Clamshells, or Screening Room Z: Ode to Junk

for David Macleod, who gave me the idea

“... about two dozen movies a year feature a mad killer going berserk ... Some have a little more plot, some have a little less. It doesn't matter.” - Roger Ebert

The shelves of my ideal Blockbuster store
are colourful with clamshells painted to
entice the buyer, unwary and gore
loving, hoping to get his fill of grue.

What nuclear holocaust
of taste
and talent
and simple cohesion
is our hero to find
in those haunted clamshells!

Those cases holding black boxes
of whatever could be restored
using a half-assembled script
and full-baked actresses.

Actors the likes of which you’ll see
in Hollywood one day,
but more likely
gone gay-for-pay
or just nowhere at all.

Seeing this motley band
trying to cobble stories out of mulch,
fantastic lands or grim slashers,
they’ll take your tropes and try, o try,
o really truly try,
to recreate them with a budget of
sixpence and string.

Horror, fantasy, sci-fi,
they’ll try and fail at ‘em all,
let loose upon
the garbage heap of old
and overdone ideas,
and ones that just should not have seen
the unforgiving light of day.

Which isn’t even mentioning
the pseudo-Freudian horrors,
the plain moronic notions of
sex and sexuality. Sanity
so far behind the plot
I can’t even be offended.

My heavenly Blockbuster
abreast a passing cloud
will guide you through the wreckage of
mankind’s creative urge.