Blaisdell as the title monster takes a practice stalk up the pier steps on location for The She Creature. (Courtesy of Fred Olen Ray.) Paul Blaisdell, Monster Maker A Biography of the B Movie Makeup and Special Effects Artist by RANDY PALMER with forewords by FRED OLEN RAY and BOB BURNS McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London To the memory of my father, who took me to see my first Paul Blaisdell movie, and to my mother, who always knew that movies don’t make monsters out of little boys For Jackie LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-0729-0 ©1997 Randy Palmer. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: Poster art for the 1958 film It! The Terror from Beyond Space (MGM/UA/Photofest) McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com Contents Foreword by Fred Olen Ray Foreword by Bob Burns Preface A Note Concerning the Text 1—Turning Hollywood into Horrorwood 2—The Eyes Have It 3—The Mutant of Topanga Canyon 4—Venusian Vegetable 5—Blaisdell in Drag 6—Voodoo and Venom 7—Here Comes Mr. Gordon 8—Cosmic Creeps 9—Bert Gordon Strikes Back 10—Missing Monsters 11—Mars Needs Hemoglobin 12—The Last Her-rah 13—Beyond the B’s 14—Black and White and Bled All Over 15—Travesties and Tributes 16—Sunset Appendix Filmography List of Names and Terms Foreword by Fred Olen Ray If you had never heard of Paul Blaisdell before picking up this book, you will soon see how damned lucky you are to have stumbled onto him. Like Roger Corman and Bert I. Gordon, you too will discover the rich imagination and ingenious talents of one of Hollywood’s most creative fringe dwellers. That it took the world so long to catch on to one of filmdom’s best-kept secrets is a true shame. That, as for many others who toiled in the empty grocery stores that passed as movie studios, his contributions were only realized after such recognition could have yielded any benefit to the creator is a crime. I think what attracted the admiring fans to his work over the years was not only the images he conjured up into physical being, but the method with which he undertook the task. Obviously, the monsters in Day the World Ended, The She- Creature, and It Conquered the World were astonishingly original in design, but it is also the fact that Blaisdell created them in his garage out of literally nothing more than carpet-laying foam and paint that instills his fans with that certain sense of awe. What first attracted me to the creations of Paul Blaisdell, at least in the sense that I noticed who was actually creating these monsters, were the “how to” articles in Paul’s magazine, Fantastic Monsters of the Films. In these articles Paul would provide details to knowledge-hungry kids, explaining how they could recreate the Beast with a Million Eyes or construct their own alien suit just like the one in It! the Terror from Beyond Space. Wanting nothing more than to be a monster maker, I read these articles over and over again, never tiring or ceasing to be amazed at what this man could do with so little money and such common household items. But the monsters themselves were the real treat. Regardless of how quickly or cheaply they were constructed, Blaisdell’s creations were always “way cool” looking. One need search no further than Invasion of the Star Creatures or Killers from Space to see what a low-budget movie without Paul Blaisdell was