“Roger Corman's notorious horror-comedy trilogy - A Bucket Of Blood, The Little Shop Of Horrors and The Creature From The Haunted Sea - was made in 1959 and 1960. Incredibly enough, although Corman had only begun directing in 1955, the trilogy pictures were, respectively, #s 23, 26 and 28 in his canon, following on the heels of classics like It Conquered The World, Attack Of The Crab Monsters, The Viking Women And The Sea Serpent, Teenage Caveman, The She-Gods Of Shark Reef and The Wasp Woman. Not for nothing was Corman called King of the Bs. Neither for nothing was he called the Fellini of Exploitation Pictures.
“Tonight we're showing Bucket and Horrors; Haunted Sea (with a monster that eats people and burps) is so silly that even card-carrying Corman fanatics have been known to pale at the prospect of sitting through it again.” --Michael Goodwin

“Clocking in at a mere 66 minutes, Bucket is one of those tight, perfect little films that give exploitation pictures a good name. Like all three of the horror-comedies, it was written by Charles B. Griffith - arguably the real auteur of the trilogy. Of particular interest is the fact that Bucket provides Dick Miller, one of the most talented comic actors in Corman's stock company, with a rare leading role as a busboy in a beatnik restaurant where ‘creativity' is the only measure of success. Miller is a likable schlemiel who hungers desperately after the rewards of creativity - girls, drugs, money - despite being totally untalented. Only when he accidentally kills his cat and covers it with clay do the beatniks realize there's a genius in their midst. Bucket is amazingly hip for a picture made in 1960, and it's also a great satire - not only on the Hollywood Beatnik phase of the 50's, but on Hollywood's general artsy-fartsy ambience as well. Shot on the cheap and in a hurry, using sets left over from another picture, it's Corman's first major film - and it holds up extremely well.”