Blood & Books
Despite the pandemic, the U.S. Golf and Tennis Opens, the Indy 500, the Stanley Cup playoffs and the NBA Finals all went off with barely a hitch. Now the World Series has been completed. Here are the Dodgers practicing social distancing while celebrating:
Here is the Halloween display of a Texas artist. Leatherface and Grandpa would approve:
Last night Movies!, channel 5–2 on over the air antennas in NYC, ran yet another flick I’d never seen: A Bucket of Blood (1959), a black comedy directed by schlockmeister Roger Corman. The story is simple: a failed sculptor finds success when he covers a dead cat in clay. Eventually, he does the same with people. It is not only a send up of art, artists and those who support them, but beatniks as well. It’s fun. The protagonist is played by Bronx-born Dick Miller, who has 184 titles under his name at IMDb. His name might not ring a bell but his face likely would to folks of a certain age. It might inspire a “Oh, yeah, that guy.” Also in the cast, two TV mainstays, Ed Nelson and Bert Convy. The former has 182 titles under his name. He did 514 episodes alone of Peyton Place. The latter, of course, was not only in films, on Broadway and TV but a frequent presence on game shows. The screenplay was written by Charles B. Griffith, a B movie maven who also has ten credits as an actor and six as a director. Among his most popular scripts are: Not of This Earth (1957), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), The Wild Angels (1966) and, most notably, The Little Shop of Horrors (1960). He also contributed to Barbarella (1968) and Death Race 2000 (1975). He had this to say about Corman: “The genius that he might have had is gone. He used to be full of ideas and Freudian concepts, and he’d throw these things out to the writers and get them all hot. They would work like crazy, but he would have forgotten what he wanted to do. He was only interested in saving money, so his intellect ground down to almost nothing.” And this about himself: “I was lazy. Instead of trying to write an A-picture and sell it on the market, I’d just go back and get another assignment from Roger.” Maybe so, but he had a significant impact on pop culture. His work endures. Kudos. All four men mentioned have passed away. Here is Griffith acting in his own creation, Little Shop…
And here’s Dick Miller in character in A Bucket of Blood:
And Bert Convy, who played an undercover cop, and the far out Ed Nelson:
The floating book shop opened four hours late today because of lingering drizzle. My thanks to the woman who bought two books in Russian, and to the one who purchased Tapestry by Belva Plain; and to the gentleman who chose a primer on the Post Office exam.
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