Walter Paisley

Evil-doer
Full Name	Walter Paisley
Alias	"Hanging Man"
Origin	A Bucket of Blood
Occupation	Waiter Artist Murderer
Powers / Skills	Sculpting Expertise in Murder
Hobby	Sculpting Murder
Goals	Become cool among all the beatniks (succeeded) Murder people to make his statues Marry Carla, one of the attractive patrons (failed)
Crimes	Murder Animal cruelty
Type of Villain	Tragic Murderer

“	Be a nose. Be a nose!	„
	~ Walter Paisley

Walter Paisley is the main protagonist villain in the 1959 horror movie A Bucket of Blood. He was portrayed by the late Dick Miller.

Biography

Walter spends each night catering to vain, pseudo-cultured 'artists' who could care less for him. The exception being Carla, a regular at the coffee shop who is the only person who consistently treats Walter with some respect. Walter himself is somewhat of a hapless, clumsy dullard. Walter displays behaviors that are characteristic of an individual with a developmental disability. Being highly impressionable, he appears to have no principles of his own and a defective moral compass. His sense of right and wrong is entirely socially constructed.

Walter is impressed by the words of a poet, Maxwell Brock, who goes so far as to say that art is more important than the lives of human beings. Unfortunately, Walter takes this advice to heart. Walter is an aspiring sculptor who has zero artistic talent. He attempts to make the face of Carla, his muse. When he fails, he throws the clay around. Hearing his landlady's cat, Frankie, trapped in the wall, the attempts to cut open the wall with a knife. Instead, he accidentally stabs the cat. To hide the evidence, he covers the cat corpse in clay.

Soon, he presents the clay-covered corpse as a sculpture, and Lennard, impressed by it's supposed realism, decided to put it in The Yellow Door that night, splitting the profits with him. This makes Walter very popular quickly, so Leonard sends him home to make another sculpture. Before he does, a beatnik named Niolia hands him some drugs, much to the annoyance to Detective Lou, a undercover cop in the building.

The cop follows Walter back home, and tries to arrest him for having the drugs, but instead when he pulls out his revolver at Walter after he refused to be arrested, Walter freaks out and bashes him with his frying pan, killing the detective. Moments later, Walter's land lady arrived after hearing Lou’s death and tries to investigate the ruckus to no avail. Walter then decides to put clay over the body like what he did to the cat. At the same time, Leonard accidentally bumps into the cat, revealing to that the cat sculpture is a actual cat.

The next day, cops arrive in The Yellow Door, as Leonard tries to have Walter admit his cat sculpture to be a fake. But before this, he decides to reveal his next sculpture, the dead Detective Lou as "Murdered Man". Upon hearing this, Leonard tries to call the police to report on Walter’s murder but before he can, a rich collector stops him and buys "Dead Cat" for $500. Walter takes Carla and Leonard to his home to reveal "Murdered Man", as both are shocked by it's ugliness. As Carla adores it, Leonard gives Walter $50 and tells him not to come in The Yellow Door, knowing of it's real murderous identity. When collecting the money, Walter realized that he became a real artist much to his glee.

The day after, he shows up in the café anyway, where he makes friends with the other beatniks. However, one lady, nicknamed "Alice the Awful", dislikes his works. Later, he follows Alice home, and offers her $25 an hour if she can pose for him for his next work. Unbeknownst to Alice, his real intent is to murder her by choking her with a handkerchief. After the murder, Walter once again decides to make a sculpture but with her body this time.

Later, Walter heads to a group of beatniks in a house, revealing the sculpted Alice as his next work. The beatniks loved it and because of the “sculpture’s” beauty, Brock decide to set up a party for the villainous hero. At the party, Walter gets drunk and Maxwell delivers a poem in his honor.

After this, Walter goes home, beheading a factory worker to make a bust of the worker’s head in his drunken state. Later he shows this to Leonard, who realizes that he has to stop his friend's murderous rampage and promises him a show. He also proposes to Carla only to be rejected by her, much to his sadness and anger. Walter offers to sculpt her which she agrees to. However, Carla soon discovers Alice's exposed finger in the back of his show. When she informs Walter about the corpse, he tells her that he just "made her immortal", and he can do the same to her. This causes her to panic and flee from him which starts a chase with Carla being chased by Walter, and Walter himself being chased by the other patrons, who were now aware of his awful deeds.

They then end up in a lumber yard, but after being haunted by the voices of his victims, Walter stops and goes home. Walter then decides to "hide where they'll never find me", and when the others break into his house, they discover that Walter had hanged himself with a noose and covered him in clay to himself a sculpture just like all of his victims. Maxwell than remarks that Walter would have called it his masterpiece and named it "Hanging Man".