They commissioned him to make a commercially viable piece of popular entertainment: he wanted to make a work of art.
--Simon Callow, Orson Welles: One-Man Band , Viking (2015)
In America artistic movies are usually not made that way intentionally. Welles always tried to make works of art and always ran into problems; Blake Edwards would always make commercial films, such as the Inspector Closeau films, in order to make more personal works and, of course, there are a few true artists --John Ford, Charlie Chaplin -- who produce popular entertainment with true artistry. Roger Corman made works of art simply by not trying to, hiring skilled writers, such as Charles Griffith, who tapped unintentionally into the unconscious zeitgeist in the always commercially successful horror genre. Bucket of Blood , 1959, stars Corman stalwart Dick Miller as a busboy in a beatnik café, complete with poetry readings and folk songs, who accidentally kills a cat and then gets the brilliant idea to cover it with clay and present it as a sculpture. Soon he starts killing people. covering them with clay, and exhibiting them with titles such as "murdered man." He is soon discovered by critics, who acclaim his impressive return to realism as compared to the current murky abstractions of modern poetry and painting.
Corman says that he and his writer and crew were part of the beatnik scene themselves, the satire of which in Bucket of Blood is affectionate, with the coffee house (The Yellow Door) containing almost as many undercover narcotic detectives as beatniks. The movie is an effective satire on the American desire of success at any price and a poignant tale of a search for love by those who will do anything to find it.
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