Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Please don't spend money on this.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Really boring film. Dick Miller is better in minor roles in Joe Dante films. He's really not a leading actor. Performances poor overall. Storyline is dull.Characters are dull. After the first accidental killing, the storyline becomes dead repetitive & predictable. There's really nothing worth hanging round for. I switched off before I could even get half way through.

Talent and good looks rarely go together. Dick Miller had the bad luck to combine a blue-collar face with a blue-collar voice, and suffered for it throughout his career. Such people are rarely successes in "leading" roles. Charles Bronson comes to mind, but he's barely a good actor. Miller is genuinely talented.His Walter Paisley (at one point the character wears a cravat with a paisley pattern) is played absolutely straight. He never winks at the camera or steps outside the character. He's a pathetic creature we sympathize with, even when doing horrible things. It is a finely nuanced, essentially perfect performance. That is not an exaggeration.Charles B Griffith's excellent script combines pointed satire, solid laughs, and genuine wit. Griffith did a lot of work for Roger Corman, and this is surely his best. The lesson to be learned is that you can't make a good movie from a bad script, but not even Roger Corman can ruin a good story.Griffith would go on to pen "The Little Shop of Horrors", which Dick Miller passed on, because he didn't want to do another film where he played a serial killer. This didn't help his career much, and today he's best-remembered as Mr Futterman in "Gremlins" and its sequel, as well as one of Lawrence Woolsey's cronies in "Matinee!". He is a beloved actor, and there aren't many actors, living or dead, who can claim that distinction.

..this film. I was often a fan of Dick Miller and his ensemble of characters in American International films, many who also were in Wasp Woman, War of the Satellites, and Little Shop of Horrors. But this was a gross disappointment. Corman tries a tepid effort to build sympathy for Miller as the main character, a waiter in a beatnik coffee shop who feels teased and rejected by the "in crowd" giving him some bizarre motive to plaster over a cat he stabbed by mistake, leaving the knife in! Why wouldn't everyone get suspicious about his sculpture with a knife sticking out of it? He kills a detective (Burt Convy) and plasters him over. Where is the missing persons bureau and a citywide search to find out what happened to him? And using a pizza pan..lethal force for sure. It's no wonder most of Convy's career remained on Match Game and Hollywood Squares quiz shows. What an embarrassment to anyone's resume.

Walter Paisley (Dick Miller) is a dim-witted busboy at the beatnik café The Yellow Door. He tries to make a clay sculpture at home. He hears Frankie the cat in his wall. He tries to get him out using a knife and accidentally kills him. He covers the cat with clay and he becomes the toast of the club with his amazing cat 'sculpture'. This sets him off on a serious of killings and cover-ups using his clay.It has some hilarious stuff with the slow innocent Walter. Director Roger Corman is making fun of the beatnik culture. Actually I don't find the beatnik stuff that funny and the music rather annoying. I guess you have to experience it at the time to truly feel the jokes. Walter turning evil isn't scary but it is good solid old-fashion horror. This is relatively well made despite its low budget.