Candy is a wannabe starlet new to Hollywood who hooks up with low-budget outfit Miracle Pictures and starts making B-movies. When a series of fatal accidents on set start happening she begins to suspect there's a killer on the loose.
Every movie director has to start out somewhere - writing, editing, MTV, commercials, what have you - Dante and Arkush's unique approach was to crib a bunch of action footage from other movies and use it to flesh out this no-budgeter about the trials and tribulations of an aspiring actress. The sheer impudence of the concept is pretty funny but the movie more than makes up for its exploitation pedigree with lots of great lines, tomfoolery acting and a nicely-observed dramatic innocence. If you like quality and professionalism give this a wide berth, but if you're willing to go with the flow there's a lot to enjoy here. Chiefly, there is the cast; Rialson is wonderfully sweet and sexy, Miller is terrific as the brown-jacketed agent Walter Paisley (his character's name in A Bucket Of Blood), gamely plugging all his cheesy lines, Bartel is hilarious as the motivation-seeking, riding-crop-sporting Von Stroheim director, Woronov is absolutely stunning in probably her definitive bitch-goddess performance, and George and Stroheimer are both super-groovy. This movie is fairly hard to describe - the editing is insane, the film stocks don't really match much, the sound is appalling, there's a weird band called Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen that show up half way through and a three-minute montage of freeway shots for no reason other than to pad the running-time. It should be dire, but it isn't at all; like most of the seventies New World Pictures it was made by very talented people and some scenes - like the Argento-style stalking of George - are a model of clever technique, and all the in-jokes will keep moviehounds chuckling throughout. No less than seven interesting directors worked on this movie - Dante and Arkush, Bartel, Kaplan and McCarthy in the cast, co-editor Amy Jones and production assistant Barbara Peeters. Watch out also for a cameo by Charles B. Griffith as the drunken pool guy - he was a fantastic writer who scripted lots of Roger Corman's classic monster movies. For the purists, the Phillipines action film shots are really Jack Hill's 1971 The Big Doll House, the weird monster movie is Thomas Colchart/Francis Coppola's 1962 Battle Beyond The Sun, the futuristic cars are from Bartel's 1974 Death Race 2000, and the drive-in movie clip with Miller and Boris Karloff is Corman's 1963 The Terror. This is a real seventies time-capsule and it saddens me slightly that both Rialson and Arkush never really made it bigger; she quit acting not long after and while he made some good films subsequently (particularly Rock 'n' Roll High School and Heartbeeps) he never really got the credit he deserved. Catch this obscure flick if you can though. My favourite scene is Woronov's gin rummy game - if you don't laugh at it, you're a lost cause. And remember the motto of Miracle Pictures - if it's a good picture, it's a Miracle !
Every movie director has to start out somewhere - writing, editing, MTV, commercials, what have you - Dante and Arkush's unique approach was to crib a bunch of action footage from other movies and use it to flesh out this no-budgeter about the trials and tribulations of an aspiring actress. The sheer impudence of the concept is pretty funny but the movie more than makes up for its exploitation pedigree with lots of great lines, tomfoolery acting and a nicely-observed dramatic innocence. If you like quality and professionalism give this a wide berth, but if you're willing to go with the flow there's a lot to enjoy here. Chiefly, there is the cast; Rialson is wonderfully sweet and sexy, Miller is terrific as the brown-jacketed agent Walter Paisley (his character's name in A Bucket Of Blood), gamely plugging all his cheesy lines, Bartel is hilarious as the motivation-seeking, riding-crop-sporting Von Stroheim director, Woronov is absolutely stunning in probably her definitive bitch-goddess performance, and George and Stroheimer are both super-groovy. This movie is fairly hard to describe - the editing is insane, the film stocks don't really match much, the sound is appalling, there's a weird band called Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen that show up half way through and a three-minute montage of freeway shots for no reason other than to pad the running-time. It should be dire, but it isn't at all; like most of the seventies New World Pictures it was made by very talented people and some scenes - like the Argento-style stalking of George - are a model of clever technique, and all the in-jokes will keep moviehounds chuckling throughout. No less than seven interesting directors worked on this movie - Dante and Arkush, Bartel, Kaplan and McCarthy in the cast, co-editor Amy Jones and production assistant Barbara Peeters. Watch out also for a cameo by Charles B. Griffith as the drunken pool guy - he was a fantastic writer who scripted lots of Roger Corman's classic monster movies. For the purists, the Phillipines action film shots are really Jack Hill's 1971 The Big Doll House, the weird monster movie is Thomas Colchart/Francis Coppola's 1962 Battle Beyond The Sun, the futuristic cars are from Bartel's 1974 Death Race 2000, and the drive-in movie clip with Miller and Boris Karloff is Corman's 1963 The Terror. This is a real seventies time-capsule and it saddens me slightly that both Rialson and Arkush never really made it bigger; she quit acting not long after and while he made some good films subsequently (particularly Rock 'n' Roll High School and Heartbeeps) he never really got the credit he deserved. Catch this obscure flick if you can though. My favourite scene is Woronov's gin rummy game - if you don't laugh at it, you're a lost cause. And remember the motto of Miracle Pictures - if it's a good picture, it's a Miracle !