Synopsis for
A Bucket of Blood (1959) More at IMDbPro »

In a bohemian café in the low rent area of San Francisco as many artists, beat poets, and musicians hang around bus boy and waiter Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) wipes up the tables and longs to be part of the world of the bohemian arts in part because he has a crush on Carla (Barboura Morris) an artist who is friendly with the waiter. The cafe is also a place where undercover drug detectives prowl and uptown folks like to rub shoulders with the artists. Walter has no friends and spends his nights alone trying to sculpt in clay with no success until one night he accidentally kills his neighbors cat and in a demented moment of morbid inspiration he covers the cat in clay and takes it to the café where the beat crowd and especially Carla admire his new-found artistic verve and hail him as a new talent. Walter is beset on by his new-found public to create new real pieces and is dumbfounded as to where to start until Lou Raby (Bert Convy) tries to arrest him for possession of Heroin and Walter uses a cooking skillet to initiate a new piece that he covers in clay and takes to the café where his fans hail the piece as fabulous. Walter discovers that he needs to repeat his method of creativity over and again resorting to dispatching an average workman from the lumber yard, and then a young attractive model. When a showing of his art at the café results in the accidental uncovering of the true source of Walters art, he becomes a fugitive pursued by the artists who praised him, and he seeks refuge someplace where no one can follow.