Paul Blaisdell, Monster Maker: A Biography of the B Movie Makeup and Special Effects Artist

by Randy Palmer

  Blaisdell’s pranks sometimes even extended to the film set. When Eddie Cahn got a good look at Paul’s first female film monster, he decreed that the creature wasn’t top-heavy enough. “She’s gotta have bigger boobs,” Cahn decided. Paul transported the costume back to the workshop for an evening of alterations. When he returned to the set the following day, Cahn took one look at Cuddles’ new set of double-D knockers and exclaimed, “Holy Christ! Well, at least now you can tell it’s definitely a woman.” Grinning from ear to ear, he glanced down at the creature’s waist. “Wait a minute. What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the abdomen.

  “I call them ‘lunch hooks,’” Blaisdell explained, and he demonstrated how they clinched together.

  “Forget it, Paul,” Cahn said. “They’re too scary. We can’t use them.”

  “Why not? I thought this was supposed to be a horror movie.”

  “Yeah, but they’re too horrible,” Cahn replied.

  The She-Creature shoot went smoothly. The atmosphere on the set was user-friendly, because by now most of the crew had worked together before on other AIP productions. Eddie Cahn’s many years of film experience enabled the crew to get through as many as 40 setups in a single day. Blaisdell explained: “Eddie liked to show off how fast he could be. We would hardly be finished with one scene when he’d get up from his director’s chair and point to some other spot on the ground and say ‘there.’ That meant that was where he wanted the camera to go. So then the crew would scurry over and begin setting up for the next shot.”

  The only problem anyone ever had with Eddie Cahn concerned his heavy English accent. He always had a pipe clenched in the center of his mouth, and when he barked out instructions, it usually came out sounding like “Grmlislkft fkdlmrp stdflbnd.” Invariably someone would say, “What’d you say, Eddie?” Then he would remove the pipe and repeat whatever it was he had just said in plain English.

  Unlike Roger Corman, Cahn never changed things in the script. He always filmed exactly what was written, which is why his cast and crew felt they could count on him. “Eddie never would have decided to have the mushroom monster chase the actors out of the cave in It Conquered the World,” confided Blaisdell. “Corman would change just about anything if he thought it would be cheaper, or faster, or almost as good.”

  Although there are only two major and two minor monster sequences in The She-Creature, Blaisdell was on call for five of the film’s seven shooting days. One of the earliest shots he filmed was for the opening of the picture, when the monster’s ghostly form swims through the ocean while Chester Morris intones some eerie voice-over narration. All that was required for the shot was a simple superimposition, so Blaisdell was photographed in the studio lying face-down on a black-draped mattress, mimicking the motions of a swimmer. The image was later combined with a long shot of the ocean, but the two viewpoints were improperly lined up, with the result that the creature seemed to be drifting above the water rather than swimming in it.

  Another superimposition was utilized for the scene in which the She-Creature materializes in the seawater beneath the amusement pier. In this instance Blaisdell crouched down against a black studio floor covering while the camera was rigged about eight or nine feet overhead. On Eddie Cahn’s cue, Blaisdell stood up and flailed his arms. The shot was superimposed over footage of bubbling seawater filmed at Paradise Cove. The bubbling effect was created with an underwater agitator.

  For the scene in which the creature smashes into Johnny’s (Paul Dubov) apartment, the crew had prepared a specially scored door made of balsa wood that would come apart easily in sections. The only problem was that it was so delicately fitted together that if anyone brushed up against it the whole thing came tumbling down. Since there was just the one door (there was never enough money in the budget to do these kinds of things twice), someone had the foresight to protect the breakaway prop by reinforcing it with plywood from the opposite side.

  When it was time for Blaisdell to knock the hell out of the door, no one remembered that it had been reinforced. Eddie Cahn had two cameras running (a rarity on such an early AIP film) so the action could be caught from both a front angle (Johnny’s viewpoint) and a rear angle (from behind the creature). When Cahn called “Action,” Blaisdell raised a creature claw and smashed at the door, but the rubber-coated pine costume just bounced off.

  Blaisdell hit the door with such force he was knocked backward and fell on the creature’s tail. There was so much latex and foam in the tail it almost bounced Paul back up.

  Finally someone remembered that the breakaway door had been reinforced with plywood. Down came the plywood for take 2. When the cameras started rolling again, Blaisdell smashed through the doorway easily, but tripped on a piece of splintered wood. This time he fell forward. Because the painted, prescored balsa door had splintered so nicely, Cahn decided just to trim off the end of the sequence, in which the She-Creature sprawled face-down on the floor.

  For the next scene, in which the creature overturns the cot on which Paul Dubov is lying, a special lifting prop was used. This time Paul made it across the room without falling over, and then, resting one of his creature claws against the frame, he yanked the cot upward. Actually, it moved pretty slowly, but Cahn was undercranking the camera so that the action would appear speeded-up during projection.

  Jackie Blaisdell always had a supply of contact cement on hand for any emergencies that might crop up during filming. If one of the creature’s antennae accidentally came loose, for instance, it could quickly be patched back together using the contact cement, and the film crew would lose no real production time. At the end of the day, Blaisdell could redo the repair more thoroughly in his home workshop. Fortunately, the construction of the She-Creature was so solid that it could withstand plenty of physical wear and tear. In fact, Blaisdell was so self-assured about the quality of the She-Creature costume that he told Sam Arkoff it could withstand the firing of .22-calibre blank ammunition. According to Arkoff in his book Flying Through Hollywood by the Seat of My Pants, Blaisdell encouraged him: “Go ahead, try shooting .22-calibre blank ammunition at it at close range. It’s not going to penetrate the material.” Arkoff decided to take Paul’s word for it.

  The climactic appearance of the monster was filmed on location at Paradise Cove near Los Angeles. This was the only time in the film the monster would actually be seen emerging from the waves, and Eddie Cahn wanted it to look impressive.

  “Get out in the water, Paul,” Cahn told Blaisdell. “Way out.”

  Blaisdell walked into the surf and turned around.

  “Farther!” Cahn yelled.

  Blaisdell backed up a few paces.

  “No, no! Get really far out! Farther! Get out up to your waist!”

  By the time Paul reached the point where Cahn was happy with what he saw, Blaisdell had become a mere dot in the camera lens. Cahn had set everything up as a wide-angle long-shot, but Blaisdell didn’t know that. Besides, he had other things to worry about. The costume was acting just like a big sponge. The foam rubber was saturated with so much sea water he could barely move.

  When Cahn finally called “Action!” Blaisdell pressed forward. The water-logged suit of foam rubber felt like it weighed a ton. Every time Paul pushed forward the outgoing ocean current pushed him back. So he started lunging through the water. It was the only way he could make any progress.

  “That looks good! Keep it up!” Cahn yelled from the beach. He had no idea Blaisdell was wading through the water the only way he could. After a moment, Cahn yelled, “Move faster, Paul, move faster!”

  “Oh sure, Eddie, I’ll be right with you,” Blaisdell shouted back somewhat angrily.

  Getting from the ocean to the beach proved to be a pretty difficult feat, but Blaisdell gave it all he had. As many viewers of the finished film would recall, the She-Creature didn’t walk, it lumbered. Even the crew didn’t realize until later that that was the only way Blaisdell could walk in the water-drenched costume. As it turned ou
t, Blaisdell suffered through the oceanic acrobatics all for naught. The image of the monster lumbering out of the ocean had been shot from so far away that nobody could tell what it was, and most of the footage ended up on the cutting-room floor. In the final print, only the creature’s feet seem to be in the surf.

  Ron Randell, who was standing by waiting to play his death scene, thought the whole thing was ludicrous. He happened to look down and see that sand was getting into his shoes. “Damn, Eddie, look! I’m getting sand in my shoes!” he complained. While everyone else was busy shooting the scene with Blaisdell, Randell was picking sand off his socks.

  In later years, Blaisdell recalled this difficult scene:

  Having an outgoing tide did not exactly help to solve the problem of getting the She-Creature to come out of the ocean. The costume weighed in at 72 pounds. Add to this another 50 pounds of cold seawater, and add to that the weight of the guy that’s trying to carry this load, and you’ll know why she comes out of the ocean so slowly. At least I got a little bit lighter as I got closer to the shore. Between takes I could hear Ron Randell complaining to Eddie about the sand that was getting in his shoes. Meanwhile, Jackie was trying to squeeze all the salt water out of the tail, which weighed a helluva lot more than any sand Ron Randell could get in his shoes.

  When the stage was finally set for the She-Creature to clobber Randell senseless, Blaisdell lumbered across the beach menacingly. Knowing the sound would be rerecorded in postproduction, Blaisdell said, “Listen, Ron, one more laugh out of you and you can forget about any sand in your shoes because you’re going to get hit with the She-Creature’s arm and end up taking all the salt water that’s in this suit back to the prop department with you.”

  Tom Conway, who was also scheduled to die at the claws of the She-Creature, seemed to be enjoying himself on the set. According to Blaisdell and Bob Burns, he thought the film was “a kick.” Blaisdell’s scenes with Conway all took place on dry land, and because Conway was the taller of the two, Paul had built special lifters for the costume so it would appear taller on screen. To make the lifters, Blaisdell glued a pair of sneakers to large styrofoam blocks, which increased his height by another twelve inches. But the lifters proved enormously difficult to walk in, and Blaisdell had to practice for days beforehand just to be able to shuffle from one side of the set to the other. The styrofoam was so light it could easily throw him off balance. One misstep and he would fall flat on his face again.

  In the end only three scenes required use of the lifters. The shots of the monster coming at Conway through the bushes were filmed normally, but for a side view of the creature gesturing menacingly at Conway, who also appears in the frame, Paul wore the lifters. Even with practice, walking in them was a problem, so Blaisdell had to “shuffle” forward during the scene. (Alert viewers will spot the white tops of the sneakers and styrofoam blocks at the very bottom of the film frame in this scene.) The lifters were also used when the creature lunges at Conway, who is trying to reach a revolver in his office desk.

  Blaisdell’s impression of Conway changed as they worked together:

  Before I got to work with Tom Conway, I used to wonder if the man ever smiled. When we worked together on The She-Creature he still had that stiff British upper lip. As I recall, he did eventually give in and crack a smile, and smiles grew to kidding around, and that grew to outright laughs. But this is understandable, considering the way I used to look most of the time.

  During the film’s actual climax, Blaisdell used the lifters one last time to augment the creature’s height as it approached Chester Morris (Lombardi) and Lance Fuller (Erickson). Blaisdell towered so high over Fuller that he had to lean into the frame when he took a swipe at the actor with one of the oversized creature claws.

  For the final shot, in which the She-Creature gazes longingly at its future body, Blaisdell took off the lifters and replaced them with the normal monster feet. But because Marla English is lying down in the scene, there is no real way for the casual viewer to know that the creature’s height has changed in the slightest.

  Blaisdell, always at the ready with a cute quip, started teasing Marla before the camera began rolling. By the time Eddie Cahn was ready to shoot the scene, Blaisdell had been joking with Marla so much she couldn’t think of him as a monster any longer. When Cahn fired up the .35mm Mitchell camera and the She-Creature’s face loomed over her, she started laughing.

  “Cut!” yelled Cahn. “What the hell’s so funny?”

  Marla just giggled, pointing at Blaisdell.

  “That’s not funny, that’s a She-Creature,” said Cahn in his heavy British accent, making Marla laugh all the harder.

  Blaisdell described the final scene in this way: “The She-Creature didn’t die. She was exorcised, not executed. The script called for machine guns and fire to destroy her, but I didn’t get hit with any artificial fire and as far as machine guns went, there weren’t any. I don’t recall anybody putting out the money for the blanks. There were some revolver shots. I probably got shot at with some police positives. It’s a lot cheaper.”

  They eventually got the scene wrapped, but it took a while. It was one of the few times when an AIP picture required more than a single take.

  The She-Creature would eventually become a fan favorite, but it didn’t win many accolades when it was first released in September of 1956. Some reviewers labeled it “pedestrian,” and Variety, the industry Bible, called it a “tossed green salad of the Bridey Murphy theme, mixed with [a] helping of monster-from-the-past, and served up with a dash of Svengali.” Although Variety cited Chester Morris’s “capable performance,” as well as turns by Marla English, Tom Conway, and Ron Randell, the magazine thought the plotline was “disjointed” and “haphazard” and said “the monster becomes ridiculous when viewed in the strong light of the kliegs.” Even so, the reviewer seemed to like something about the film, remarking, “Director Edward L. Cahn manages to mix in a good quota of chills, especially for impressionable small fry.”

  There was definitely a limit to the horror, however, as Blaisdell later noted:

  When you’re making a monster movie, the one that is most fearful of the monster is the producer, not the audience, because the producer sometimes doesn’t quite know what to do with it. Isn’t it funny that today we can have movies where a zombie gets its head chopped off because it walks too close to the rotoblades of a helicopter and his head bursts apart into the screen like a ruptured watermelon [a reference to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead]. But when pictures like The She-Creature were first produced, we weren’t allowed to show anything too horrible.

  American International sent The She-Creature out as part of a double feature with Roger Corman’s It Conquered the World. To really get ticket sales booming, AIP wanted Blaisdell to appear on a Los Angeles television show—not in a special “behind the scenes” story, but in full character as the She-Creature herself.

  Blaisdell dreaded going on television. “Jackie and I had just got finished working on the film, and you couldn’t have got me back inside that suit at that particular time if you’d squeezed me through a cake decorator,” Blaisdell insisted. “I’d had enough of that suit to last me at least a week, or until I got caught up on my sleep.” But AIP wanted him immediately; they couldn’t wait a week. Since Paul didn’t want to let Jim Nicholson down, he turned to his pal Bob Burns and asked him if he would be interested in becoming the She-Creature for a day.

  “Are you kidding, or what?” Burns said. Of course he would do the TV show. What could be more fun?

  Actually, the She-Creature was scheduled for appearances on two Los Angeles shows—Quinn’s Corner and Campus Club. The former was an afternoon talk show hosted by Louis Quinn, who would go on to appear as “Roscoe” in TV’s fondly remembered 77 Sunset Strip. Since Burns was about the same size as Blaisdell, the She-Creature costume fit him remarkably well. With the help of Bob’s friend Lionel Comport, who remained on hand to zip Burns in and out of the costume,
the She-Creature was soon destined for television stardom.

  Things went smoothly for Burns on Quinn’s Corner, but the Campus Club stint nearly turned into a riot as the show’s college-age live audience stampeded the stage to get an up-close and personal look at a “real live monster” in the flesh. In retrospect it was a wildly successful publicity stunt, but there was a moment or two when Burns wasn’t so sure this had been a good idea. It looked as if the students were going to mow him down in their enthusiastic rush onto the stage. He could imagine Paul’s costume being ripped to shreds as dozens of students grabbed for a piece of movie monster to take home as a souvenir.

  In Fantastic Monsters of the Films, vol. 1, no. 2, Bob Burns described that television appearance:

  The Day the She-Creature Invaded TV

  While sitting out the 40 minute wait before the [Louis] Quinn interview [on “Quinn’s Corner’’], Lionel took off my She-Creature head for me, then put it back, suggesting he needed a drink, even if I didn’t.

  There was a Coke machine in the basement of the TV station, so we got into the elevator and started down. When the doors rolled back to reveal the basement, it also showed us two attractive young secretaries—and they saw us.

  Their screams and footsteps faded into the distance like an old “Hi-Yo Silver Away …”

  Finally, at the machine, I found it difficult to hold a pop bottle between my two claws, so I slipped off my huge monster gauntlets and drank the Coke through a straw stuck in the mouthpiece of The She-Creature mask.

  Just then, another cute secretary strolled by. Even the sight of my human hands could not soothe her, and she ran screaming off to convince her two friends she had just seen a monster walking around, one with a tongue that hung out, big as a Coke bottle.

  As Lionel and I walked back towards the elevator, two other girls sitting at snack tables didn’t even look up from the book they were discussing, The Man Who Made Maniacs.