Written and directed — in five days — at the apex of the Fifties (1954–63), Roger Corman‘s loopy, poorly lit, but inspired A Bucket of Blood satirizes two of the era’s key low-middlebrow cultural developments: beatnik culture and schlock horror. I describe these otherwise dissimilar phenomena as “low-middlebrow” because both smooth the edges off the uncanny and the alienating: schlock horror gives us lowbrow folktales without the hysteria, while beatnik gives us anti-highbrow Beat-ness without the exaltation. (Fans of Twilight or David Eggers, pay attention.) Not that I’m suggesting that Corman’s nobrow comedy-horror movie seeks to provide us with hysteria and exaltation. Far from it! Instead, via propaganda-film-esque blocking like that shown here, from a scene in which busboy-turned-murderous wunderkind sculptor Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) is anointed king of the scene, Corman reminds us (for the first time, though hardly the last) how pathetic it is that we’ve allowed ourselves to be persuaded to settle for anything less.

An occasional series analyzing some of the author’s favorite moments in the positioning or movement of actors in a movie.

THIRTIES (1934–43): It Happened One Night (1934) | The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) | The Guv’nor (1935) | The 39 Steps (1935) | Young and Innocent (1937) | The Lady Vanishes (1938) | Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) | The Big Sleep (1939) | The Little Princess (1939) | Gone With the Wind (1939) | His Girl Friday (1940)
FORTIES (1944–53): The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) | The Asphalt Jungle (1950) | The African Queen (1951)
FIFTIES (1954–63): A Bucket of Blood (1959) | Beach Party (1963)
SIXTIES (1964–73): For Those Who Think Young (1964) | Thunderball (1965) | Clambake (1967) | Bonnie and Clyde (1967) | Madigan (1968) | Wild in the Streets (1968) | Barbarella (1968) | Harold and Maude (1971) | The Mack (1973) | The Long Goodbye (1973)
SEVENTIES (1974–83): Les Valseuses (1974) | Eraserhead (1976) | The Bad News Bears (1976) | Breaking Away (1979) | Apocalypse Now (1979) | Caddyshack (1980) | Stripes (1981) | Blade Runner (1982) | Tender Mercies (1983) | Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life (1983)
EIGHTIES (1984–93): Repo Man (1984) | Buckaroo Banzai (1984) | Raising Arizona (1987) | RoboCop (1987) | Goodfellas (1990) | Candyman (1992) | Dazed and Confused (1993)
NINETIES (1994–2003): The Fifth Element (1997)
OUGHTS (2004–13): District 9 (2009)

Joshua Glenn’s most recent books (2012) are UNBORED: THE ESSENTIAL FIELD GUIDE TO SERIOUS FUN (with Elizabeth Foy Larsen); and SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS: 100 EXTRAORDINARY STORIES ABOUT ORDINARY THINGS (with Rob Walker).