Monster Yuck Rally

You can't reason with insectoid threats
Killer bees ain't directed like pets
Waving feelers, THEM! come
Giant gila looks dumb
Wrecking cheesy and second-rate sets.

David Cairns



A giant prehistoric scorpion is freed by an erupting volcano and battles tanks and helicopters in The Black Scorpion (Edward Ludwig; 1957). Featuring stop motion animation created by Willis O'Brien.

Blanket Coverage

Her trauma’s beyond all endurance
(And she may need that treatment with currents);
But the doctors’ first task
Is, as always, to ask:
“Does this cute little mite have insurance?”

Paul Truster

William Schallert and James Whitmore rescue Sandy Descher, traumatized by THEM! (Gordon Douglas; 1954).

Pajama Gamey

He reels, filled with dread and disgust
It feels like his head might just bust
He wanders all night
Till dawn's early light
Reveals that he's dead in the dust.

Okay, so Prof. Deemer is NOT dead at this point in the movie. Don't make me show you my poetic license. Leo G. Carroll in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Crawl of the Wild

Gigantic arachnid, oh my!
Tarantula blackens the sky!
This insect's appalling!
Your skin begins crawling!
A panic attack--then you die!

A creepy frame from Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Beauty Parts

All horror, or science-based dramas
Use torridly eye-popping mammas
These drive-in wet dreams
Provide piercing screams
What's more, they look fly in pajamas.

Ross Elliot, Nestor Paiva, and scream queen Mara Corday in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Genus Enlargement

Just how will we feed the poor saps?
By powerful breeding, perhaps?
Unceasing, he tries
Increasing the size...
And now the world needs bigger traps.

Leo G. Carroll tries to find an answer to the food shortage in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Growth Industry

The doctor, a humanitarian,
Had approaches one might term contrarian;
His cry was ‘more meat!’
But the task had him beat
Next time, Doc, try something agrarian.

Paul Truster

Scientist Leo G. Carroll seeks a solution to world hunger in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Physician Congeal Thyself

This nutritional breakthrough is stalling
As its side effects prove quite appalling;
Deemer’s New Wonder Diet?
There's few that will try it!
Its stock, like his features, is falling.

Dr. Deemer’s a very sad case
With his eye and his ear out of place
Though his motives were pure
He himself needs a cure;
It’s no fun for a doc to lose face.

Paul Truster

Leo G. Carroll as Professor Gerald Deemer in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Intention Headache

This friendly old guy's understandable
He intends to make spiders expandable
Starvation would end
All his patients distend
And we'll end in an outsize great mandible.

David Cairns

Scientist Leo G. Carroll seeks a cure for world hunger in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Body Trouble

One effect of the harmful injection
Is it wrecks Leo's charming complexion
Then his bones start to grow
And, once grown, start to show
We suspect in alarming directions.

Leo G. Carroll is injected with his experimental growth serum in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Hoarse and Buggy

A spider now dwells in your house
A giant-from-hell hairy louse
No rarebit-fueled dream
In terror you scream
Get insect repellent and douse!

Mara Corday reacts to the Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Carpet Diem

Are you nuts? Don't recline on the rug!
Your cute butt's in the line of a bug!
Get up, gal, we're not joking
Soon its talon starts poking
And your guts like cheap wine it will chug!

Mara Corday poses in a striking still from Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Ick-speriment!

It creeps through the scrub and the thistles
It’s hungry and covered with bristles;
The drive-in crowd cheers
Every time it appears
While Mara Corday provokes whistles.

Paul Truster



Mara Corday adds the sex appeal to Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955); with Leo G. Carroll.

Not Waverley, but Drowning

You've seen him command men from U.N.C.L.E.
Now he's been at the glands, so this junk'll
Not show Leo be charming
(Could he be more alarming?)
He's obscene, an expanding carbuncle.

David Cairns

Leo G. Carroll in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

The Pituitary and the Pendulous

 

Poor Leo to hormones, exposed
Can see that his form's discomposed
All awry, he's a grower
One eye higher, one lower
That's really abnormal. He's hosed.

Reviewing poor Leo's complexion
We peruse a bad scene of abjection
His pituitary gland
Got Critically panned
For this crude facial feature selection.

David Cairns

Scientist Leo G. Carroll  in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Face Awful

The fact is, experiments leak
Contract something rare, you turn freak
Having meddled, Professor,
Your head's now a mess, sir
Attractive young characters shriek!

Leo G. Carroll startles Mara Corday in a still from Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Close Crawl

Beware of arachnids, king size       
The hairy things blacken the skies
You'll die if you face them
So try to outrace them
You're fare they will snack on like flies.

Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955). Rev that Chevy! Or whatever it is.

Picasso's Boo Period

This scientist braces for changes  

But, my! How his face rearranges!
Accursed, he looks weird

Far worse than he feared
An eye-out-of-place is what strange is!

Scientist Leo G. Carroll is a victim of his own experiments in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Quackromegaly

Leo's working away at his theorem
Goes berserk with some crazy growth serum
His pituitary gland
Gets askew, out of hand
Now his quirky, warped face makes us fearum.

David Cairns

Scientist Leo G. Carroll is afflicted by accelerated acromegaly in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Lab Rattled

Better flee from your fearful assistant 
To your pleas, deformed ears are resistant
He's shunned 'cause he's bumpy
No wonder he's grumpy!
Upon evil he's weirdly insistent.



Paul Lund (Ed Parker), mutated assistant to Prof. Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll) in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955).

Spidermanipulator

A master of pest-based inventions
He has but the best of intentions
And couldn't have known
What shouldn't be grown
Disaster's unguessed-at dimensions.

Scientist Leo G. Carroll uses radioactive elements to produce a super-nutrient, a defacto growth formula in Tarantula (Jack Arnold; 1955). Title by language manipulator David Cairns.

It's Hard For a Mantidae

That pesky ol' mantis does rise
Into Eskimo shanties it pries
In a tunnel it's gassed
Is stunned and, at last
Grotesquely, it dances, then dies.

Alix Talton gets a closer look at The Deadly Mantis (Nathan Juran; 1957). Title by David 'Hardbody' Cairns.

Spraying Mantis

They blast the poor critter with shells  
A vast load of grue spits and wells
Its juice fills the tunnel
Like a sluice or a runnel
With ghastliest spewing of smells.

David Cairns

It looks like the end for The Deadly Mantis (Nathan Juran; 1957).