AMC MONSTERFEST SET 2: ROGER CORMAN

Four "b monster movies" from cult classic maker Roger Corman!

A BUCKET OF BLOOD(1959)

Quite a fun movie about a mis-understood accidental
sculpturer!!(Pun intended!!!) B-

A review from IMDb.com:

The great Roger Corman produced and directed this
cheerfully gory skewering of beatniks and the arts
community. Dick Miller plays Walter Paisley, a no-talent
busboy who idolizes the artsy types who frequent the
coffeehouse where he works. When Walter accidentally
kills his landlady's cat, he tries to hide the crime by
covering the kitty in clay, and is soon hailed as a sculpting
genius. Sure enough, the fickle arts community begins
clamoring for some larger work. As a horror movie, A
Bucket of Blood is merely okay, but it's great as a little
black comedy. Corman works in some nice gruesome
touches, such as backing up Walter's Big Emotional
Moment with a steady drizzle of blood from a victim's
arm. Most of the jokes aimed at the artists' pretensions
still seem fresh: When offering Walter some breakfast,
Maxwell announces that they're having "soy and
wheat-germ pancakes, organic guava nectar, calcium
lactate and tomato juice and garbanzo omelettes
sprinkled with smoked yeast." The free-verse parodies
are also very funny. Don't expect Bucket of Blood to
keep you up with nightmares, but do sit back and
prepare to enjoy a refreshingly sick sense of humor. --Ali Davis

Just when you think you know just how a movie is
going to end, it does!!(lol) Not terrible, but probably
wouldn't watch it again! C

A review from IMBd.com:

Janice Starlin, the owner of a cosmetics firm, sees
that her fading beauty is not only causing waves in
her personal life but causing some prestige problems
for her also-fading business. She becomes an easy
mark for a pseudo-scientist, Eric Zinthrop, who claims
to have developed a serum from the enzymes of
wasps that will turn aging skin to youthful-looking
skin. The second-best thing to a time machine.
She, without any hesitation, agrees to be the first
human to try the Zinthro injections. But, as her
beauty returns, her secretary, Mary Dennison, and
her advertising executive, Bill Lane, notices she
is also having a personality change and it isn't for
the better, albeit she was no Miss Congegeniality
to begin with. Then, Zinthrop gets hit by an
automobile, for plot-development purposes, and
is somewhat incapacitated and not in any shape
to be whipping up any new batches of Zinthrop's
Wasp Enzyme Injection Serum and without her
enzyme injections, Janice turns into a wasp-like
woman and meaner that a yellow-jacket hornet.
Several people don't live to regret coming into
contact with her, and this is not good for thebusiness,
either.... Written by Les Adams

The original with the great Jack Nicholson(not the
main actor!)!! While the re-make was fun with quite a
bit of tounge-in-cheek humor, this one is pretty much
played straight, imo! (If you can call a movie about
a man-eating plant straight.) B-

A review from Amazon.com:

Hilarious, cheapie black comedy from 1960 that may
be the best film by B-picture master Roger Corman,
other than Bucket of Blood, made about the same time
with the same writer, Charles Griffith. Seymour(Jonathan
Haze) is an assistant in a skid-row flower shop who's on
the point of losing his job when the unusual plant he's
developed turns the store into a major attraction.
The only problem is that the plant needs human blood
to live, all the while crying, "Feed me! FEED ME!"
Luckily, Seymour causes a series of inadvertent deaths
that more than make up for the food shortage. Jack
Nicholson provides a comic sidebar as a nutjob masochist
visiting a dentist's office. Giggling and wild-eyed from
the same impulse that might lead others to read scandal
sheets, he can be seen in the dentist's waiting room
reading aloud from Pain magazine. Famous for having
the shortest shooting schedule on record (two days
and a night) The Little Shop of Horrors spawned an
off-Broadway musical that was in turn made into
a successful film in 1986, starring Rick Moranis and
Steve Martin. It was in just this quick-shoot atmosphere
that Corman nurtured the careers of many of America's
most celebrated film directors; this little shop of
honors included Francis Ford Coppola, Peter Bogdanovich,
Martin Scorsese, and Jonathan Demme. The DVD(not
the one I have) has optional Japanese subtitles, very
generous bios of the stars and filmmakers, and a clean,
crisp transfer. --Jim Gay

A very interesting movie with the great Boris
Karloff and a very young Jack Nicholson!! Keeps
your interest trying to figure out what's the deal
with the woman! B-

A review from IMDb.com:

France, 18th century. Lieutenant Andre Duvalier
(Jack Nicholson) has been accidentally separated
from his regiment. He is wandering near the coast
when he sees a young woman (Sandra Knight) and
asks her for directions to Coldon, where he hopes
to rejoin his regiment. But the woman doesn't answer,
doesn't even greet him and walks away. Eventually
she takes him towards the sea, where she disappears
in rough water. Andre loses consciousness while
trying to follow her, and is attacked by a bird
and awakes in a house where an old woman
(Dorothy Neumann) claims never to have seen
the woman. After he leaves, he sees the woman
again, and while trying to follow her, is saved
by a man from certain death. Andre learns that
in order to help the girl, he must go to castle
of Baron Von Leppe (Boris Karloff), and when
he arrives, Andre sees the woman looking out
of a window. However, Baron Von Leppe is old
and seems reluctant to let Andre in... Written
by Arnoud Tiele (imdb@tiele.nl) and subs111

COMPLETE LIST OF DVDs
LIST OF MOVIE DVDs
LIST OF ANIME/ANIMATION DVDs
LIST OF BOND DVDs
LIST OF DISNEY DVDs
LIST OF ELVIS DVDs
LIST OF MUSIC DVDs
LIST OF STAR TREK/STAR WARS DVDs
LIST OF SUPERHERO DVDs
LIST OF TELEVISION DVDs

TO PHOTO PAGES OF MOVIES:

A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J-K
L
M
N
O
P-Q
R
S
T
U-V
W
X-Z

ANIME/ANIMATION
ANIME SUPERHERO
BOND
DISNEY
ELVIS
HOLIDAY
MUSIC
MUSICALS
OTHER
SERIALS
SETS #-M
SETS N-Z
STAR TREK/STAR WARS
SUPERHERO
TELEVISION A-B
TELEVISION C-D
TELEVISION E-F
TELEVISION G-H
TELEVISION I-K
TELEVISION L
TELEVISION M
TELEVISION N-O
TELEVISION P-Q
TELEVISION R
TELEVISION Gene Roddenberry
TELEVISION S
TELEVISION T
TELEVISION U-W
TELEVISION X-Z
TELEVISION STAR TREK/STAR WARS
TELEVISION SUPERHERO