Carpenter Rants

His character's nothing but bad
He's terribly selfish--a cad
Uniquely soft-boiled,
he's weak and he's spoiled,
and he cares not a whit nor a tad



Production stills from Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944): Vincent Price (Shelby Carpenter) and Judith Anderson (Ann Treadwell).

The Killer Effete

These vermin will only degrade her
Like a pearl before swine they'll parade her
An object so fine
belongs in a shrine
I know, she is mine, for I made her



Clifton Webb plays a prissy Pygmalion to Gene Tierney's gorgeous Galatea. With Vincent Price and Dana Andrews in Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944). Image source: Moon in the Gutter (top); Filmfanatic (above).

Gene Genie

Her painting and death are mysterious
They make the detective delirious
It sucks that she's dead
'cause she's stuck in his head
His case of the Lauras is serious



Dana Andrews, Vincent Price, Clifton Webb and Gene Tierney in Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944). I'd rank Laura as the best film that Price ever appeared in--with Leave Her to Heaven a close second--though neither is a 'Vincent Price film'. Describing his forties work, critic David Thomson wrote that the actor "...was required to be effete, caddish, insolent, malicious, or weak." He's certainly caddish and weak as Laura's fiancé. Here's an earlier limerick on the detective's obsession with Laura.

There's Waldo

Her suitors seem perfectly fey
Does this cutie prefer them that way?
V Price is a reb
And C Webb's a celeb
But she chooses that perv Dana A.

David Cairns

Vincent Price as Southern writer and gigolo Shelby Carpenter, Clifton Webb as newspaper columnist Waldo Lydecker, Dana Andrews as police detective Mark Mcpherson, and Gene Tierney as their dream girl, Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944). "Perv" because McPherson falls in love with the portrait of a murder victim.

French Stickler

Escaping a fry on death row,
the fugitive tries to lay low
But eluding Gerard
has been proving quite hard--
like Valjean with Javert long ago

Fugitive Fridays gets literary. The Fugitive's Richard Kimble (David Janssen) and Lieutenant Gerard echo Jean Valjean and Inspector Javert in Les Misérables. Norm Knott and I tossed around quite a few names for this limerick: To the Victor goes the Hugo; In Gendarmes Way; Gendarmey of One; The Boys in Cordon Bleu; Chat and Mousse...

In Deed I Do

A man whose ambitions were great
laid plans that were big and first rate
Why steal something small
when you might get it all?
James Reavis tried stealing a state



Okay, so it was the 1880s and still a territory. Based on an amazing but true story, James Addison Reavis (Vincent Price) forges records and documents in an elaborate scheme to become The Baron of Arizona (Sam Fuller, 1950).

Wyckyd

A haughty and wicked patroon,
He sought his cute cousin to spoon
When his wife up and dies,
Van Ryn eyes his prize...
And he ought to be spooning her soon.

Vincent Price (as Nicholas Van Ryn) and Gene Tierney in Dragonwyck (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1946). This was Price's first taste of the Gothic. The film's haunting melody is "Creole Lullaby" by Alfred Newman. Image source: Doctor Macro.

Price Gouger

The masterful thespian Price
Whenever he's nasty it's nice
Pursuing such meanery
he chews on the scenery
He's a ham, and an extra thick slice

Welcome to our Vincentennial tribute to horror film star Vincent Price. I'm not being critical. Price's performances were perfectly in tune with the material.

The Gremlin Letter

We weren't joking about the technical difficulties we mentioned last Friday. Since Thursday, limericks have disappeared, then reappeared without comments. Some limericks didn't post when scheduled, others didn't post at all. And apparently the gremlins are still at it. Something very weird is going on around here.

Russian Rhapsody (Bob Clampett, 1944), aka Gremlins from the Kremlin.

Wait'll You See My Digit!

In her unitard covered in scales,
she's cruising for love-hungry males
Disguised as a nurse,
the guys she'll coerce,
by using her Lee Press-On Nails



Salome Jens hypnotizes men with her fabulous fingernails from the future in Terror From the Year 5000 (Robert J. Gurney Jr, 1958). Cheesy ads for "Lee Press-On Nails" once blanketed TV. If you weren't subjected to them like I was, feel free to substitute "lovely long nails."

Defacing the Future

When her future Earth gets off the rails,
this mutant and femme fatale bails
She first steals a face,
then searches the place
for useful and non-deformed males

Terror From the Year 5000 (Robert J. Gurney Jr, 1958). Even though she looks sexy in the leotard in the poster, Salome Jens looked pretty hideous as the mutant future woman. Hideous, that is, until she applied a stolen face and disguised herself as a nurse.

Excuse us, we seem to be having technical difficulties with the site.

Morse's Code

Kimble's wanted for slaying his spouse
And a cop's playing cat to his mouse
Gerard's driven, obsessed,
and won't give it a rest...
His job makes him act like a louse

Barry Morse was Lt. Philip Gerard, hot and bothered on the trail of fugitive Richard Kimble. Image source: DVD Beaver. Fugitive Fridays is still running.