Dietrich or Treat

Marlene, black-wigged, eyes beholders
Our main man's grown big as some boulders
But his wistful, sad gaze
Through the mist of past days
(And chain-smoked cigars) sadly smoulders.

David Cairns


Marlene Dietrich and Orson Welles in Touch of Evil (1958).

Candy, Cane

Sheriff Hank gave up booze, now eats candy
When he drank he'd get woozy on brandy
Though he limps through this thriller
He's no gimp, he's a killer
And he strangles that loser Joe Grandi.

David Cairns

Orson Welles is Sheriff Hank Quinlan in Touch of Evil (Welles; 1958). Quinlan carries a cane, and he leaves it behind after strangling Joe Grandi, played by Akim Tamiroff.

David Cairns notes that various observers have commented on Welles being undone by his cane/Kane. But David might be the only one to point out that Welles freezeframes the hotel door sign saying Make Sure You Haven't Left Any Belongings Behind.

Hell Toupee

Uncle Joe cuts a fig short and squat
Face of dough, flips his wig when he's caught
In a cheap hotel room
The poor creep meets his doom
As this slow-moving pig ties the knot.

David Cairns

Sheriff Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles), Uncle Joe Grandi (Akim Tamiroff), and Susan Vargas (Janet Leigh) in a sordid scene in Touch of Evil (Welles; 1958).

Vargas' Girl

In a sweater all busty and pert
Like Betty, she's thrusting, overt
Now plunged into Hades
With grungy Mercedes
She's fretful, nonplussed, but unhurt.

Davd Cairns

Touch of Evil (Orson Welles; 1958): Susan Vargas (Janet Leigh) is terrorized by a gang led by actress Mercedes McCambridge.

Ham and Sleaze

On the border where Tex and Mex meet

When disorder is vexing...some cheat
Will Hank blame the right perp
Or just frame up some twerp?
We're floored when he gets to his feet.

David Cairns

In Touch of Evil (1958), the entrance of Hank Quinlan (Orson Welles) is a low angle shot of the bulky police captain getting out of a car.

Shot/Countershot

A mirror-maze shoot-out is crazy
What appears to be true gets quite hazy
The antagonists shatter
In fragments and scatter
When smoke clears they're all slew -- call Scorsese!

David Cairns

Everett Sloane, Orson Welles, and Rita Hayworth crack up in The Lady From Shanghai (Welles; 1947)

Holey Matrimony

The Bannisters, Elsa and Art
Should manage to dwell far apart
Their life, joined in wedlock
Is strife, strain and deadlock
Till - BANG! - each is shelled through the heart.

David Cairns

Rita Hayworth and Everett Sloane can't face each other in a hall of mirrors: The Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles; 1947).

David's a Goliath

                                 No slight, David's quick and prolific
                                 Delighting in icks quite horrific
                                 The limerick form
                                 To him is the norm
                                 To write 666 is terrific!

           

Congratulations to LimerWrecker David Cairns on reaching this satanic milestone. David is a talented writer, and we are very lucky and honored to have his wordplay here at LimerWrecks. You can follow David on his wonderful film blog, Shadowplay.

Silly Ass-assin

"I want you to kill me," he said
Too jaunty to will to be dead,
Faking murder he's planned
But some bird's unseen hand
Nonchalantly has filled him with lead.

David Cairns

Glenn Anders makes an unusual request in Lady From Shanghai (Orson Welles; 1947).

Slow-acting Masterclass

Ed O'Brien is chasing round town
The guy has a case to run down
While a poison acts slowly
Destroying him wholly
That's why Ed's fat face wears a frown.

David Cairns


Edmond O'Brien staggers through D.O.A. (Rudolph Maté; 1950).

The Fatal Glass of Fear

A sentence of death is announced
Like a zen shibboleth, mispronounced
The poison he's supped
Will annoy, then corrupt
He's spent, his last breath gets him bounced.

David Cairns

Edmond O'Brien learns of his imminent demise in D.O.A. (Rudolph Maté; 1950).

Ed On Arrival

The drug he's been given will kill him
He's buggered, won't live, it'll chill him
Can he catch his own killer
In this patchy noir thriller?
This struggle makes riveting fillum.

David Cairns


Edmond O'Brien stars in D.O.A. (Rudolph Maté; 1950), film noir that ends with a bang.

A Wild Christmas in Wales

I'm all packed like a woolly Kris Kringle
In my sack silver bullets go jingle
Werewolf hunting in Wales
If blunt instrument fails
Then I'll whack 'em this Yule in the dingle.

David Cairns

 

The Wolf Man has no idea what we're going on about. Lon Chaney Jr in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man ( Roy William Neill; 1943).

THIS is Spinal Tap

This xylophone's slickly erected
Restyling bones quickly selected
This chuckle-head dreamer
Gets struck with a femur
A smiling, prone, stickman dissected.

David Cairns


The Skeleton Dance (Ub Iwerks; 1929) was the first Silly Symphony animated short subject produced by Walt Disney. Title by boney Donald Benson.

The Thing Is...

...a strange intellectual carrot
A change from the text where like parrot
It mimics each crewman
A gimmick inhuman
Here it drains blood from necks like it's claret.

David Cairns


A young James Arness plays The Thing from Another World (Christian Nyby and Howard Hawks; 1951). The film's plot deviates from the source material, the 1938 novella "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell.

Quite-a-Mess at the Pics

In the subway the murky thing's lurking
In the rubble where workmen are shirking
From the soil they have dug
Comes a gargoyle-like bug
Which troubles the Circle Line, smirking.

David Cairns


James Donald and Andrew Keir star in Quatermass and the Pit, aka Five Million Years to Earth (Roy Ward Baker; 1967).

Quite-a-Mess Too

Invade? They have already struck!
They persuade--they don't brawl, run amok.
Thus by slow infiltration
They take over the nation
Marinading this fall guy in muck.

David Cairns


A Member of Parliament (Tom Chatto) is covered in poisonous black slime in Quatermass 2, a.k.a. Enemy From Space (Val Guest; 1957).

The Quite-a-Mess Xperiment

Its flesh is defective and scabby
(The special effects are quite shabby)
That damn splurge that attacked us
Was man merged with cactus
Indiscretion in Westminster Abbey.

David Cairns


An astronaut (Victor Wordsworth) infected by an alien organism returns to Earth, and his body begins to mutate by absorbing other lifeforms: The Quatermass Xperiment a.k.a. The Creeping Unknown (Val Guest; 1955).

Please, Sir, I Want Some Moreau

When he's up to his elbows in leopard
This wild pup sure as hell won't play shepherd
But this dog's had his day
Demagogue won't hold sway
They all sup on the fellow, unpeppered.

David Cairns


The beast-men take their revenge Dr. Moreau (Charles Laughton) in Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton; 1932).

Natty Dead

Bela ended his days stony broke
Told his friends, "So, OK, when I croak,
And I'm pressed in my coffin
My rest it will soften
To spend it arrayed in my cloak."

David Cairns