Director: Roger Corman
Writers: Charles B. Griffith (screenplay)
Release year: 1959

The Picture That’ll Make You… sick sick SICK with Laughter!

The movie begins with a horrible beatnik poet reciting some terrible poetry and that made me almost put it off to watch The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant instead. But hey, since I watched the first minute, I might as well view the next 64. And I’m glad I did, ’cause it’s a pretty damn good black comedy.

The main character Walter is some sort of borderline retard working as a busboy in a beatnik cafe. The cafe is frequented by lots of horrible ‘cool cats’ from that time period and for some strange reason Walter looks up to them. Is it their beards? Their gay hats? Their previously mentioned horrible poetry? I’ll never know but fact is he does, and embarks upon a quest to become as hip as them.

His artistic voyage begins when he accidentally stabs his cat which was stuck in a wall and encapsulates it in clay. His ‘anatomically correct’ cat sculpture is a success, and when an undercover cop tries to arrest him for the drugs some beatnik whore gave him he freaks out, marking the birth of his next artwork ‘Murdered Man’. It makes him become a respected artist, and he even gets his own gay hat. Borderline retard or not, he notices a pattern in his success. The rest of the story you’ll have to see for yourself, but it’s worth it.