cheap, but the fact that the movie
Speaker 2: is so cheap and you can still find things to
Speaker 2: talk about, that there's still things that stand out and
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, and then you know a film like nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: four's Mask of the Red Death. You get to see
Speaker 2: what Corman was capable of when he did have a
Speaker 2: bigger budget backing him up right and did go for
Speaker 2: like a stylistic picture.
Speaker 3: That's a great example.
Speaker 2: Yeah. This picture though, is again nineteen fifty nine. It's
Speaker 2: coming on the Heels. I think five different pictures that
Speaker 2: he directed in the previous year in fifty eight, including
Speaker 2: Teenage Caveman and eight pictures from fifty seven including Not
Speaker 2: of This Earth and Attack of the Crab Monsters. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of entering a new dimension here. You know.
Speaker 2: He directed a lot of different things. We think of him,
Speaker 2: you know, in terms of monster films, but he did westerns,
Speaker 2: he did crime, he did dramas, and of course he
Speaker 2: did black comedies and satires, as we see in this picture.
Speaker 2: Now the screenwriter again as Charles B. Griffith, who of
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty through two thousand and seven American screenwriter, best
Speaker 2: known for his work with Corman, which also included some acting.
Speaker 2: And you know, as is often the case in the
Speaker 2: Corman camp, you know, it's like you're just called on
Speaker 2: to do different things. He worked on such films as
Speaker 2: Not of This Earth, from fifty six, Attack of the
Speaker 2: Crab Monsters, fifty seven The Little Shop of Hers. He
Speaker 2: also directed six films, including fifty nine Forbidden Island, seventy
Speaker 2: nine's Up from the Depths in nineteen eighty nine's Wizards
Speaker 2: 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 2: Oh yeah, I haven't. I haven't watched that MST three
Speaker 2: K episode yet.
Speaker 3: But yeah's I want to say, that's perhaps the second
Speaker 3: Netflix season perhaps, And yeah, that was actually a good one.
Speaker 3: I like that one.
Speaker 2: This has some sort of crazy lion creature or something
Speaker 2: in the sky. I want to say.
Speaker 3: That sounds about right. That sounds about right. Mostly it
Speaker 3: was that kind of like comedic relief and small child
Speaker 3: traveling across medieval Europe kind of situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right, getting into the cast here, this
Speaker 2: film is all about Walter Paisley, and we're gonna have
Speaker 2: a lot to say about the character of Walter Paisley
Speaker 2: as we proceed here. But Walter Paisle was played by
Speaker 2: the great Dick Miller, who lived nineteen twenty eight through
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. We've talked about him before on Weird House
Speaker 2: cinema legendary character actor from the Bronx who made his
Speaker 2: way to California in the mid fifties. He's trying to
Speaker 2: make it, go at it as a writer, but then
Speaker 2: he meets Roger Corman. Roger Corman didn't need writers, he
Speaker 2: needed actors, so he started using him on pictures as
Speaker 2: early as nineteen fifty five as Apache Woman, in which
Speaker 2: I believe he plays two different Dick parts. So it's like,
Speaker 2: get in there, Dick, we need you in the background
Speaker 2: here and okay, now wipe the makeup off. We need
Speaker 2: you in this scene as well. And from that point
Speaker 2: on he ends up showing up in other Corman pictures
Speaker 2: such as Not of This Earth and He Not of
Speaker 2: This Earth is a great example where he comes in.
Speaker 2: He brings a lot of energy and creativity to the role.
Speaker 2: I think he ad libs some stuff. He takes something
Speaker 2: that could just be a thankless, little extra role, this
Speaker 2: guy's it's going to be killed by the alien menace,
Speaker 2: and makes it something memorable. And so it's no surprise
Speaker 2: that Corman finally casts him in the lead. He casts
Speaker 2: him in the lead in a crime drama titled Rock
Speaker 2: all Night, and this kicks off a whole string of
Speaker 2: roles in Corman pictures. It becomes an icon of genre cinema,
Speaker 2: popping up later on in memorable roles in such pictures
Speaker 2: as Grimlins, Tales from the Crypt, Demon Knight, the Terminator.
Speaker 2: Of course, he has that great small role as the
Speaker 2: guy that's running the gun shop that the Terminator goes into.
Speaker 2: So wherever he pops up, he's always a treat. And
Speaker 2: while many film goers, I think, tend to associate him
Speaker 2: with kind of snappy working man roles, you know, like
Speaker 2: a terminator. Just what you see here Pal Bucket of
Speaker 2: Blood casts them as a likable but ultimately dim witted
Speaker 2: outcast who desperately wants to belong. So if you're not
Speaker 2: used to seeing him outside of those sort of working
Speaker 2: man roles, you might be a little surprised at the
Speaker 2: ultimately the depth that they get into here with this character.
Speaker 2: It's also the first of several characters named Walter Paisley
Speaker 2: 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 Like. I saw these two cop films
Speaker 3: he was in where he played like Sergeant Paisley back
Speaker 3: to back, and yeah, it seems like that was I
Speaker 3: have to assume that it's everyone paying homage back to
Speaker 3: this film, but I guess it could also be that
Speaker 3: there was some sort of inside joke where that's something
Speaker 3: happened even pre this film with the name Walter Paisley.
Speaker 3: And even this film is homage to some other inside
Speaker 3: joke about the name Walter Paisley, but at least in
Speaker 3: cinema on screen, this is the birth of the name
Speaker 3: Walter Paisley that he then played that. I guess just
Speaker 3: the name, because it can't be the same role, because
Speaker 3: again and again and again, all the different waltz and
Speaker 3: Walter's and Walter Paisley's he plays, like, for example, the
Speaker 3: garbage man in the Burbs, I believe that's a Walter Paisley.
Speaker 3: I may be getting this one wrong, but so he
Speaker 3: kept working with Joe Dante over and over. Joe Dante
Speaker 3: loved to put him in any movie he ever did.
Speaker 3: I think the show Let's See It was called Erie Indiana,
Speaker 3: and I believe his role was in that episode. He
Speaker 3: would sneak around and whenever someone loses something, like they
Speaker 3: lose a sock in the dryer, they lose the capital,
Speaker 3: their pen whatever, it's because Walter Paisley is sneaking up
Speaker 3: and stealing it. Because it's a big part about like
Speaker 3: the American economy, where they need to ensure that people
Speaker 3: are still buying new things. So Walter Paisley is sneaking
Speaker 3: around and stealing people's belongings when they think that they
Speaker 3: lose them. Really remarkable. Oh I bring that up because
Speaker 3: Joe Dante produced that series. That's the connection there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I remember Eerie Indiana. I remember liking it,
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It was a fun series.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, all right, Well, yeah, Dick Miller the star
Speaker 2: of this picture, and I think it's a pretty solid performance.
Speaker 2: He's awkward and likable in the early goings, not just
Speaker 2: socially awkward, but like physically bumbling in a very effective manner.
Speaker 2: Like there's an early scene where he is frustrated he
Speaker 2: goes to kick like a milk carton on the street
Speaker 2: and falls. It's it's great, No, he's.
Speaker 3: Very believable, and especially when you compare him to like
Speaker 3: you said, his more like workman type characters later where
Speaker 3: he's kind of like gruff And you know what was
Speaker 3: he in chopping mall and I remember now.
Speaker 2: Correctly, Yeah, it was a janitor who gets murdered by
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, And eventually, this is a character that darkens somewhat.
Speaker 2: It is titled a bucket of Blood, and he's able
Speaker 2: to push that portrayal to the dark side a bit
Speaker 2: as well, you know, not to the degree that somebody
Speaker 2: who specializes in that sort of thing. But then that
Speaker 2: sort of actor wouldn't be necessarily be able to manage
Speaker 2: the lovable and likable aspects of the character as well.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it would take it would take
Speaker 2: a special actor to really nail both of those, and
Speaker 2: I think Dick Miller does a pretty darn good job
Speaker 2: here for sure. All Right. Other members of the cast,
Speaker 2: Carla is the only beat Nick in the film that
Speaker 2: is nice to him early on, and as such, this
Speaker 2: is the woman of his dreams. She's played by Barbara Morris,
Speaker 2: who lived nineteen thirty two. From nineteen seventy five, she
Speaker 2: appeared in several Corman films, beginning in fifty seven with
Speaker 2: a trio that included Rock All Night. She's also in
Speaker 2: fifty eight Teenage Caveman, She's in fifty nine's The Wasp Woman,
Speaker 2: and later on she appeared in Corman's nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 2: LSD movie The Trip, which is pretty amusing. That's the
Speaker 2: Dennis Hopper and his crew. Bruce Dern is in it
Speaker 2: as a guy that's here to guide you on your trip.
Speaker 2: And then she pops up in nineteen seventies The Done,
Speaker 2: which horror one of her final role. That's a film
Speaker 2: that's been covered on Weird House as well. Not much
Speaker 2: to say here, she's a likable, effective performance. Absolutely, Okay,
Speaker 2: then we have we should mention that the central setting
Speaker 2: for the whole picture is the beat Nick bar I
Speaker 2: guess it's more of a coffee shop type of situation,
Speaker 2: a 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 like 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 2: Yeah. Yeah, and it's it's interesting that it's it's presented
Speaker 2: it it's presented, well, you believe that this is a
Speaker 2: real place, but it's presented seemingly simultaneously, like from an
Speaker 2: inward view as well as an outside view, because it
Speaker 2: feels authentic. But then also there's this whole element of like,
Speaker 2: not one but two undercover cops have been assigned to
Speaker 2: his place to keep track of the Beatnik 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 2: Yeah, there was there really that much heroin action going
Speaker 2: on at your average like you know, small coffee house
Speaker 2: in the late fifties. I don't know, but anyway, the
Speaker 2: guy that runs the place is this character. Leonard decentis
Speaker 2: played by Anthony Carbutten, who lived nineteen twenty five through
Speaker 2: twenty twenty the immoral owner operator of the Beatnick coffee
Speaker 2: house here. He appeared in various TV and film projects,
Speaker 2: including several Corman pictures. He pops up in sixty one's
Speaker 2: 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 so funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I really like him in this picture. I
Speaker 2: think you know. So he's initially just another beatnick jerk
Speaker 2: who doesn't give Walter a chance. He's also Walter's boss,
Speaker 2: and he's or some mean boss who tells Walter he
Speaker 2: has to do his job and so forth, quit staring
Speaker 2: into the stars, quit talking to the customers. But he
Speaker 2: ultimately becomes like the one person who knows the terrible
Speaker 2: truth about what's going on, and he has to wrestle
Speaker 2: with that, and we'll get into how he wrestles with
Speaker 2: it and what sort of choices he makes based on
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 2: Fun. All right, We also have Ed Nelson popping up
Speaker 2: in this one. Ed Nelson lived nineteen twenty eight through
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen. He was the star of fifty eights The
Speaker 2: Brain Eaters, which we've talked about on We Your House before.
Speaker 2: He was a frequent Corman actor. In this he plays
Speaker 2: one of those two undercover cops, Art Lacroix. And I'm
Speaker 2: not sure what flavor Lacroix he would be, because he'd
Speaker 2: be one of the less drinkable flavors. I think, you know,
Speaker 2: because he has a very rough exterior he's At first
Speaker 2: you think he's like the sleazier of the beat Nicks,
Speaker 2: 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 to fur jackets, like he's he's definitely like, hello,
Speaker 3: fellow kids, I'm here.
Speaker 2: All right. So we have a lot of beat Nicks
Speaker 2: hanging out in there, and we do have kind of
Speaker 2: like a lead beat Nick, your head beat Nick. This
Speaker 2: is the poet Maxwell, played by Julian Burton of the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty two through two thousand and six, mostly a
Speaker 2: TV actor, perhaps best known for this film. Yeah, he's
Speaker 2: the lead, pompous beat Nick poet and ultimately the taste
Speaker 2: maker at the Yellowdar. If he says something is good,
Speaker 2: it is good and everyone falls in line. I thought
Speaker 2: this character was a constant delight. He does a lot
Speaker 2: of poetry performances, either officially or sort of unofficially off Mike,
Speaker 2: because it's also just how he speaks to everyone, and
Speaker 2: it ultimately plays an essential role in both the plot
Speaker 2: and also just sort of the texture of the films.
Speaker 3: It's note perfect, pitch perfect for someone who is both
Speaker 3: very pompous and yet like not phony, like he does
Speaker 3: kind of back up what he says. He's just like
Speaker 3: a typical blow hard artist that really really buys into
Speaker 3: their own their own scene and their own message and
Speaker 3: their own intentions. And it's it's perfect. It's perfect. I've
Speaker 3: met dozens of men just like Maxwell for sure.
Speaker 2: And of course there's a hypocrisy to him as well,
Speaker 2: as we'll get old, of course, because that is a
Speaker 2: part of art, absolutely all right. Moving on to the
Speaker 2: art direction on this film, it's worth pointing out because
Speaker 2: it's Daniel Holler born nineteen twenty nine. He's come up
Speaker 2: on the show before because he went on to direct
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies The Dunwich Horror and he also did production
Speaker 2: design on Mask of the Red Death, so he worked
Speaker 2: with Corman a lot and went on to went on
Speaker 2: to direct a number of 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 2: Because he couldn't take the same shortcuts that Walter did, right,
Speaker 2: very true, very true, all right. Music wise, the score
Speaker 2: is attributed to Fred Katz, who have nineteen nineteen through
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, and fittingly, there's a lot of a lot
Speaker 2: of sacks, a lot of delirious beat, nicked sacks that
Speaker 2: you've heard, and if you watch the films of this caliber,
Speaker 2: you've heard it before. You know the sacks is drizzling.
Speaker 2: There's like implied or overt drug use. It is supposed
Speaker 2: 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 2: I was, yeah, you're referring to there's a there's a duo,
Speaker 2: like the comedic duo of Stoner's. And I was constantly
Speaker 2: floored by the humor because I it was not connecting
Speaker 2: with me, and I wasn't sure how much of it is,
Speaker 2: like the cultural distance, how much of it is like
Speaker 2: the fact that they had to be a little careful
Speaker 2: how they treated this humor, because you know, they're supposed
Speaker 2: to be high all the time and they're sort of
Speaker 2: drifting in and out of the room blasted out of
Speaker 2: their skulls. But I found very little that they did
Speaker 2: was actually like overtly funny. I felt like I was
Speaker 2: 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?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 3: And the other one goes, didn't you hear him? He's like, nah,
Speaker 3: I'm too far out.
Speaker 2: Ah. Oh yeah, that's good.
Speaker 3: That's good of course.
Speaker 2: Hours now, one final note on the saxophone music, though
Speaker 2: the credited SAXOPHONEI ist here and we see him on
Speaker 2: screen is Grammy nominated Paul Horn, who lived nineteen thirty
Speaker 2: through twenty fourteen. Were you familiar with Paul Horn.
Speaker 3: Only by I can't say I'm too familiar with specific
Speaker 3: saxophone jazz.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I wasn't either, But this guy apparently was a
Speaker 2: pretty big deal. He went on to become a pretty
Speaker 2: big deal. He got into the early New Age music scene,
Speaker 2: particularly with a nineteen sixty nine album called Inside Sometimes.
Speaker 2: I think it's on like Spotify as Inside the taj
Speaker 2: Mahll because it was apparently recorded inside the taj Mahll
Speaker 2: And I was listening to part of it before we
Speaker 2: came in to record this, and it's it's pretty good stuff.
Speaker 2: It's like it's got that thing soothing, you know, very
Speaker 2: obviously inspired by traditional Indian music and utilizing traditional Indian instruments,
Speaker 2: but yeah, it's quite good. And apparently it was a
Speaker 2: big hit in like the New Age scene, and he
Speaker 2: went on to doing albums for what is it Wyndham Hill,
Speaker 2: 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 a at a little coffee shop.
Speaker 3: So yeah, no, it's perfect for this beatnik styled film.
Speaker 2: Well, let's let's get into the plot a little bit. Now.
Speaker 2: This is not one that we're going to necessarily do
Speaker 2: like a blow by blow or beat by beat if
Speaker 2: you will, if you want to get cheeky account of
Speaker 2: what happens. And then to a certain extent, we don't
Speaker 2: have to go beat by beat because the formula you
Speaker 2: can pretty much guess at everything once we lay out
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah. So again, it's the late fifties. You've got this
Speaker 2: beatnik hang You've got this coffee house. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of poetry going on, visual arts, obviously smokingland and also
Speaker 2: obviously some drug use going on. They're very clear about that.
Speaker 2: The police are are interested in this in this place
Speaker 2: for that very reason. And uh, you see, you know
Speaker 2: the typical interactions between you know, we have the you know,
Speaker 2: the tastemaker Maxwell, and we have his hangers on. We
Speaker 2: have the stoner duo who are not artists and barely
Speaker 2: seem to know really what's going on in their immediate vicinity,
Speaker 2: but you know, they're they're there, they're there to hang out,
Speaker 2: they're part of the scene. And in the midst of
Speaker 2: all of this we have we have Walter. Uh, And
Speaker 2: Walter just works at the coffee shop. He's going around
Speaker 2: like busting the tables and so forth, bringing coffee out
Speaker 2: to folks. But he's constantly distracted because he is ultimately,
Speaker 2: even though he works here, he is an outsider to
Speaker 2: the actual scene. Uh. He is a loner. He desperately
Speaker 2: wants to belong somewhere, and this is the primary culture
Speaker 2: that he is apparently exposed to. So he wants to
Speaker 2: be a part of what he sees here, and he
Speaker 2: sees that the main thing he needs to do is
Speaker 2: he needs to become an artist.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think most people become artists in real
Speaker 3: life because they have an affinity for it or perhaps
Speaker 3: some sort of innate talent. Walter, as we see, doesn't
Speaker 3: really have either of those things. It's like you said,
Speaker 3: it's just logically he wants to be a part of
Speaker 3: this social group, and the way to do that is
Speaker 3: to be a popular artist amongst this social group.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Unfortunately, they're not they're not looking to let anybody in.
Speaker 2: Certainly they're not looking to let him in. They're very
Speaker 2: that everyone, with the exception of Clara, are pretty pretty
Speaker 2: clear on this right that that he does not belong.
Speaker 2: He's only here to pick up the coffee munks and
Speaker 2: so forth. So that's part of it. But he doesn't
Speaker 2: seem to be drawn to the creative side of art
Speaker 2: so much. He's drawn to the prospect of social belonging
Speaker 2: and ultimately fame. But he doesn't put the time in.
Speaker 2: And perhaps part of that is he doesn't know how
Speaker 2: to put the time in. You know, he's he's, I guess,
Speaker 2: exposed to this like very poetic vision of what creative
Speaker 2: he is. That Maxwell is spouting the idea that, like,
Speaker 2: you know, creativity is just something that like the artist
Speaker 2: breathes in and out, and it's not implied that it's
Speaker 2: something that imployed, that takes work and dedication, that you
Speaker 2: may fail at a lot before you get somewhere. And
Speaker 2: so he also doesn't know how to fail. He doesn't
Speaker 2: know how to set goes. He doesn't have any of
Speaker 2: these tools, and he's also probably you know, supposed to
Speaker 2: 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 Carla, 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 Bean knows, Pia knows, and he doesn't know. He
Speaker 3: doesn't know how to actually do these things. He isn't
Speaker 3: going through the steps. He just wants instantaneously, like he said,
Speaker 3: to like breathe out the art and it exists.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's hitting that. I've heard it called creative Cliff
Speaker 2: and and I. And it's interesting because I think you
Speaker 2: know everyone out there, you know, myself included. I'm sure
Speaker 2: you've had this experience. We've all had those b and
Speaker 2: O's moments of the things we're working on where you
Speaker 2: just you you can't do make the thing happen, and
Speaker 2: and it's frustrating, and ultimately you know you have to
Speaker 2: you have to stop, you have to come back. But
Speaker 2: but again, he hasn't been trained any of that, He
Speaker 2: hasn't been told any of that. He hasn't been picking
Speaker 2: up on a culture that that that that that that
Speaker 2: says that that is a part of the the of
Speaker 2: being a creative person and engaging in creative endeavors, so
Speaker 2: he just gets super frustrated. Uh and and doesn't know
Speaker 2: how to move forward. Poor guy. Yeah, but we have
Speaker 2: to stress that he is, at least initially a very
Speaker 2: likable guy. He's you know, he's he's supposed to be
Speaker 2: a bit dim witted. He's supposed to still, you know,
Speaker 2: be a nice guy. He wants to make friends. Nobody
Speaker 2: else is letting him in or giving him a chance
Speaker 2: except maybe Carla, and uh yeah, yeah. At the same time,
Speaker 2: all he's exposed to is this culture of there is
Speaker 2: only art. You know. Maxwell's constantly talking about this in
Speaker 2: his poetry, like nothing else has value except art. Everything
Speaker 2: else serves art. And these are the ideas that take
Speaker 2: on literal weight and end up festering in his increasingly
Speaker 2: 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 2: Oh and the chef is a great idea because there's
Speaker 2: your instant template for a cannibal movie. Yes, yeah, different.
Speaker 2: Walter Paisley wants to be a fine chef, doesn't have
Speaker 2: the skills and ends up committing murder and cannibalism.
Speaker 3: I can and I bet I have seen that film.
Speaker 2: So yeah, let's get to the point. Because he's trying
Speaker 2: to create, he wants to create, and he's failing. He
Speaker 2: can't make a nose does not manifest out of the clay. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: the landlady, the nice but also nosey land lady who
Speaker 2: gets checking in on him, has a cat, a beloved
Speaker 2: cat that has somehow climbed into the wall, and he's
Speaker 2: got several things going and frustrated with the art, he's
Speaker 2: trying to cook some sort of dinner, and then it's
Speaker 2: clear that the cat is stuck in the wall. So
Speaker 2: he does what a rational person does. He decides to
Speaker 2: stab the wall to free the cat, and of course
Speaker 2: 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 cats is
Speaker 3: a big thing for a protagonist to do, to show
Speaker 3: that they are bikable 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 2: Yeah, he's trying to save it, he's trying to do right.
Speaker 2: But if the hideous fumble, the cat doesn't suffer mine
Speaker 2: just not too grotesque or anything. But he's left with
Speaker 2: this dead cat and something clicks in his head, right,
Speaker 2: he realizes this is the opportunity. You know, He's got
Speaker 2: Maxwell's poetic drivels running around his head and he realizes, Okay,
Speaker 2: there is something I can do here, and then you
Speaker 2: 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 form and ratios of body parts
Speaker 3: of a living creature, but he's got it overnight.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So he brings this this hideous sculpture in,
Speaker 2: which is just you know, supposed to be a dead
Speaker 2: cat covered in clay, and then there's a knife sticking
Speaker 2: out of it.
Speaker 3: I'd love that he didn't remove the knife.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he just left the knife in there. And you
Speaker 2: know it first, you know, he brings us in, and
Speaker 2: you know, Carla takes a look at it, and and
Speaker 2: also decantist takes a look at it, and you know,
Speaker 2: it's it's it's grim and Desanta's is pretty quick to
Speaker 2: want to just dismiss it. But but Carla's nice and
Speaker 2: she's like, I think you might have something here. And
Speaker 2: eventually Desanta's is like, okay, we'll put it in the corner.
Speaker 2: We'll see if anybody buys it. It can go in
Speaker 2: the corner of the coffee house and we'll just see
Speaker 2: what happens. He doesn't seem to expect much, but of
Speaker 2: course you know what's going to happen. It catches on.
Speaker 2: People are noticing this cool, hyper realistic sculpture of a
Speaker 2: dead cat.
Speaker 3: It's very telling and very accurate of the art scene.
Speaker 2: Well, is that you want to walk us through the
Speaker 2: escalation of these of these crimes each won a different
Speaker 2: artistic 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 beat nick's are really proud of him for making
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 2: I should add. They like it so much that there's
Speaker 2: this one lady who comes up to him at the
Speaker 2: coffee house and she just can't put it into words
Speaker 2: how beautiful the work is. So she gives him a
Speaker 2: 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, right, Someone came to see me at
Speaker 3: my house. And he's like, I'm an undercover cop. I
Speaker 3: saw that you were handed heroin. I'm gonna have to
Speaker 3: 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 know,
Speaker 3: horse and he's like, oh it wasn't that nicerver to
Speaker 3: give me that nice horse?
Speaker 2: Yeah, 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 going to shoot you. I'm
Speaker 3: just saying I'm a cop. I'm arresting you. Let's go.
Speaker 3: And 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 screen, but later we will see just cleaves
Speaker 3: his head right down the middle with this with this
Speaker 3: very slim pan. So first death was an animal and
Speaker 3: it was an accident. Second death undercover cop quote unquote
Speaker 3: self defense. Let's let's see where this keeps going. So
Speaker 3: obviously there's the pattern here. So he covers this undercover
Speaker 3: cop in clay, and I suppose we'll kind of let
Speaker 3: this part happen. So the first person to realize what
Speaker 3: Walter is doing is Leonard, the guy that owns the
Speaker 3: the art house, the coffee shop at the yellow door,
Speaker 3: and he sees it because I believe the cat statue
Speaker 3: tips over and just a little piece of fur is
Speaker 3: poking out, and he's like, oh, you hack, fraud, you weirdo.
Speaker 3: What do you do in trying to cover a dead
Speaker 3: cat and clay and put it in my coffee house?
Speaker 3: This is ridiculous. So he's about to like go tell
Speaker 3: it to Walter and get mad at him, when someone
Speaker 3: comes in, let's call it a square page comes in
Speaker 3: and it's like, I need that cat sculpture. I'll pay
Speaker 3: you ten times what you ask for. It's getting I
Speaker 3: must have it. I must have it. And at first
Speaker 3: he's like, no, I'm not going to sell you a
Speaker 3: dead cat covered in clay. He's like, I'll double it
Speaker 3: and he's like, oh no, no, no, I can't do that.
Speaker 3: I'll triple it.
Speaker 2: 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 2: 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.
Speaker 2: No, no big deal.
Speaker 3: 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 2: Yeah, Like Maxwell comes to his defense. It's like, don't
Speaker 2: 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 uh 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 2: Yeah, going on, it's a little sabbatical here, and he's
Speaker 2: clear he's not. He's like, yeah, don't don't make any
Speaker 2: more art just yet, because again money. But also yeah,
Speaker 2: he knows that what then what another piece would mean?
Speaker 2: And he's probably, you know, juggling around this idea is like,
Speaker 2: am I an accessory to murder at this point? And
Speaker 2: then also you can imagine he's telling himself but hey,
Speaker 2: nobody else has to know that. I know, I can
Speaker 2: just be as surprised as everyone else when this eventually
Speaker 2: blows up up. But I can make a little bit
Speaker 2: of 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: a lot of just people lurking there that aren't actually
Speaker 3: giving Leonard any money. So moving on, the next time
Speaker 3: we see Walter Paisley, suddenly he's got a little money
Speaker 3: in his pocket. He has two successful sculptures. He comes
Speaker 3: into the Yellow Door not as an employee, but as
Speaker 3: a guest's He's bought a fancy, new beat nick outfit.
Speaker 3: He's walking around like a little walking stick that he
Speaker 3: refers to as his zen stick, which is just remarkable,
Speaker 3: and everyone's just fawning over him. Maxwell invites him down
Speaker 3: to be his special guest, et cetera, et cetera, and
Speaker 3: this is all wonderful. Walter is having the best time
Speaker 3: of his life. This is anything and everything he ever wanted.
Speaker 3: He's getting it. But then a artist's model who is
Speaker 3: often a part of this scene named Alice, who's been
Speaker 3: out of town for the past week or two. She says,
Speaker 3: she comes into the hangout and then like everyone's fawning
Speaker 3: over Walter, and she's confused because she's like what, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: I'm awesome. You guys are awesome. He's not awesome. He's
Speaker 3: just the bus boy. And they're like, no, no, he's
Speaker 3: an artist now. And he's like, no, y'all, y'all are
Speaker 3: putting me on, like this is just a joke for
Speaker 3: my benefit, Like he's just the bus boy. He get
Speaker 3: him out of here. Walter doesn't like this. He was
Speaker 3: just on the top of the mountain. He's not gonna
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So she goes to his place and now Walter
Speaker 3: is definitely crossing a line because you can see where
Speaker 3: this is going. He kills her. He strangles her with
Speaker 3: a scarf, and this one's just personal spite, like there's
Speaker 3: no self defense, there's no act. He is doing this
Speaker 3: because Alice was mean to him, and now he is
Speaker 3: he needs a body for the arts.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's it's very funny. I was thinking about this. This
Speaker 3: movie came out from the same writer director right before
Speaker 3: Little Shop of Horrors. Many similarities. This situation here, specifically
Speaker 3: is where it's like I gotta kill someone, well, you're mean,
Speaker 3: I guess, I guess you'll do. It's that same situation
Speaker 3: of a of a of a ne'er do well, kind
Speaker 3: of nebish guy just being like I need bodies.
Speaker 2: Here we go. And so now now he's going in
Speaker 2: cold blood and yeah, it's a character that she's not hateable, No,
Speaker 2: she's but she's not supposed to be one hundred percent likable.
Speaker 2: So you know, we're accelerating through that gray zone into like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's clearly he's a murderer at this point, but he
Speaker 2: hasn't attempted to murder anyone that we really like yet.
Speaker 2: And you know, especially in a genre picture like I
Speaker 2: guess we were more forgiving of that sort of thing,
Speaker 2: Like the threshold of the uncrossable transgression is is maybe
Speaker 2: 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
Speaker 3: stop stop, But he just keeps on doing his thing,
Speaker 3: and he's he's he's really like kind of like hitting
Speaker 3: the thesis on the head at this point because they
Speaker 3: threw like a big celebration for him where he got
Speaker 3: very drunk, and he's just kind of like lamenting and
Speaker 3: feeling kind of sad, and he starts like walking home
Speaker 3: alone by himself, and he literally says the phrase, I
Speaker 3: gotta do something before they forget. Yeah, it's just this
Speaker 3: this moment where it's like, yeah, that's a kind of
Speaker 3: all he has and all he wants is this moment
Speaker 3: of being in the spotlight and being admired. I don't
Speaker 3: want to put too many parallels here, but there's definitely
Speaker 3: some modern social media parallels there of things of just
Speaker 3: like I just got to do something for the gram.
Speaker 3: He's got to put something up on TikTok. It doesn't
Speaker 3: really matter what it is. I just need to stay
Speaker 3: in the spotlight for another minute, and kind of like
Speaker 3: we were saying before, where it's like he's not trying
Speaker 3: to get notoriety by being good at something. He's not
Speaker 3: trying to get notoriety because like he particularly loves making art,
Speaker 3: he just wants to be famous. And so again there's
Speaker 3: some social media parallels there of like just wanting fame
Speaker 3: for fame's sake, to fit in be a part of
Speaker 3: a social scene. And just like he said, I gotta
Speaker 3: do something before they forget. I just need to go.
Speaker 3: I just need to do And so here's here's where
Speaker 3: he crosses yet another line, a further escalation. He's walking
Speaker 3: home drunk from the yellow door, and he sees like
Speaker 3: a construction worker perhaps like making a furniture in like
Speaker 3: a little like outdoor kind of like alleyway workshop kind
Speaker 3: of thing, and he just kills the man. He cuts
Speaker 3: off his head with a like circular saw. Again, this
Speaker 3: is all Hayes coache, so we don't see anything. There's
Speaker 3: like no violence in any of this. And he makes
Speaker 3: a it's just the man's 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 2: That's his logical conclusion. Not this is the point where
Speaker 2: I call the police or even like set opposite like
Speaker 2: convince everyone, like now I realize what's up. He's like,
Speaker 2: 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 this,
Speaker 3: and this is actually very accurate. He gets a fifty
Speaker 3: percent cut of the sales of the pieces, and in fact,
Speaker 3: we do see him take advantage of Walter early on.
Speaker 3: The dead Cat was originally being sold I believe for
Speaker 3: a hundred, and so Walter would have gotten fifty, and
Speaker 3: he would have gotten fifty. But the when he was like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna sell, I'm not gonna sell. I believe,
Speaker 3: it went all the way up to five hundred. But
Speaker 3: when he paid Walter, he still only paid him fifty dollars.
Speaker 3: So Leonard is a villain here and he is taking
Speaker 3: advantage of Walter, but he really needs this money. So
Speaker 3: he's gonna do an art show and it's gonna bring
Speaker 3: in everybody. And so they do it. They bring him
Speaker 3: this big art show. Got a dead cat, got a
Speaker 3: dead cop, got a dead art model, got a dead
Speaker 3: construction worker's head on a stick, all covered in clay,
Speaker 3: and everyone's loving it. There's an art critic there saying, oh,
Speaker 3: I'm going to write this up and all these pieces
Speaker 3: are gonna 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 2: Oh yeah, And now he's really crossed that line, Like
Speaker 2: now he's in the in the unredeemable area here because
Speaker 2: he's decided, well, if you're not going to be my partner,
Speaker 2: 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: I think bumps into Oh no no. I believe they
Speaker 3: see a fingernail poking out of the alice sculpture and
Speaker 3: they're trying to figure out what it is. Then someone
Speaker 3: knocks over one of them and it cracks open, and
Speaker 3: like so the cat is out of the bag. Everyone knows,
Speaker 3: 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: almost like making bad in a way. You're okay with
Speaker 3: this character at first, and you just see them getting
Speaker 3: worse and worse and worse, and by the end you're like, no,
Speaker 3: I'm not with them. They're making they've made too many
Speaker 3: bad decisions against people. I like, I'm not in at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is like a lot of these
Speaker 2: the pictures of this time period, Like this is a
Speaker 2: very short run time sixty five minutes, so everything is
Speaker 2: very economically presented, like beat to beat. You can follow
Speaker 2: 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 me
Speaker 3: by myself to rotoscope an entire feature length film. But
Speaker 3: I did plan it all out, and the idea and
Speaker 3: all 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 I never finished it, but I used some clips
Speaker 3: in like animation reels that I used to like get
Speaker 3: real animation jobs.
Speaker 2: Oh that's good. It's a great idea for a project.
Speaker 2: I guess you didn't have a B and nos moment,
Speaker 2: but you had this moment that Walter never has, where
Speaker 2: where you realized how much work it would take and
Speaker 2: what it would take out of you, and what the
Speaker 2: returns would be based on this investment.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, and in some ways. Rotoscoping, 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 that,
Speaker 3: you know, every art project is achievable because you have
Speaker 3: infinite time in this world. Then you have to get jobs,
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: Looking back on Walter's creations like the first one is
Speaker 2: kind of an interesting stopping point because there are artists
Speaker 2: who use and have used animals and dead animals, and
Speaker 2: two varying degrees, either actually as part of the work
Speaker 2: as we see with Walter, or of course as inspiration
Speaker 2: anatomical studies. I'm, of course very much opposed to any
Speaker 2: kind of animal cruelty based artwork, but just the idea
Speaker 2: of like a dead animal being used in the art
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah. And of course there are artists who have also
Speaker 2: used either you know, anatomical fluids or parts or even
Speaker 2: cadavers to different degrees, human cadavers. But of course one
Speaker 2: of the key rules is you were not allow to
Speaker 2: make that cadaver yourself. And you need in any kind
Speaker 2: of fluids or parts you use, it needs to be
Speaker 2: above board, 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 2: Now another interesting theme that I like, we get, we
Speaker 2: get we get to see a little bit of this,
Speaker 2: reflections of it, perhaps in the like you know, the
Speaker 2: third act, I guess you know, where Walter is concerned
Speaker 2: about what's next and you know, how am I gonna
Speaker 2: again we talked about this, how you know, I've got
Speaker 2: to put up something else. I've got to stay in
Speaker 2: the conversation. And at the same time, like fear that
Speaker 2: they're going to find him out, He's going to realize
Speaker 2: that he's a fraud. So we have that interesting texture
Speaker 2: that he is, I guess quite literally a fraud and
Speaker 2: there is this dark secret and people don't know the
Speaker 2: dark secret of how he's creating the art and it's
Speaker 2: not based in his sculpting talent that has come out
Speaker 2: of nowhere, and so you know, it gets into that
Speaker 2: whole like fear that I think even very successful artists
Speaker 2: have that like they're going to see through me. They're
Speaker 2: you know, they're going to They're going to to to
Speaker 2: realize the insecurities that I have about my creations.
Speaker 3: Imposter syndrome for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And then also, you know, getting back to what you said,
Speaker 2: this idea of like how do I follow it up?
Speaker 2: Like what is the next thing that I have to do?
Speaker 2: And with Walter, like his pieces of art are literal crimes,
Speaker 2: they're literal, you know, traumatic experiences that you know, we're
Speaker 2: still taking a lot out of him, And yeah, we
Speaker 2: can sort of like roughly compare that to any creative
Speaker 2: process where it's like you put all this work into something,
Speaker 2: you know, you lose something in making it, maybe you
Speaker 2: don't even love the thing when you're done with it anymore.
Speaker 2: But it's and then there is either the overt demand
Speaker 2: or just the pressure you feel to like you've got
Speaker 2: to do something else. Now you've got to go perhaps
Speaker 2: 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: like when you think about like what are the extremes
Speaker 3: of where art can go? This is a logical, slippery
Speaker 3: slope conclusion is like murder. Murder can be the thing
Speaker 3: because because there are also versions of this. There was
Speaker 3: an artist, for example, that his art piece was to
Speaker 3: be shot. He stood in a gallery and got shot
Speaker 3: by a gun and that was his art piece that day.
Speaker 3: So so you know there are versions of this in
Speaker 3: the real world, and so it's it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then of course you also have
Speaker 2: the various wax museum pictures where a toy was some
Speaker 2: version of this as well. It's like the hideous secret
Speaker 2: behind these these wax doubles as that of course they're
Speaker 2: dead bodies that the wax master is covered up in wax. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an interesting concept that can be approached multiple boys.
Speaker 2: Now, i'd say with the ending of the film, it like,
Speaker 2: like you said, it's it's a pretty dark ending, but
Speaker 2: it also happens really fast. It has that kind of
Speaker 2: quick wrap up feel that you find in a lot
Speaker 2: of especially that crime pictures of the time period, even
Speaker 2: like very you know, superheroe, horror, sci fi things. It's
Speaker 2: like Enemy's Dead roll credits, so it's all very sudden
Speaker 2: and it's very much in keeping with the time period.
Speaker 2: But I found myself wondering again, he's just hanging up there,
Speaker 2: He's got some clay just smeared on him. What if
Speaker 2: they'd gone in a different direction, And what if Walter's
Speaker 2: final creation, his own death was beautiful. What if it
Speaker 2: had been transcendent? What if it had been sublime? It
Speaker 2: would have been really in keeping with the feel of
Speaker 2: the film. But I can't help but imagine what that
Speaker 2: would have I guess it would have skewed the message
Speaker 2: of the film and perhaps an undesirable direction, But it
Speaker 2: might have also been just a little less dark in
Speaker 2: 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 2: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, the the cult
Speaker 2: of the the the young artist that has we've tragically lost.
Speaker 2: But also just like the idea, like the cult of
Speaker 2: the young artist. I was listening to an MPR piece
Speaker 2: before this recording and the expert I'm sorry, I don't
Speaker 2: I don't have the information in front of me. I
Speaker 2: can't remember what the expert's name was, but he was
Speaker 2: talking a bit about like this this myth, like the
Speaker 2: basic myth that, like real creativity, it comes young and strong,
Speaker 2: you know, And it's the sort of creative myth that
Speaker 2: ends up having a negative impact on a lot of us.
Speaker 2: And you can imagine that sort of myth impacting the
Speaker 2: fictional Walter Paisley as well, Like, you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: a natural talent, then I must be lost. There's nothing
Speaker 2: I can do, And that's that's not 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 2: I think my final thought well on this film would
Speaker 2: be I was really expecting someone to say daddy O
Speaker 2: at some point, and no one ever did. And it
Speaker 2: makes me wonder. I've never researched when daddy O entered
Speaker 2: public usage or becomes associated with Beatnicks. Maybe I'm going
Speaker 2: 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 fifties,
Speaker 3: and it was only popular enough to make two issues
Speaker 3: and then it was canceled. And the thing I remember
Speaker 3: in their slang is they use the word reat all
Speaker 3: 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 2: It was.
Speaker 3: It's fascinating seeing those little like time capsules.
Speaker 2: All right, seth, Well, this has been a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on the show to discuss a Bucket
Speaker 2: of Blood from nineteen fifty nine. Yeah, a lot to
Speaker 2: chew on with this one. Tell folks out there where
Speaker 2: they can find Rusty Needles Record Club and how they.
Speaker 3: Can get in touch with you, absolutely so. Rusty Needles
Speaker 3: Record Club is a weekly podcast, new episode every Friday,
Speaker 3: and it's a podcast in the style of how podcasts
Speaker 3: used to be. Remember the old days folks like around,
Speaker 3: like let's say two thousand and four, when people made
Speaker 3: podcasts just for fun and didn't put ads in them
Speaker 3: and just kind of like, yeah, they were personal and
Speaker 3: simple and very niche. That's what Rusty Needle's Record Club is.
Speaker 3: It's a two thousand and four style podcast. And if
Speaker 3: you like music and you want to expand your musical horizons,
Speaker 3: or perhaps you just don't have anyone around you that
Speaker 3: you can have those kind of conversations with. You can
Speaker 3: at least have like a parasocial relationship with me and
Speaker 3: my co host Scott as we talk about music. Our
Speaker 3: goal of the podcast is to listen to every single
Speaker 3: album ever made, and so far we're doing great. It's
Speaker 3: we are progressively moving towards that direction. So if you
Speaker 3: want to join us, just look up Rusty Needles Record
Speaker 3: Club anywhere you listen to podcasts. We're available everywhere, and yeah,
Speaker 3: you'll find it. It's easy, that's it. I join us
Speaker 3: if you feel like it.
Speaker 2: All right. As for Weird House Cinema, of course, Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science podcast, with
Speaker 2: core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but on Fridays we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema. If you want a
Speaker 2: nice list of all the films we've covered so far
Speaker 2: in the show, including I guess three episodes with you
Speaker 2: now seth because during Joe's Brintal leave we covered two films,
Speaker 2: I think, right. If you want to find all of those, well,
Speaker 2: you can find a nice list at letterboxed dot com.
Speaker 2: It's L E T T E R B O x
Speaker 2: D dot com. Our username is weird House. There's a
Speaker 2: nice list there. Dive in there, find something you've never
Speaker 2: seen before, or find something you want to revisit. It's
Speaker 2: a great tool to use. And yeah, in general, I'll
Speaker 2: just ask everyone out there, Hey, if you've never rated
Speaker 2: and reviewed the podcast on one of the many platforms
Speaker 2: where you can get it, why don't you do that?
Speaker 2: That could help us out. Another thing, if you listen
Speaker 2: to this on Apple on Apple device, just maybe pop
Speaker 2: in and make sure that you're still still subscribe, you're
Speaker 2: still getting downloads. That also helps us out in the
Speaker 2: long run. Thanks as always to our excellent producer JJ
Speaker 2: for helping put together the show here and if you
Speaker 2: want to get in touch with me and or Joe,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.