The film, produced on a $50,000 budget, was shot in five days[2] and shares many of the low-budget filmmaking aesthetics commonly associated with Corman's work.

[4] Written by Charles B. Griffith, the film is a dark comic satire[2][5] about a dimwitted, impressionable young busboy at a Bohemian café who is acclaimed as a brilliant sculptor when he accidentally kills his landlady's cat and covers its body in clay to hide the evidence.

The film has also been praised in many circles as an honest, undiscriminating portrayal of the many facets of beatnik culture, including poetry, dance, and a minimalist style of life.

However, by setting the story in the Beat milieu of 1950s Southern California, Corman creates an entirely different mood from the earlier film.

He stops when he hears the meowing of Frankie, the cat owned by his inquisitive landlady, Mrs. Surchart, who has gotten himself stuck in Walter's wall.

The next night, Walter is treated like a king by almost everyone, except for a blonde model named Alice, who is widely disliked by her peers.

He claims he and screenwriter Charles B. Griffith developed the idea for producing a satirical black comedy horror film about the beatnik culture.

[12] Corman says that the genesis of the film was an evening he and Griffith "spent drifting around the beatnik coffeehouses, observing the scene and tossing ideas and reactions back and forth until we had the basic story.

"[13] The director says by the end of the evening they developed the film's plot structure,[2] partially basing the story upon Mystery of the Wax Museum.

[15][16] According to actor Antony Carbone, "[The production] had a kind of spirit of 'having fun,' and I think [Corman] realized that while making the film.

",[17] a reference to cartoonist Jules Feiffer's popular Village Voice comic strip and his 1958 book with the same title.

[citation needed] According to Tim Dirks, the film was one of a wave of "cheap teen movies" released for the drive-in market.

The film was acquired by MGM Home Entertainment upon the company's purchase of Orion Pictures, which had owned the AIP catalog.

"[22] In a retrospective review, Sight & Sound referred to the film as "Corman's best work" with "hilarious dialogue and a finale reminiscent of Fritz Lang's M" and that his "low-budget comedy horror pic works both as satire at the expense of the Beat generation and as a trenchant little allegory about the New York art world in general.

"[23] Corman later said the film "wasn't a huge success, but I think we were ahead of our time because The Raven, which is a triumph, is far less funny.

The cast also included cameos by David Cross, Paul Bartel, Mink Stole, Jennifer Coolidge and Will Ferrell.

[25] It opened September 26, and closed October 31, 2009, garnering exceptional reviews,[26] including a recommendation from the Chicago Reader.

[28] In March 2023, the La Mirada Theatre premiered a musical adaption of A Bucket of Blood entitled Did You See What Walter Paisley Did Today?

The show featured a libretto by Randy Rogel and choreography by Connor Gallagher, as well as direction by BT McNicholl, and ran from March 16, 2023 to April 2, 2023.