Film Masters recently released an American International Pictures Blu-ray collection, featuring new restorations of Bucket of Blood (1959) and Dementia 13 (1963). Featuring a booklet, two commentary tracks, and other goodies, this collection features one classic and one not-so-classic picture. Both are extremely important film-history relics, though, and this new collection is very welcome.
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Despite the fact that his career as a filmmaker was less than 5 years old in 1959, Roger Corman already had more than twenty features under his belt by the time he shot A Bucket of Blood. While he already had a few future cult-classics to his name, A Bucket of Blood represented a real leap for Corman and his company.
A hip and funny satire on beatnik culture, posing as a horror film, A Bucket of Blood is still extremely funny and fresh, despite the fact that its Poe-like story of an artist driven to murder for his craft has been copied over and over again in the decades since. Starring a charmingly hilarious Dick Miller, A Bucket of Blood is both audacious and outrageous.
I’d only previously seen A Bucket of Blood in pretty piss-poor condition, so this new Film Masters Blu-ray is not only welcome, but it made me appreciate this incredibly sharp and wonderfully compact film even more. Running just over an hour, A Bucket of Blood is really a really endearing offering from the decade that gave us Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.
Pretty much everything about A Bucket of Blood works. From Charles B. Griffith’s perfectly-pitched screenplay to Jacques R. Marquette’s moody black-and-white photography to the snappy Fred Katz score, A Bucket of Blood is delightful and a real winner. Its place as one of Roger Corman’s best films is secure.
This Film Masters restoration comes from a new 2K scan from original 35mm materials. I haven’t seen the film’s previous Blu-ray, so I can’t compare the two, but I found this new scan mostly fine. It is a bit inconsistent, and the picture has been too cleaned up to my eyes, but compared to this is still miles above the older edition I had seen. Interestingly, Film Masters have also provided an untouched 16mm scan from Something Weird Video and AGFA. While this has a ton of print damage, I found it more pleasing than the 2K restoration at times.
Extras for A Bucket of Blood include both a printed essay and audio commentary by Tom Weaver. These are both great, and he lays down a lot of knowledge about the film and beyond. We also get an extra from Trailers From Hell and some other promotional material. While the 2K restoration might have been sharper, I still found this a mostly pleasing edition of a very special film.
Dementia 13
How many great filmmakers does it take to make a not-so-great film? In the case of Dementia 13, it took three: Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Hill, and Roger Corman. Another American International Pictures production by Corman, Dementia 13 has always stood out from the company’s other films of the period, simply because it was shot in Ireland. Beyond the now-legendary names in the credits, the Irish locations are the only really memorable thing about this patchy black-and-white thriller.
Coppola was nearing his 25th birthday when he wrote the screenplay for Dementia 13. By the time the film wrapped, Corman decided Coppola’s footage was so incomplete that he hired Francis’ fellow film student Jack Hill to essentially fill in the missing gaps. The final film feels as fractured as the tumultuous shoot pretty much promised it would be. The fact that Coppola was able to deliver films like The Godfather and The Conversation within a decade of this is crazy business. Talk about growth.
Focused on a young widow’s attempts to get her late husband’s family inheritance, Dementia 13 features a good cast, and there are moments when one senses that a real talent is behind the camera. Those moments are few and far between though, as Dementia 13 slogs to the 75-minute runtime Corman desired for distribution.
Shot by producer and novice cinematographer Charles Hannawalt, Dementia 13’s black-and-white photography never rises above average. Even less inspiring is the film’s editing, credited to Stuart O’Brien and Morton Tubor, which ensures the film feels much, much longer than its slight length.
Despite the film’s many faults, there is no questioning Dementia 13’s significance in film history. Without this lethargic little film, we’d perhaps never gotten masterpieces as wildly diverse as Switchblade Sisters and Apocalypse Now. Let that sink in. Of course, that is really the power of a lot of these early Corman flicks. It is what came after that makes so many of them so interesting.
Scanned in HD from original 35mm archival elements, Dementia 13 looks decent enough on this new Film Masters release, although fans hoping for an eye-popping restoration will be disappointed. Still, considering the public-domain hell this title has been in previously, this new Blu-ray looks more than acceptable. Extra-wise, we get an informative commentary track from Heath Holland of Cereal at Midnight, a printed Tom Weaver penned essay, and an interview with Jack Hill.
-Jeremy Richey, October 2026-
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