Tomb

“Watch out! He’s got a knife! It’s a palette knife; he’s a surrealistic painter!”

The “mad artist” horror subgenre might be less popular than the venerable “mad scientist,” but it tends to be a lot more idiosyncratic. And why shouldn’t it be? Artists are supposed to be eccentric anyways. Film itself is an art, so portraying an artist as a frothing madman is a delicious form of self-parody. These madmen kill not in the name of science or profit, but in the service of creativity:

• Color Me Blood Red (1965). Splatter film innovator Herschell Gordon Lewis rounded out his famous “Blood Trilogy” (1963’s Blood Feast, 1964’s Two Thousand Maniacs!) with this macabre tale of a painter who finds that only human blood provides the sort of vibrant colour his paintings need.

• A Bucket of Blood (1959). Faced with the challenge of making a horror movie in five days with only $50,000, Roger Corman decided to take on the additional challenge of making the film funny. The result is A Bucket of Blood, a marvellously bizarre foray into dark humour and then-current beatnik culture. Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) is a hopeless schnook who desperately wants to win the approval of the beatnik crowd that populates a bohemian café. After accidentally stabbing his landlady’s cat, he covers the critter in plaster and passes it off as a sculpture. He’s immediately hailed as a genius sculptor, and is pressured into creating more art, which leads to bigger and more violent crimes. The film is thematically similar to the original Little Shop of Horrors (1960), which is not surprising since the films share the same creative team. The character of “Walter Paisley” appeared in several other films as an in-joke, and Dick Miller has played him six times to date.

• Special Effects (1984). The ever-intense Eric Bogosian plays a psychotic film director who kills a woman in his bedroom, realizes that he’s accidentally filmed the crime, and sets out to make a blockbuster movie out of the footage. He finds an actress who looks exactly like the dead woman (Zoe Tamerlis in a dual role), and casts her in the film that will climax with the snuff footage. Then the original murder film gets destroyed, forcing the mad director to “reshoot” the scene with the new actress. Yipee! Bogosian has fun with his role, bringing a touch of dry wit to his despicable character. Just before strangling a witness with a handful of 35mm film, he dismisses a simpler murder weapon with a wry “Nah, it’s been done.”

• Scanners (1981). David Cronenberg’s legendary “exploding head” movie offers a clever inversion of the “mad artist” motif. One of the characters actually uses art in order to remain sane. After a thalidomide-like drug causes several people to be born with psychic powers, the majority of these “scanners” go crazy thanks to all the voices in their heads. One guy manages to keep his sanity by becoming an artist; by sculpting, he’s better able to differentiate his own personality from the cacophony of other people’s thoughts invading his head.

• Murder Party (2007). Murderous artists are again played for laughs in this dark comedy. After accepting a handbill inviting him to a “murder party” on Halloween, a soft-spoken loner finds himself trapped by a gang of psychotic artists who plan on killing him. The joke is that everybody is an idiot, and nothing goes according to plan. One killer douses our hero with acid, only to find that “acetic acid” is just vinegar, and has no effect. Somebody gets chased with an electric chainsaw, but the device loses power when the extension cord runs out and the plug pops out of the wall. Near the end, a bunch of models lounge around an art studio, waiting to begin an exhibit in which they pose in tableaux. They get massacred by a killer, and when the audience finds their remains, they think it’s the exhibit. Naturally, they all think it’s brilliant.

• Playgirl Killer (1966). Unintended laughs abound in this highly entertaining piece of 1960s Canadian schlock. Co-writer William Kerwin stars as Bill, a frustrated artist who hates it when his models won’t hold still while he tries to paint them. Singer Neil Sedaka shows up long enough to apply suntan lotion to a girl’s back (“I’m sorry to leave you half-oiled, Arlene”), sing a song (“Waterbug”) and receive a paycheque. Kerwin works himself up to full-on bug-eyed insanity. A real treat.