Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Tiny Tots are Halloweeny

In October, love-bitten l'il fellas 
pitch proposals to big Vampirellas
But neck-biting Gidgets
reject monster midgets
and will only submit to their Belas.

Bela Lugosis, that is. Everyone at Limerwrecks wishes you a very scary Halloween!  "PF" is Pete Fitzgerald, the secret identity of Backthrow, one of the poetry-mad scientists that helped create Limerwrecks. Gruesome hues by Jason and the Arrrgh!-onauts Millet.

Red Rag to a Ball

My masque is a vivid diversion
With provision for ev'ry perversion
What color's your coat in?
Vermilion's verboten!
Your host has a fervent aversion.

David Cairns



Vincent Price is Prince Prospero, decadent host of the Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964). Our Vincentennial tribute to the movie-master of the morbid will return in December, with more on Red Death, plus Dr. Phibes, Theater of Blood, and more, more, more! In the meantime, stay tuned for a month of November Noir.

Red Raver, Red Raver, Let David Come Quaver

At my masque you can drink and be merry
Amontillado's the very best sherry
But my castle abode
Has a rigid dress code
So please don't wear anything cherry.

David Cairns


Vincent Price is Prince Prospero, decadent host of the Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964). I think David is the real Vincent Price fan around here.

Spoons on the Left, Pitchforks on the Right

You're welcome to enter my masque
Where in decadent splendor you'll bask    
While you mingle dear guest,
I've a single request:
Do whatever the Devil will ask.      

Vincent Price is a cruel, jaded Satanist (unlike all those kind, naive Satanists),  in The Masque of the Red Death (Roger Corman, 1964). Image source:  Title by Satanic Norm Knott.

The Doctor is INnocent

Doc Kimble committed no crime
Just a case of wrong place and wrong time
Let this innocent be    
and in prison stick ME --  
I'm guilty of making this rhyme.

David Janssen was Dr. Richard Kimble, an innocent man forced to flee a miscarriage of justice as The Fugitive. We're guilty of committing Fugitive Fridays every week. David Cairns bears all responsibility for the title.   Image source: Richard Kimble, The Fugitive.

What Bums a Legend Most?

It's never much fun being last
when every loved one has passed
Each day you're apart
drives a stake through your heart
Not to mention the vamps you've harassed.

Vincent Price stars as the last human survivor of a plague of vampirism in Last Man on Earth (1964). This was the first film adaptation of Richard Matheson's novel "I Am Legend".

Blossom Dreary

You thought her a delicate flower
But his daughter held terrible power
Her loveliness thrills you,
but a touch from her kills you
and you ought to be taking a shower.



Overly protective Vincent Price treats his daughter with an exotic and toxic plant in "Rappaccini's Daughter", one of three chapters in Twice-Told Tales (Sidney Salkow, 1963).  With Joyce Taylor and Brett Halsey.

More and Morgue

Are we meant to suppose that this rape
Is the work of a trained circus ape?
And that acting as pimp
for this oversexed chimp
is Lugosi, all swathed in a cape?

David Cairns



This was originally posted as a comment on Rue Pall, a limerick on Murders in the Rue Morgue (Robert Florey, 1932). Morgue starred Bela Lugosi as the sadistic sideshow sawbones, Doctor Mirakle. The rape was only implied, of course, but this was pre-code horror at its lurid best. Or is that worst?

A Face in the Shroud

Revived by the fountain of youth
this bride-to-be shied from the truth
In her coffin long dead,
she'd put off being wed,
and could hide being long in the tooth.



Vincent Price stars in three Twice-Told Tales (Sidney Salkow, 1963). Mari Blanchard is brought back from the dead by Sebastian Cabot  in the anthology's first segment, "Dr. Heidegger's Experiment".

Montage à Trois

This trio of actors played mean
With brio attacked ev'ry scene
In life they were gentle
and quite sentimental,
but the threesome wore black on the screen.

Thespians Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre appeared together in two films by Roger Corman, The Raven (top) and The Comedy of Terrors (above, with Basil Rathbone).

Resurrectile Dysfunction

He survives being bopped on the head
And defies being shot full of lead
From his coffin and crypt
far too often he's skipped...                    
When he dies he's just not staying dead.



Murderous undertaker Vincent Price and reluctant assistant Peter Lorre find that Basil Rathbone won't say dead in The Comedy of Terrors (Jacques Tourneur, 1964). With Boris Karloff and Joe E. Brown (in his final film appearance). David Cairns came up with the title.  Image source: Doctor Macro; peterlorrebook.com.

Courting Hazel

His stunning young wife is no more
The love of his life -- his Lenore!
But her "death" was a hoax
just to bed other blokes
For this honey found Price was a bore.

Hazel Court is Lenore, with Vincent Price as Dr. Erasmus Craven and Boris Karloff as Dr.Scarabus, in The Raven (Roger Corman, 1963). Norm Knott conjured up the title. Image source: IMDb.  Images © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. Inc. Reserved

Fromage à Trois

Old Vince plays a wizard named Craven

And Pete changes into a raven

With Boris, you see,

they're sorcerers three...

But at wizardy, B's misbehavin'.

Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff play a trio of rival sorcerers in The Raven (Roger Corman, 1963). Image source: Wrong Side of the Art. Images © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. All rights reserved.

Obsessive-Repulsive Disorder

In my custody Kimble was placed
Thus entrusted, I'm simply disgraced
I've got to erase
this blot to save face      
His dust leaves too bitter a taste  

Lt. Gerard (Barry Morse) was unrelenting in his pursuit of The Fugitive. Was it simply dedication to his job that drove him? Or was it something more, something darker?  Each and every week we obsessively compose limericks for Fugitive Fridays.

Nevermore the Merrier

In this comical corvid-based Corman
Price's wife, long thought dead, starts re-warming
A boozy old crow
Is the sole nod to Poe
That's the role Peter Lorre's performing.

Poor Vince has the blues like old Muddy
He sits and he stews in his study
But his passions are stirred
By his wife, disinterred
Who splits and then screws his ex-buddy.

David Cairns

Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre play a trio of rival sorcerers in The Raven (Roger Corman, 1963).  David has not forgotten Fred Zinnemann nor Teresa.
Images © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. Inc. Reserved
                                                                                               
Today is Bela Lugosi's 129th birthday. Happy birthday, Bela! 

A Pain in the Necronomicon

By her husband this wife is perplexed
He's consulted frightening text
When the townsfolk are burned
she gets downright concerned
and wonders whose life will be next.



Vincent Price and Debra Paget are Charles Dexter and Anne Ward in The Haunted Palace (Roger Corman,1963). Title by David "Bookworm" Cairns.

The Lovecraft That Dare Not Speak Its Name

In a pit 'neath a circular grate
lives an "It" in a hurry to date
With a rating "adult"
and the aid of a cult,
this critter with girlies will mate

Vincent Price and Debra Paget are creeped out by H. P. Lovecraft -- and a late-career appearance by Lon Chaney Jr. -- in The Haunted Palace (Roger Corman,1963).

Cthulhu Dawn

Said this perv from whom Vince is descended,

"To sacrifice virgins is splendid!
The Gods have a taste...
for bodies still chaste
As a snack or hors d'oeuvre they're intended."

Vincent Price, Debra Paget and Lon Chaney Jr. summon Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth, those wacky Elder Gods of horror scribe H. P. Lovecraft. The Haunted Palace (Roger Corman,1963). Title by that Elder Sod, David Cairns. By the way, it's Fred Zinnemann week at David's Shadowplay.

Rabid Descent

When the warlock was burned at the stake,
he had sworn in a curse he'd awake
Now his embers control

his descendant's poor soul,
reborn in an urn double-take.

Vincent Price is overtaken by an evil ancestor in The Haunted Palace (Roger Corman,1963). With Debra Paget and Lon Chaney Jr.

All You Need is Lovecraft

Through his portrait that hung on the wall,
to his forbear his skull was in thrall
This painting of evil
hid a danger primeval
and a horror that clung like a pall.

In The Haunted Palace (Roger Corman,1963), Vincent Price is possessed by the writing of H.P. Lovecraft. With Debra Paget. Title by that lurking fear-monger, David Cairns.

Crazy Little Thing Called Lovecraft

They've moved to this hilltop estate

with a view of the village that's great
But under the manse
is a dungeon expanse
where Cthulhu lies chilling in wait.

She thinks that the town will be quaint,

but things all around make her faint
Like the growing enormity

of local deformity

No, "quaint" is a place that this ain't.

They're deformed by his ancestor's curse
(an old warlock with habits perverse)
Though they burned him alive

he returns to connive

And their fortunes from bad turn to worse.


Vincent Price and Debra Paget move into The Haunted Palace (Roger Corman, 1963), which comes equipped with Lon Chaney Jr., its apparently ancient caretaker. Attempting to capitalize on the success of the previous Corman/Price/Poe film, the title was taken from a novella by Poe. But the story is actually the first adaptation of a work of H. P. Lovecraft, "The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward".

Hitch and Famous

Down the road moves a lone silhouette      
Where's he going?  As far as he'll get
You give him a ride
then you try to decide
if you know him, or only just met.

Familiarity breeds danger for Richard Kimble, The Fugitive. If only David Janssen didn't take such a nice mugshot. Hitch a ride on Fugitive Fridays. Image source: Richard Kimble, the Fugitive.