What do you think?
Rate this book
Paul Blaisdell, Monster Maker: A Biography of the B Movie Makeup and Special Effects Artist
Paul Blaisdell was the man behind the monsters in such movies as The She Creature, Invasion of the Saucer Men, Not of This Earth, It! Terror from Beyond Space and many others. Working in primarily low-budget films, Blaisdell was forced to rely on greasepaint, guts and, most importantly, an unbounded imagination for his creations. From his inauspicious beginning through The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959), the construction of Blaisdell's monsters and the making of the movies in which they appeared are fully detailed here. Blaisdell's work in the early monster magazines of the 1960s is also covered.
- GenresFilm
304 pages, Paperback
First published November 21, 1996
3 people are currently reading
28 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 12, 2013
Paul Blaisdell was a genius, creating monsters still remembered today on tight budgets, tight schedules, and with little more than liquid latex, foam rubber, and an airbrush and paint. He only worked for American International Pictures (with one exception), mostly for Roger Corman, and his career as a monster maker lasted less than ten years.
This biography, written by a fan and friend, is unfortunately disappointing. There is very little biography (Blaisdell's childhood is just barely glossed over, for instance) and, at times, too much recitation of things that anyone who would read this book will already know. The extensive plot summaries of the movies for which Blaisdell made monsters are the worst offenders, somehow managing to go into entirely too much detail (unrelated to anything having to do with Blaisdell's contribution to the movie) and failing completely to give a sense of the shape of the story (one wonders if Palmer has ever heard of three-act structure). It would have made far more sense to do a capsule summary followed by details that would be relevant to Blaisdell's task in the production, e.g., "X is a movie about an alien invasion, with interesting details A and B, and the script also called for Y and Z, which was Blaisdell's challenge."
There are also gaps for the casual reader. The bulk of the book is about the AIP years, and understandably so. But after he started making monsters, I came away with no idea how Blaisdell made his living. His pre-film years are sketched in, albeit not memorably, but once his final work with AIP is complete, all Palmer tells us is about a monster magazine Blaisdell started that failed after a year (due to apparent insurance fraud by the printer and distributor), and the occasional artwork he did for AIP and other studios that sometimes ended up on posters, and sometimes did not. Other than noting that Blaisdell lost a lot of his savings in the magazine venture, there is no indication of how he maintained himself, his wife, and his house in Topanga Canyon.
In short, this is a very fannish book, giving great gobs of detail about what interests the fan/writer, and not much to round out the portrait. (One saving grace: very entertaining transcripts of humorous "radio shows" Blaisdell and a friend recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder just for fun, included as an appendix.)
Blaisdell himself comes through, despite the imperfections of the biography. He seems to have been of a kind with other introverted Hollywood geniuses, such as Buster Keaton, happy to do what he was good at, and when the work dried up, not particularly tenacious in creating new venues for his talents.
But the book I cannot recommend, unless you really, really want to know how the She-Creature or the Space Cucumber from It Conquered the World! were created. If you do want that, you get it in loving detail. Along with how Crash Corrigan's enormous cranium nearly ruined another of Blaisdell's creations, and the frankly hilarious way he saved the costume and made it work.
This biography, written by a fan and friend, is unfortunately disappointing. There is very little biography (Blaisdell's childhood is just barely glossed over, for instance) and, at times, too much recitation of things that anyone who would read this book will already know. The extensive plot summaries of the movies for which Blaisdell made monsters are the worst offenders, somehow managing to go into entirely too much detail (unrelated to anything having to do with Blaisdell's contribution to the movie) and failing completely to give a sense of the shape of the story (one wonders if Palmer has ever heard of three-act structure). It would have made far more sense to do a capsule summary followed by details that would be relevant to Blaisdell's task in the production, e.g., "X is a movie about an alien invasion, with interesting details A and B, and the script also called for Y and Z, which was Blaisdell's challenge."
There are also gaps for the casual reader. The bulk of the book is about the AIP years, and understandably so. But after he started making monsters, I came away with no idea how Blaisdell made his living. His pre-film years are sketched in, albeit not memorably, but once his final work with AIP is complete, all Palmer tells us is about a monster magazine Blaisdell started that failed after a year (due to apparent insurance fraud by the printer and distributor), and the occasional artwork he did for AIP and other studios that sometimes ended up on posters, and sometimes did not. Other than noting that Blaisdell lost a lot of his savings in the magazine venture, there is no indication of how he maintained himself, his wife, and his house in Topanga Canyon.
In short, this is a very fannish book, giving great gobs of detail about what interests the fan/writer, and not much to round out the portrait. (One saving grace: very entertaining transcripts of humorous "radio shows" Blaisdell and a friend recorded on a reel-to-reel tape recorder just for fun, included as an appendix.)
Blaisdell himself comes through, despite the imperfections of the biography. He seems to have been of a kind with other introverted Hollywood geniuses, such as Buster Keaton, happy to do what he was good at, and when the work dried up, not particularly tenacious in creating new venues for his talents.
But the book I cannot recommend, unless you really, really want to know how the She-Creature or the Space Cucumber from It Conquered the World! were created. If you do want that, you get it in loving detail. Along with how Crash Corrigan's enormous cranium nearly ruined another of Blaisdell's creations, and the frankly hilarious way he saved the costume and made it work.
May 31, 2022
Great overview of Blaisdell's life and work. I have only one major complaint. The author spends too much time summarizing in exhaustive/exhausting detail the plots of Blaisdell's movies. There's an index-like list of names at the back of the Kindle edition, but no links to the pages on which the names appear, which is inexplicable, and useless.
January 26, 2018
I've been a fan of Blaisdell's work ever since 1956, when I saw the TV ads for SHE CREATURE and IT CONQUERED THE WORLD. The monsters looked completely alien to my six-year old eyeballs, horrible nightmares whose images stuck with me for months. The movies were playing in San Francisco: my family lived in a suburb, Walnut Creek, and unless "This is Cinerama" or "The Ten Commandments" were playing the Big City, I was deprived of these and many other monster classics.
That next summer, while driving through San Bernadino on vacation, I saw a movie house called the Globe that was playing not only the aforementioned AIP double bill, but also "Pharoah's Curse". My dad being a bit of a horror fan himself, gave into my pleading and we all walked into the faded glory of the Globe. A triple horror feature? Be still my tiny beating heart!
Well...I never got as scared as I had imagined after staring at Albert Kallis's poster images, but it was still a totally enjoyable afternoon. The cucumber monster from IT CONQUERED THE WORLD did indeed make the audience crack up when it lumbered out of the cage like an intoxicated pinhead. However, in the cave....with its glowing eyes...it gave me serious heebie-jeebies. When I think of that cheesy trip to a flea-house theater, I tear up thinking how cool my father was.
Fast forward. I became a monster kid, buying Famous Monsters and every rip-off imitation and reading them to tatters. Eventually, while walking through Chinatown in San Francisco, I saw Fantastic Monsters of the Films, the Paul Blaisdell/Bob Burns publication. Along with Castle of Frankenstein, it became my favorite magazine. I got to know more about Blaisdell (and Burns) and the color photos were novel and fascinating. I bought their short films that showed Paul's creations going through their paces. I watched them over and over again. They were, again, cheesy and kind of amateurish, but they were tremendously appealing. When the magazine stopped publishing due to the infamous insurance fire scam, it was a tremendous disappointment.
I've read a lot about Blaisdell via mentions in Cinefantastique magazine and Bob Burns, but Randy Palmer finally it all together in this fabulous book. Palmer is an excellent writer; I was engaged all the way through the book. It's pretty rare for a biography to be a "page-turner", but this a rare exception. I feel like I really understood Blaisdell. As talented as he was, no one ever recognized his genius, especially Sam Arkoff, Roger Corman, and everyone else at AIP save Jim Nicholson. The loss of all that rare material and the brutal termination of his magazine following on the heels of his being unceremoniously dumped by the studio whose rise he was an integral part of The last part of the book was a heartbreaking, cautionary tale about how Hollywood eats its young. If only one of the majors had recognized Paul's talent. Think of what he could have done with an actual studio, and a studio budget, to work with.
The book is a Monster Kid must-read, lavishly illustrated, and packed with page after page of tiny triumphs and gargantuan disappointments. I have a pretty large movie poster collection, and an IT CONQUERED THE WORLD one sheet is next on my list. My emotional attachment to these overpriced bits of paper was already huge, but this book made it even more keen.
Best horror/sci-fi book since Mank's "Karloff and Lugosi", and that's saying a lot.
That next summer, while driving through San Bernadino on vacation, I saw a movie house called the Globe that was playing not only the aforementioned AIP double bill, but also "Pharoah's Curse". My dad being a bit of a horror fan himself, gave into my pleading and we all walked into the faded glory of the Globe. A triple horror feature? Be still my tiny beating heart!
Well...I never got as scared as I had imagined after staring at Albert Kallis's poster images, but it was still a totally enjoyable afternoon. The cucumber monster from IT CONQUERED THE WORLD did indeed make the audience crack up when it lumbered out of the cage like an intoxicated pinhead. However, in the cave....with its glowing eyes...it gave me serious heebie-jeebies. When I think of that cheesy trip to a flea-house theater, I tear up thinking how cool my father was.
Fast forward. I became a monster kid, buying Famous Monsters and every rip-off imitation and reading them to tatters. Eventually, while walking through Chinatown in San Francisco, I saw Fantastic Monsters of the Films, the Paul Blaisdell/Bob Burns publication. Along with Castle of Frankenstein, it became my favorite magazine. I got to know more about Blaisdell (and Burns) and the color photos were novel and fascinating. I bought their short films that showed Paul's creations going through their paces. I watched them over and over again. They were, again, cheesy and kind of amateurish, but they were tremendously appealing. When the magazine stopped publishing due to the infamous insurance fire scam, it was a tremendous disappointment.
I've read a lot about Blaisdell via mentions in Cinefantastique magazine and Bob Burns, but Randy Palmer finally it all together in this fabulous book. Palmer is an excellent writer; I was engaged all the way through the book. It's pretty rare for a biography to be a "page-turner", but this a rare exception. I feel like I really understood Blaisdell. As talented as he was, no one ever recognized his genius, especially Sam Arkoff, Roger Corman, and everyone else at AIP save Jim Nicholson. The loss of all that rare material and the brutal termination of his magazine following on the heels of his being unceremoniously dumped by the studio whose rise he was an integral part of The last part of the book was a heartbreaking, cautionary tale about how Hollywood eats its young. If only one of the majors had recognized Paul's talent. Think of what he could have done with an actual studio, and a studio budget, to work with.
The book is a Monster Kid must-read, lavishly illustrated, and packed with page after page of tiny triumphs and gargantuan disappointments. I have a pretty large movie poster collection, and an IT CONQUERED THE WORLD one sheet is next on my list. My emotional attachment to these overpriced bits of paper was already huge, but this book made it even more keen.
Best horror/sci-fi book since Mank's "Karloff and Lugosi", and that's saying a lot.
October 8, 2024
Fun bio of artist Paul Blaisdell who through his many artistic skills found himself the head monster-maker for American International Pictures (AIP) in the 1950's. His creations were in many B sci-fi movies with Invasion of the Saucer-Men (1957) being my favorite. The book reads well and you get a good look at AIP in the '50's including Directors Roger Cormen and Bert I. Gordon. My only complaint is I thought the book was a little too long and some of the film synopsis could have been shorten. Other than that a fun read and I recommend if you know of Paul Blaisdell and the films he worked on...3.0 0utta 5.0...
June 18, 2015
Informative, entertaining volume about an extraordinary artist and creative jack-of-all-trades in SPX makeup, costumes and props for low-budget science fiction and horror films in the 1950s. Highly recommended if you are interested in fly-by-night filmmaking of the Roger Corman/Alex Gordon school.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews