The Terror / Bucket of Blood

Studio: Diamond Ent. Corp.
Product Type: DVD

Roger Corman Classics - Collection 1 (A Bucket of Blood, Little Shop of Horrors, The Terror, The Wasp Woman)

Average customer rating:

after the botched jobs a.m.c. did to the bela lugosi collection i was worried about this one but they got it right this time
Correction
Scary Cult Classics!!!

Roger Corman Classics - Collection 1 (A Bucket of Blood, Little Shop of Horrors, The Terror, The Wasp Woman)
Starring: Roger Corman
Manufacturer: Genius Entertainment
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0000JBUIC
Release Date: 2003-10-21

Description

4 Movies on 2 DVD's
Digitally Re-Mastered

A Bucket of Blood (1959) From the director of Little Shop of Horrors, this earlier feature has a similar mix of ironic humor and icky gore.

Little Shop of Horros (1960) In two days, Roger Corman directed this funny cult horror classic that chronicles a flower-shop assistant's dilemma with a demanding, vociferous carnivorous plant.

The Terror (1963) Napoleonic officer (Jack Nicholson) pursues a mysterious woman to the castle of a baron. He encounters a witch bent on driving the baron to suicide.

The Wasp Woman (1960) A vain, youth obsessed owner of a cosmetics firm turns into a man-killing wasp woman after ingesting wasp-derived serum created by a zany scientist.

Customer Reviews:

after the botched jobs a.m.c. did to the bela lugosi collection i was worried about this one but they got it right this time.......2006-04-27

a.m.c. is still on my list of bewere of buys because of some of there other collections(the bela lugosi collections), but my love for roger corman over came me and i'm glad.
this is as good a transfers of these movies as i have seen,no extras ,but they do look great. for the price you can't go wrong.

Correction.......2003-11-23

Little Shop of Horrors does not star Jack Nicholson as Semour, rather Mr. Nicholson appears as a creepy dentist patient with a flair for all things unpleasent. His short performance alone would be worth the price of this DVD. But thankfully, the joys to be found in this strange film do not end there. Adding to the fun is Dick Miller (from Bucket of Blood) as a flower lover who takes his taste for botanicals to a new level. Speaking of Bucket of Blood, that is one creepy film. Stupid, but creepy. It also offers a first hand account of the 60s in a more bohemian way than many might be accustomed to. Dick Miller is nearly unrecognizable in a terriffic performance. If nothing else, seeing him and his massive transformation between Bucket of Blood (notice that the initials of this film spell BOB?) and Little Shop of Horrors is worth it. I have yet to see The Terror, but it looks great thanks to Mr. Nicholson again and Boris Karloff.

Scary Cult Classics!!!.......2003-10-22

A great collection of scary classics:

A BUCKET OF BLOOD stars Dick Miller who plays a nobody who gains fame among the beatniks. His realistic sculptures are made by covering dead bodies with clay. Watch out---you may just jump out of your own skin!!!

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS stars Jack Nicholson as a skid row flower shop owner facing a dilemma with a demanding carnivorous plant. Don't get too close to the screen---it might gobble you up!!!

THE TERROR stars Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson. Nicholson plays an officer in Napoleon's army who pursues a mysterious woman. The woman becomes the pawn of a old witch bent of driving a baron to suicide. Creepy atmosphere in a castle with a crypt.

Customer Reviews:

Roger Corman Double Feature.......2003-12-04

How much you like this Roger Corman double feature will depend, of course, on how much you like Roger Corman in general--the "King of the B's," a producer/director/writer with a knack for turning out inexpensive horror films on a tight schedule. Most often Corman's film were dive-in dreck, lame-brainers like ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, WASP WOMAN, and CREATURE FROM THE HAUNTED SEA. But as his career progressed, Corman did indeed begin to strike gold, keeping to his inexpensive budgets but luring big name stars like Vincent Price and Ray Milland for such films as THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM and X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES--movies that are classics of their kind and remain tremendous fun to watch to this day.

The films on this double feature disk fall somewhere between Corman dreck and Corman gold. According to film lore, Corman created THE TERROR in 1963 for the simple reason that when THE RAVEN wrapped he still had star Boris Karloff under contract for three days more--and not being one to waste a dime he quickly came up with a script that could play out on the earlier film's sets and be shot in less than thirty-eight hours.

THE TERROR concerns a young French solider (Jack Nicholson, who made several films with Corman early in his career) who is separated from Napoleon's army and finds himself drawn to an isolated castle by the charms of a lovely young woman (Sandra Knight)--but instead of finding her in residence encounters the Baron Victor Frederick Von Leppe (Boris Karloff), an elderly and possibly demented man still mourning the death of his wife some twenty years ago. The plot is loose, to say the least, and Nicholson is hardly any one's idea of a Napoleonic officer, but while THE TERROR isn't a great film by any stretch of the imagination it isn't a bad one either--for all its cliches and cheap manipulations, it manages to create an atmosphere that is surprisingly effective.

The second feature, however, is really the more interesting of the two. Starring Dick Miller (who also appears in THE TERROR), the 1959 BUCKET OF BLOOD reads very much like an extended episode from the classic t.v. series THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Walter Paisley (Miller) is a geeky wannabe who scrabbles a living as a waiter in a beatnik coffee shop--but when he accidentally kills his landlady's cat he covers it in clay to create an instant sculpture that makes a hit with the club's ever-so-artsy clientele. Needless to say, one thing leads to another, and before too long Paisley is making a hit with life-size sculptures as well.

What makes BUCKET OF BLOOD particularly interesting are Corman's florishes of black comedy, grotesque humor, and his constant jabs at the pseudo-artistic crowd that admire Paisley's work. In a year or so more, Corman would ravel much the same thread with the comic story of a mousy florist clerk who grows a sinister plant in the better known LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS.

The print of THE TERROR (which had Francis Ford Coppola as an assistant producer, no less) is in pretty bad condition: the film is presented in pan-and-scan, the colors are washed out and often fuzzy, and the film is riddled with blips, scratches, and various artifacts. But it is watchable, and I have to say I've never seen a really good print of this film in any release. BUCKET OF BLOOD fares better: while hardly pristine it is fairly crisp in its original black and white. The disk comes with a few lightweight but entertaining extras, including basic information on each movie, trivia, etc.; scene access, however, is extremely limited.

Neither of these films should be classed along side the best of Corman's work, but then again neither are they anywhere near the worst of his worst. If you're a Corman fan, they're must-have, and this two-for-one deal is a handy and fairly inexpensive way of picking up both.

Customer Reviews:

You Get What You Pay For: No Quality Here.......2006-06-29

PC Treasures has released several "Two Pack" DVDs of B movies, most particularly of horror films from the 1950s and 1960s. This particular edition includes THE SCREAMING SKULL, A BUCKET OF BLOOD, and HANSEL AND GRETEL, an early short by the legendary stop-motion master Ray Harryhausen.

Released in 1957, THE SCREAMING SKULL is one of those films that is more interesting in terms of its lurid poster art than in film content. Very, very loosely based on a famous short story by Francis Marion Crawford, it is the story of a wealthy but nervous woman who marries a sinister man whose first wife died under mysterious circumstances. Once installed in his home, she is tormented by a half-wit gardner, a badly done painting, shrieking peacocks, and a skull that rolls around the various rooms of the mansion.

The cast is actually above average, and actress Peggy Webber is good at screaming, but frankly the THE SCREAMING SKULL is so incredibly tiresome that it makes PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE look like an Ingmar Bergman film in comparison. Now and then you do come across a bad film that is so bad it is funny, but SKULL is not one among these; it is simply bad. And so is the print offered here. Indeed, it is so bad that about ten minutes into the film the sound went out of synch and they never got it back it again. The black and white is also very muddy.

A BUCKET OF BLOOD is a somewhat different matter: it will never make any critic's short list, but it is actually an interesting little film in its own right. Produced by Roger Corman and released in 1959, it offers the story of a geeky wannabe artist who works as a waiter in a beatnick cafe--and who meets with scant success until he accidentally offs his landlady's cat. To cover the crime he covers the cat in clay, the uppity artsy types down at the cafe go wild over it, and before too long he progresses to life-size scuptures.

The whole thing reads rather like an extended episode from THE TWILIGHT ZONE, but unlike THE SCREAMING SKULL it is well made--and it is also unexpectedly witty in its take on the 1950s beat scene. I have indeed seen better prints of BUCKET than the one included here, but this one isn't bad, the sound is okay and the black and white is reasonable. If you've never seen the film and you want to, well, you could do worse. On the other hand, you could also do a whole lot better.

HANSEL AND GRETEL, as previously noted, is an early effort by Ray Harryhausen. It is essentially the same fairy tale we've heard over and over all these many years, and while I would hardly call it a lost masterpiece Harryhausen's work is always worth a look. I note, however, that the color is somewhat washed out.

It is difficult to give an overall rating to a release that offers multiple titles on the same disk. A BUCKET OF BLOOD isn't a bad little movie and the quality is okay; the Harryhausen short is at least watchable. But THE SCREAMING SKULL is so unspeakably dire in film, sound, and print that I just can't bring myself to give the whole package more than a two. You usually get what you pay for, and the bargain price of this DVD package is a case in point.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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