Get the Pointilism

B. Wolverton's artwork is aces
It features the freakiest faces
Grotesquely extending
contorting and bending
like pre-plastic surgery cases



All art by the late, great, Basil Wolverton.
Be sure to click on the image above to enlarge.
It's Wolverton Week at Limerwrecks.

Eye-da Lupino

Here's looking at Ida Lupino
She's hot as a green jalapeno
Director and star
in setting, bizarre
with eye on a pretty bambino

Pipe Scream

A plumber unclogging in Plano
used copious cupfuls of Drano
It started to rain
and back through the drain
exploded a sewage volcano.

Noir City , Part 5

They shoot and you stagger and sputter
then gasp as you fall in the gutter
Face down near a grate
you can't conjugate
No famous last words will you utter

This is Noir City, part 5 of 5. Photo: Hell's Kitchen by Weegee.

Pranksgiving

For vegans, whose tastes are quite quirky

Thanksgiving means basting tofurkey

Denying a ham
they dye pink a yam

The meal tastes like paste--it's a turkey

Happy thanksgiving! Image: Starlet Showcase.
We now resume Noir City, already in progress.

A Major Imp-position

Evil brats spend this day of festive-ing
raising Cain, as if tired of living
Their butts, on the map
for a justified slap
We wish them a happy SPANKS-giving!

Noir City , Part 4

Your killers are hot on your trail
You'd fight but you know that you'd fail
With ice picks and gats
they're swarming like rats
Fate's sharpened your coffin's last nail

Image: Killer's Kiss (Stanley Kubrick, 1955), from The Bleat.
This is Noir City, part 4 of 5.

Noir City, Part 3

You run but there's nowhere to hide
It's prison--you're locked up inside
You'll wriggle and squirm
but serve out your term
till gas chamber, noose, or you're fried

Noir City, part 3 of 5. Pic: Act of Violence (Fred Zinnemann, 1948)

Noir City, Part 2

You walk through the streets of the city
It's dark and it's sleazy and gritty
The sidewalks are cracked
the decks are all stacked
with "taps" the official town ditty

This is Noir City, part 2 of 5. Pic: A frame from Black Friday
(Arthur Lubin, 1940), from Six Martinis and the Seventh Art.

Noir City, Part 1

You've entered the city called Noir
You stumbled and fell, here you are
It's midnight and scary
and though you are wary
you'll leave in the trunk of a car

This is Noir City, part 1 of 5.

The Price is Righteous

Seems his kind of woman was she
and her kind of he-man was he
Their repartee snappy
the two were quite happy
till ham Vincent Price made it three


As gloriously hammy actor Mark Cardigan, Vincent
Price steals the show from Robert Mitchum, Jane Russell
and Raymond Burr in His Kind of Woman (John Farrow
[and Richard Fleischer, uncredited], 1952).

Passed Out of the Past

A common belief -- but mistake --
is Mitchum was just half awake
Big Bob was a guy
who liked to get high
More likely the dude was half-baked

Struck in Reverse

A movie that's set in reverse
is marketing move that's perverse
"The end" at the start?!?
Were they making "Art"?
Did actors, ass backwards, rehearse?



We're kidding, of course. Whether the movie is backward or not is a matter of opinion. Giant radioactive grasshoppers attack Chicago in Beginning of the End (Bert L. Gordon, 1957), as we back out of Sci-Fi Drive-In Week.

Tin Man Alley

At Earth the Venusians take aim
and so to Chicago they came
The city, alerted
was mostly deserted
except for a good looking dame

She wanders the now vacant streets
till traveling salesman she meets
Then drunks and a killer--
Is this a noir thriller?
A robot! Hang on to your seats


Richard Denning and Kathleen Crowley star
in Target Earth (Sherman A. Rose, 1954).
Though set in Chicago, Target was shot in LA.

The Trouble With Triffids

When meteors rained from the skies
all vision was stricken from eyes
Awaiting mankind
was fate less-than-kind:
carnivorous plants' food supplies


Janette Scott tries to avoid being planted in Day of the Triffids (Steve Sekely, Freddie Francis, 1962)

Red Ahead

The planet is angry and red!
Perhaps it was something I said?
Are aliens commies
who hate pie and mommies?
Or mad 'cause they haven't been fed?


Gerald Mohr and Nora Hayden star in Angry Red Planet
(Ib Melchior, 1960), which was written by a guy named Sid Pink.
Mucho gracias to Monster Movie Music and BADMOVIES.ORG

Gerald Mohr's film career might not have have been something
to shout about, but his sonorous baritone spoke volumes on radio.
It was there that Mohr worked in Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre
and played detective Phillip Marlowe. For more Mohr, click here

Big and Tall Menace

Watch bomb tests and you'll pay the piper
get shot at by crack army sniper
The growing will strain
your normal-sized brain
You'll crap in your giant-size diaper

The Amazing Collossal Man (Bert L. Gordon, 1957)
Welcome to Sci-Fi Drive-in Week at Limerwrecks.

Van Theft Auto

Today's generation is lost
seeks pleasure no matter the cost
For Mamie Van Doren
the hotrods are roarin'
Her heater does more than defrost

She couldn't be more than a child
but nothing about her is mild
She's tempting and tough
and likes her crowd rough
Miss Mamie Van Doren runs wild

Mamie joins a car theft ring in Running Wild
(Abner Biberman, 1955). We just ran out of
Mamie Van Doren Week at Limerwrecks.
By the way, Miss Van Doren is still going strong,
and even hosts an adults only homepage.

Cock-a-Mamie

Van Doren made plenty of Bs
in which she seemed eager to please
Production code snipses
filled scripts with ellipsis...
thus turning her into a tease

Vice Capades

The vice squad conducted a raid
and learned for what "models" were paid
The B-girls who posed
by cops were exposed
as working the world's oldest trade

Mamie Van Doren displays her talents in Vice Raid
(Edward L. Cahn, 1960) while dancing in a swimsuit.

Squeeze Player

Into dresses B's Mamie Van Doren
was not really stepping, but pourin'
She filled out a skirt
and spilled from her shirt
Her headlights so sharp they were goring


All photos from Untamed Youth (Howard W. Koch, 1957),
starring Mamie Van Doren, Lori Nelson and John Russell.
Photo source: Film Noir Photos, and Do You Speak English?

Pillar to Poster

At teenagers movies were aimed
with promise of passions inflamed
With ads, titillating
the kids they were baiting
but never delivered as claimed

Untamed Youth (Howard W. Koch, 1957) and Girls Town (Charles Haas, 1959)

Juvenile delinquent exploitation films from the 1950s
were typically more mild than wild. But here's a scene
from Girls Town that proved too racy for censors:

Getting High Scool

In high school the students confide
and drag-racers go for a ride
There's beatniks and drugs
a nympho and thugs
and sweaters with nothing to hide


Russ Tamblyn, Jan Sterling, Mamie Van Doren, and Diane
Jergens in High Scool Confidential! (Jack Arnold, 1957).

Explorin' Van Doren

If starring Miss Mamie Van Doren
a movie could never cause snorin'
Her shirts were so tight
she'd always excite
Unless you find pulchritude borin'


Welcome to Mamie Van Doren Week, big boy.
Sorry, mom! Photos: Doctor Macro

Sesame Street of Shame

Their mouths like a long gaping gash
With voices that make your teeth gnash
They're cuddly and cute
and colored like fruit
with unibrowed heads set to bash



A giant who's floppy and yellow
all feathery fluffy and mellow
Too bad his I.Q.
is lacking a few
His bird brain contains lemon jello

He's green and he's grouchy and brash

and lives in a can with the trash

Below the can's rim

where it's smelly and dim

he's hiding a horrible rash

Sesame Street has turned forty.

Bathing in Attention

O'er me, all the soldiers do gather

They drool as they bluster and blather

All squeaky and clean

I now have a sheen
Those soldiers worked up quite a lather

Miriam Hopkins in Becky Sharp (Rouben Mamoulian, 1935).

Double's Troubles

From money no danger deterred her
The ill-gotten gains only spurred her
The man she had married
he killed and she buried
Some accidents really are murder

Fred of Night

MacMurray was not always nice
He dabbled in murder and vice
He'd lie and he'd cheat
both sides of the street
till the Code made ol' Fred pay the price



Fred MacMurray plays a cop gone wrong in Pushover
(Richard Quine, 1954), with Kim Novak (top), Phillip Carey
(middle), and Dorothy Malone (above). Photos: Noir of the
Week, If Charlie Parker was a Gunslinger, Film Noir Photos.