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I'll
begin this with a quick editors note: Most of the stories and
incidents in this tribute were gleaned from several sources
including Randy Palmer's biography of Blaisdell, Mark McGee's
history of AIP, the biographies of Sam Arkoff and Roger Corman and
several magazine articles.
A
lot of the stories contradict each other; and the events and
incidents probably didn't happen exactly the way they've been told;
and have been embellished over time; or the victim of faulty
memories. Regardless, the stories are documented, and whether
they're all exactly true remains to be seen but the fact remains the
same - they are pretty darn funny.
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- - -
When
people think of great special effects artists, you usually think of
the gang from Industrial Light and Magic, Stan Winston or, if you're
a little older, Ray Harryhausen.
But
there is one man who also should be mentioned among these sfx
wizards. A man who did so much more with so much less. A man whose
infamous creations turned out so absurd and yet so practical due to
budget limitations that their images are burned forever into the
brains of the B-Movie brethren (usually
because we were laughing at them.)
The
man I'm talking about is Paul Blaisdell - the king of glue and foam
rubber chunks - the chief monster maker and f/x man for good old American
International Pictures (AIP). You may not know the name but
you definitely know his creations.
Born
in Newport, Rhode Island, Blaisdell attended the New England School
of Art and Design. It was there that he met his wife, Jackie. (She
was Blaisdell’s co-conspirator in a lot of design and monster
building.)
Upon
graduation he got work as an illustrator for several Sci-Fi pulp
magazines and book covers like Spaceways
and Otherworlds.
He illustrated a story for Forrest J. Ackerman (of Famous
Monsters of Filmland
fame) who
liked his work and, in turn, became Blaisdell’s agent. This
relationship set Blaisdell’s crash course with Sci-fi infamy.
The
fledgling American Releasing Corporation (later
to become American International Pictures)
was in deep trouble. Roger Corman had just finished shooting The
Beast with a Million Eyes. They
screened the film for their distributors who were shocked to find
out that the monster movie had no monster because the film’s
budget ran out because Corman
had leeched part of the budget to finish a couple of his westerns.
All it had was a teapot
spaceship and some scratched emulsion death-rays.
Producer
Joseph E. Levine reportedly offered to buy the advertising layouts
for the film but had every intention of burning the film and
starting over. Undaunted,
Jim Nicholson, the head of ARC, gave Corman $200 dollars and
Ackerman’s phone number and told him to get a monster.
Ackerman
originally suggested his friend Ray Harryhausen but Corman knew he
would prove too expensive. He gave Corman several other names but
they too were beyond the extra budget. Ackerman knew a certain
illustrator who wanted to take a crack at special effects so he
negotiated with Corman and got Blaisdell the $200 plus the cost of
expenses and a B-Movie legend was born.
Blaisdell
created a monster puppet and a flying saucer (kit-bashed
together with some junk the prop men found in the desert). He
dubbed his creation "Hercules." It was very articulate and
could pick up a toy ray gun to shoot at the film’s protagonists.
Unfortunately, the puppet was such a big hit that when it came time
to film everyone was on set to watch and got in the way. Blaisdell
couldn’t operate it properly and the footage didn’t turn out
very well. (That is why during the creatures brief appearance
it's obscured by a superimposed eye and swirling effect.)
And
even though the million-eyed creature wound up with only two eyes,
it saved the film and in a sense saved AIP. (Blaisdell
explains that Hercules was another creature under control of the
titled beast.)
Blaisdell
next did some conceptual work designing the Tobanga suit for the
evil tree monster in the hilarious, albeit grammatically challenged,
From
Hell it Came for the Milner
brothers. They based their suit on the design but Blaisdell received
no payment or credit. (The first
of many injustices he’d have to face.)
His
next project was another Corman picture The
Day the World Ended. He designed
and built the three-eyed mutant suit. (It
also appears to have crab legs growing out of its shoulders.)
Most of Blaisdell’s creations were patchwork. With his limited
budgets, he couldn’t make molds for a rubber suit. Instead he
pieced his suits together with chunks of carpet foam.
Sam
Arkoff had to rattle his cage to get the suit done on time for the
shoot. When completed, he propped it up in his car and drove it to
the set. To Corman's horror he built the suit to fit himself, and
Blaisdell was barely over 5 feet tall, not a very menacing size for
a monster.
Things
got off to a rough start. While carrying Lori Nelson down an
incline, they both took a tumble down the hill.
The
monster met its doom in the film by drowning in a pool of rain
water. Again, remember the suit was a patchwork piece and wasn't
water tight. The rain came on cue and at first Blaisdell was happy
and felt cool under the water. Corman yelled cut and moved on to
film the next scene when someone realized their monster hadn't
gotten up yet. The foam suit had soaked up too much water and
Blaisdell couldn’t get up. The leaky suit also began to fill up
with water and he started to panic. Luckily, he was rescued in time.
They stood him up and water rushed out of several holes in the
costume.
Blaisdell
then made the Martians for Eddie Cahn’s Invasion
of the Saucer Men. His first
design was rejected because the heads were too big so he just cut a
chunk out of the center. (Blaisdell’s
creations became the prototype for all little green men to follow.)
They got the green light, but they were still too top heavy and the
midget actors hired to wear them kept losing their balance and
falling over.
At
this time Blaisdell found himself an apprentice, none other than Bob
Burns (Tracey
the Gorilla himself.)
The two met by circumstance while attending a seminar given by Ray
Bradbury. The two just happened to sit by each other. It was Bob and
Paul in the costumes for the close-ups and most of the publicity
shots. Burns also had to be a stunt double, that was his neck the
aliens injected the alcohol in to.
During
the big bull fight scene, Burns ran the prop bull’s head and
rammed the horn right into the Martian’s eye. Blaisdell ran the
head prop and pumped a grease gun full of chocolate syrup for the
gooey effect.
The
suit for The
She-Creature is probably
Blaisdell's most technically sound creation. He dubbed this one
"Cuddles."
The monster suit caused quite a stir for its ample *ahem*
breasts when the film debuted. (The
suit was so good that AIP recycled parts of it for Voodoo
Woman and
The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow
in which Blaisdell makes a rare
on-screen appearance.)
The
creature suit also had a row of teeth along its abdomen that Paul
dubbed the "lunch hooks." Eddie Cahn curiously asked what
they were so Blaisdell showed him. He worked his stomach muscles,
which caused the teeth to move, and encouraged the director to use
the gag. Cahn dubbed them too gruesome for filming.
During
filming Blaisdell almost drowned again, as several scenes called for
the monster to surface out of the ocean.
One
of the best-documented stories during the shoot was a scene that
required the She-Creature to break through a door. On the first take
he broke through the balsa door but fell down and ruined the shot.
They had no more balsa wood to redo the shot, so they used a
sturdier wood (solid
pine!)
to replace the broken door. I understand he gave it the old college
try, but take after take, the poor guy just kept bouncing off the
door.
Blaisdell's
most infamous creation was the killer turnip for It
Conquered the World. Corman told Blaisdell what he wanted; a
squat creature, based on "scientific fact" that would
hardly be seen inside a dark cave. He showed his concepts of a
"hyper-intelligent mushroom" to both Nicholson and Corman
who were very pleased with the model so Paul went to work in his
basement.
He
built a wood framework and glued foam rubber pieces to it. When the
monster was completed he painted the creature red and detailed it
with black paint. He didn’t quite like the look of his monster so
he got a ball pin hammer and proceeded to beat the crap out of his
creation. He claimed it helped the monsters believability by making
it more organic looking.
The
monster completed Blaisdell realized, to his horror, that the
monster was too big to fit out his basement door so he began
disassembling it to take to the filming location.
Upon
its arrival and reconstruction on the set, Beverly Garland, the
film's heroine, took one look at the small, goofy looking creature
then laughed and kicked it right in the head causing the prop to
fall over. (They
tweaked the monster on the spot to make it bigger than their leading
lady.) The creature's arms were
very articulate but during filming the arms were trampled into
disrepair. Blaisdell did the best he could with his broken
equipment. (He also almost got a
bayonet in the head too but was saved by an army helmet he borrowed
from one of the extras.)
"Beaulah"
was passable in the dark with it’s glow in the dark eyes and it
wasn't supposed to come out of the cave but did for some reason. (It's
rumored the lights broke or the generator got lost, and they
couldn't afford to replace them.)
Corman brought it out into the daylight for the film's climax. To
me, it's one of the greatest moments and images in cinematic
history.
Lee
Van Cleef had a rough time keeping a straight face. When he stuck
the blowtorch into the critter’s eye, Blaisdell was in the suit
with his trusty grease gun. In the heat the syrup congealed in the
nozzle. Corman yelled at him to do something so he pumped harder.
The gun exploded out the creature’s eye and back on Paul. When he
crawled out of the monster suit he discovered Corman got a face full
of syrup too.
By
this time, Blaisdell was getting disenchanted with the movie
business. Long hours, little pay and less recognition for the work
he was required to do with a $1.50 budget. Things really started to
unravel when some of his prized creations were destroyed in a fire
during the filming of How
to Make a Monster,
the tale of an effects man who exacts deadly revenge on the studio
execs who fired him.
In
his appearance in Ghost
of Dragstrip Hollow,
Blaisdell's speech rang a little too true as he claimed the studio
he helped put on the map abandoned him. Blaisdell was tapped to do
the effects for Beast from the Haunted
Cave. He asked for a bigger budget and
when he didn't get it, he left AIP.
The
last movie he did was the monster suit for IT!
The Terror from Beyond Space for his old friend Eddie Cahn. MGM
was going to distribute it so Paul finally got a decent budget. The
monster in the film is Blaisdell’s only creation done with a
rubber mold. (Burns
still has the mold in his infamous basement.) Ray
"Crash" Corrigan barely could fit in it.
Blaisdell
stayed in the business on the fringes. Together with Burns they
started a monster magazine called Fantastic
Monsters of the Films.
Blaisdell had a section called "The Devil’s Workshop"
where he gave tips and pointers on how to make your very own
monsters.
The
magazine started strong and ran for seven issues. They sent all the
materials for the eighth issue, a tribute to Boris Karloff, to the
printer in Iowa but heard nothing back from them. The building where
the magazine was printed "mysteriously" burned to the
ground and the printer disappeared with the insurance money.
That
was the last straw for Blaisdell. Disheartened by the lack of
respect he got for the wonderful work he was doing (yes,
wonderful, considering the budget and time constraints he had to
work with,) Blaisdell
retired to Topanga Canyon and a life of carpentry.
A
misunderstanding with publisher Jim Warren (he
wasn’t happy with Paul for starting a rival monster magazine)
kept his name out of Famous
Monsters so, for the most part,
Blaisdell and his monsters disappeared into obscurity. (Beulah
was lost in a flood, and the She-Creature costume became the home of
three generations of raccoons.)
Still feeling bitter and abandoned, Blaisdell died of stomach cancer
in 1983. He was 55.
Blaisdell’s
story is another sad chapter in the life of a B-Movie legend. A
legend whose life ended before the renaissance of B-Movie mania,
fueled by cable, home video and the people who grew up on those
goofy monsters finally giving the respect and admiration these films
and film makers, despite their misperceived technical ineptitude,
truly deserve.
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