Road Show Stopper

There is danger round most ev'ry bend
Is that stranger a foe or a friend?
This fugitive knows
With the future and shows
All is change and each road has an end.

David Janssen ponders his fate as The Fugitive, as we near the end on Fugitive Fridays.

The Bluebeard of Crappiness

A newlywed girl and her boy
Should be drooling and fervid with joy
Days filling with pleasure
And thrills beyond measure--
Not ruled by the urge to destroy.


Michael Redgrave and Joan Bennett in Secret Beyond the Door. David "Uxoricidal" Cairns pitched in on the title. Redgrave was cast due to his intense portrayal of a crazed ventriloquist in Dead of Night(1945).

Secret Expirer

About murders this rat reminisces
Not purple and passionate kisses
More pleasing than sex

Is the squeezing of necks 

Most fervently that of his Mrs.

Michael Redgrave feels a compulsion to strangle wife Joan Bennett in Fritz Lang's Freudian nightmare, Secret Beyond the Door ( 1947).

Boudoir and Peace

He would speak of his rooms as "felicitous"
But not deign to explain with with explicitness
How each mate met her fate
To inflate the crime rate
These boudoirs have a certain illicitness.

David Cairns

Michael Redgrave and Joan Bennett in Secret Beyond the Door.

Dangerous When Wed

From the start hubby troubled the bride
Her new partner had something to hide
A twisted heart beat

In each sinister suite...
All apartments where somebody died.


Joan Bennett in Secret Beyond the Door ( Fritz Lang, 1947). Title by best man David Cairns.

Necro-Philthy-Act

Entombed with the family jewels,
He's exhumed by some lunatic ghouls
Having found him equipped
They went down in his crypt
And consumed his huge...oops! APRIL FOOLS!

A front page from The Mad Ghoul (1943), a B which has nothing to do with this rhyme. Well, almost nothing.  Image source: Shock! Theater

Sepulchritudinous

Vampira's a belfry-belle flapper
Nocturnal, by day she's a napper
Her face will stay pinched
Though her waist is so cinched
That a quick gust of wind may well snap her.

David Cairns

Vampira was the first television horror host. Here's our limerick obit on the wasp-waisted star of Plan 9 From Outer Space.

After Dark, My Sweet Tooth

The vamp spreads a curse after dark
They'll leave on your person a mark
When hanging about
The fangs will come out
And their bite is much worse than their bark.



Bela Lugosi and Caroll Borland in Mark of the Vampire (1935), Tod Browning's remake of his own London After Midnight. Cross yourself, cretins: we'll continue to crawl from the crypt on Vampire Weekends.

One-Armed Manhandled

For a man who has only one arm
He's managed a whole lot of harm
Both nasty and cruel,
He was fast-tracked at school --
Though it can't be l'ecole de la charm.


Bill Raisch as the "one-armed man", with David Janssen and Diane Brewster as Richard and Helen Kimble. From Wikepedia: A dancer who worked for the Ziegfeld Follies in the 1930s, Raisch lost his right arm while serving in the US Navy during World War II. His most memorable film role was in a famous fight scene with Kirk Douglas in Lonely are the Brave.   Famous, that is, on Fugitive Fridays.  

Window Undressing

One look at the lady's reflection
And this schnook gets a fateful erection
He's soon doing time
In a nightmare of crime
As a crook who's afraid of detection.

Edgar G. Robinson and dream girl Joan Bennett, The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944).

A Girl, A Guy and a Prob

All it takes is a stupid misstep  
One mistake that'll ruin your rep
A single hot date
That seemed to go great
Till a wake with a body to schlep.


Joan Bennett and Edward G. Robinson in The Woman in the Window (Fritz Lang, 1944). Aside from David Cairns, can anyone name the film that this limerick's title is a play on? Come on, film buffs!

Sour Milquetoast

Poor Christopher Cross was a sucker
When kissing a butt he would pucker
Then he fell for a floozy
Who...well, wasn't choosy
Got pissed, took an ice pick and stuck her.


Edward G. Robinson met Joan Bennett on Fritz Lang's Scarlet Street.

Joan of Dark

To make it she's scratched and she's clawed
By apes she's been slapped at and pawed
Bought, bartered and sold,
Her heart's not of gold
No lady, Joan Bennett's a broad.



In the 1940s, Joan Bennett played a string of loose ladies and dark dames, and was a favorite of director Fritz Lang. Here she's a hooker in Lang's Scarlet Street, having her toenails done by milquetoast Edward G. Robinson. Read our earlier rhymes on Joan Bennett. Image source: Shadows and Satin.