M.J. Arcangelini

SATURDAYS AT THE VARIETY THEATER IN CLEVELAND, OHIO (early 1960's)

 

Double and triple features running from
10 or 11 AM into Saturday afternoons.
Parents would drop us kids off in front
with enough money for admission (cheap!),
popcorn, candy, & soda (lunch!).
O, Vincent Price!
O, Roger Corman!
Stories expanded from Poe and
creatures stirred from raw nightmares,
banshees howling in the foggy night,
gothic horror, disinterred corpses,
Dracula, his brides and daughters,
Frankenstein’s monster, the Mummy!
O, Christopher Lee!
O, Peter Cushing!
O, ghosts of Jacques Tourneur,
James Whale, and Todd Browning
inspiring young ambitious directors to
animate horror for another generation.
Haunted houses overlooking swamps.
Meteors crashing into earth holding
monsters hidden within!
Sputtering space ships with astronauts
swaggering their way to other planets!
Giant radioactive crabs and ants!
The nuclear age abiding in imagination!
50 foot women and shrinking men!
The creatures inhabiting the black
lagoons of our fertile fears!
Living through atomic days where
bomb drills alternated with fire drills.
Russian long-range missiles suspended
in the sky above all of our heads while
freeze framed ambiguous endings
followed us into our beds each night
filling our dreams with dubious futures,
the residue of Saturday afternoon matinees.
 

 

 

Bio: M.J. Arcangelini (b.1952) has resided in northern California since 1979. His work has been published in print magazines, online journals, (including The James White Review, Rusty Truck, The Ekphrastic Review, The Gasconade Review, As It Ought To Be) & over a dozen anthologies.  The most recent of his five collections are: “What the Night Keeps,” (2019) Stubborn Mule Press and “A Quiet Ghost,” (2020) Luchador Press.