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

by Randy Palmer

  Back at the village, Dr. Gerard continues his experiments on Sirandah. He leads her to an underground laboratory and injects her with a drug that changes her flesh into a stony substance capable of withstanding the impact of a bullet as well as scorching fire and burning acid. Gerard’s wife Susan (Mary Ellen Kaye) is a reluctant witness to her husband’s twisted experiments. She believes he is insane and lives in mortal terror of him. Guarded round the clock by Gerard’s manservant Bobo (Otis Greene) and Chaka’s guard Gandor (Emmett E. Smith), she is a virtual prisoner in her own home.

  Gerard changes Sirandah into a hulking monstrosity and leads her to a neighboring village, where the natives flee in panic. He commands her to destroy one of the native huts, and with her newfound strength she is able to pull it down with one bony claw. But when Gerard orders her to kill a young village couple, the spell is broken and Sirandah reverts to her human form. “You must kill in order to survive,” Gerard warns her, but Sirandah has a good heart and is unable to take a human life.

  Chaka explains that Sirandah disobeyed Gerard’s instructions because there is no evil within her soul. But Gerard remains convinced he can train Sirandah to murder at his command and continues the experiments. He changes her once more into a she-monster and demonstrates her invulnerability to his captive wife. Fearful of her husband’s escalating madness and what he might have in store for her, Susan enlists Bobo’s aid to help her escape, but Gandor kills Bobo with a spear before he can get outside the village perimeter.

  Gerard finally admits that Chaka was right about Sirandah and sends the girl back to her own village. Meanwhile, Marilyn and her entourage are making their way through the jungle. Scouting ahead of the rest of the troup, Rick runs into Sirandah and recognizes a trinket she is wearing as a gold artifact from the legendary voodoo village. He murders her and takes her necklace to Marilyn. “The gold’s right in our backyard,” he tells her.

  Guards from Chaka’s tribe discover Sirandah’s corpse and move in to surround Marilyn’s camp. Dr. Gerard accompanies them and explains that the tribe demands a death to recompense the murder of Sirandah. To make matters worse, the victim must be killed by a white man. As soon as she hears that, Marilyn pulls out her pistol and kills Rick instantly. Gerard realizes he has found the perfect woman for his experiments.

  Dr. Gerard (Tom Conway) shows off the indestructible Voodoo Woman (Paul Blaisdell) to his wife Susan (Mary Ellen Kaye).

  Ted is imprisoned in Gerard’s house while the doctor and Chaka initiate Marilyn into the tribe’s voodoo rites. Gerard explains that once she has been made a tribal priestess she can have anything the tribe has, including its gold. In actuality he wants her to submit to the voodoo ritual as the first part of the chemical process that will turn her into one of his monstrous superbeings. After he leads her to his lab and injects her with a special serum, Marilyn changes into the she-beast.

  Ted makes a break for freedom, killing Gandor in the process. Susan tries to escape next but runs right into Gerard and his she-creature. Gerard decides to give Susan to Chaka’s tribe, which is demanding another sacrifice. He orders the creature to carry Susan to the tribe’s sacrificial altar.

  When Ted returns to find out what happened to Susan, he is captured by two guards and tied up next to her at the sacrificial stake. Chaka surprises Gerard by telling him that the tribe demands his life as well. Gerard silently wills the she-beast to come to his aid. When Chaka’s men see the approaching apparition, they scatter in terror. The vengeance-minded Gerard then tells his creation, “Chaka must die, too.” The monster throws the voodoo priest into a pool of poisonous vapors.

  The Voodoo Woman (Paul Blaisdell) abducts Susan Gerard (Mary Ellen Kaye) at the direction of her megalomaniac husband Roland (Tom Conway).

  During the confusion Ted manages to break free of his bonds, and he and Susan escape. Now alone with his indestructible superbeing, Gerard watches as it examines the tribe’s ritual artifacts. “Clay—that’s all they are,” Gerard reveals. “There was only one gold idol, and Chaka took that with him into the pit.” Outraged by Gerard’s deception, the creature pins him against a tree, crushing his neck. With Gerard’s death, the spell is broken, and Marilyn reverts to her true form. She remembers Gerard’s words about Chaka’s gold idol and sees it wedged between the edge of the pit and its poisonous surface. As she kneels at the edge of the pit, she loses her footing and tumbles straight into the poisonous vapors.

  When Ted and Susan arrive at the pub in Bantalaya, Marcel asks them about Marilyn and Rick. “They’re both dead,” Ted tells him. Marcel shakes his head knowingly. “Her friend, maybe. But Marilyn? I have a feeling that one still lives.”

  Sure enough, in the film’s closing shot the indestructible she-beast climbs out of the sacrificial pit, a familiar gold idol clutched in one scaly claw.

  Marla English, who played the character of Marilyn, particularly impressed Paul Blaisdell:

  The Pit of Death from Voodoo Woman. Voodoo shaman Chaka (Martin Wilkins) prepares to sacrifice Susan Gerard (Mary Ellen Kaye) to the dark gods. Sitting atop the wooden post at left is the film’s “MacGuffin”—the native idol pursued by Marilyn Blanchard (Marla English, not shown).

  Marla English was such a wonderful lady to work with. She was a beauty by any contemporary standard of beauty—very tall and statuesque, she could make your heart melt. But she was also a very down-to-earth and a very conscientious person. She was just an all-around terrific person to know. And Marla worked hard on her scripts. She studied them and rehearsed her scenes over and over like a beaver trying to build a dam. She really did a lot more than she should have been required or expected to do. But Marla was that conscientious and that studious, and everyone on the set really tried to help her when it appeared that things might be getting too strenuous for her. We all tried to joke around with her and get her to relax. She was a real trooper.

  In addition to the revamped She-Creature outfit, Blaisdell designed and built the voodoo idol that registered dollar signs in the eyes of Marla’s character, Marilyn Blanchard. The sculpture was modeled in clay, using a papier-mâché Halloween pumpkin decoration as a base to give it bulk and was then painted gold so it would resemble an actual artifact, even though the film was made in black and white. “I nicknamed the idol ‘Ugga,’ because you’d take one look at it and go ‘ugga-ugga,’” joked Blaisdell.

  “Ugga,” the mysterious idol that causes all the hubbub in Voodoo Woman, was so named because, according to Paul Blaisdell, “you’d take one look at it and go ‘ugga-ugga!’” Ugga’s girfriend is one of the Puppet People created by Blaisdell for Bert I. Gordon’s Attack of the Puppet People (courtesy of Bob Burns).

  Blaisdell has often referred to Voodoo Woman as “a hard-luck picture” because, among other things, many of the cast and crew came down with colds and viruses, including himself. The picture was made during the winter of 1956–57 and the studio sets were often permeated by an uncharacteristic Southern California chill.

  AIP gave the project to Eddie Cahn to direct because he could work faster than even Roger Corman. Cahn was in no mood to hear about aches and pains and the flu season. He was under the gun to get Voodoo Woman finished in record time, and he expected his crew to be ready and available on time each morning in order not to fall behind schedule. This made working conditions even more strenuous, and tempers sometimes flared.

  Marla English was one of those who caught the flu bug. Oddly enough, the disabling fever that she began to run eventually helped cool off most of the tempers Cahn had been stoking with his vociferous attitude during the production’s unrelenting physical pace. Marla was trying hard not to let the bug get the best of her. When the crew saw how she was struggling to cope, everyone pulled together to help her out. That defused a potentially volatile situation which, left unchecked, might have threatened to shut down the entire production.

  Tempers and temperatures weren’t the only problems that surfaced during the making of Voodoo Woman. The rush-rush nat
ure of this AIP quickie was partially responsible for an inadvertent relaxation of standard safety precautions, and Paul Blaisdell ended up on the wrong end of a potentially gruesome incident that should never have occurred in the first place.

  The mishap took place during the shooting of a scene in which Dr. Gerard (Tom Conway) demonstrates the indestructibility of his zombie creation to his hysterical wife (Mary Ellen Kaye). The script called for Conway to pour “acid” on the creature’s exposed leg. The “acid” would smoke and bubble, but the creature’s skin would remain unaffected.

  Blaisdell was outfitted in his Voodoo garb and climbed into position on the table that served as Gerard’s experimental platform. While Tom Conway and Mary Ellen Kaye stood patiently by, a prop man appeared with the vial of “acid” and showed Conway how to pour it so that Fred West’s camera could catch the best angle. Blaisdell took one look at the container and tapped a scaly Voodoo finger on the fellow’s shoulder. “That’s not the kind of chemical smoke made from ammonia and hydrochloric acid, is it?” Blaisdell asked suspiciously.

  “Oh, no! This is something new. It’s called ‘Brett Smoke,’” the fellow assured him. “It’s completely harmless.”

  “Well, okay.”

  After Conway and Kaye took up their positions on the set, the camera began rolling. Conway poured the liquid onto the leg of Paul’s costume. Although he couldn’t see how it looked from his vantage point inside Voodoo’s headpiece, Blaisdell figured the stuff must have given out a pretty good blossom of smoke because Eddie Cahn was letting the camera roll.

  But a moment later Blaisdell felt the telltale signs of a real acid burn collecting on his leg inside the costume. Within seconds his skin felt as if it was on fire. Cahn finally yelled “Cut,” and that’s when Blaisdell started yelling—for help. Despite all the assurances, the “Brett Smoke” proved far from harmless and left a scar on Blaisdell’s leg that stayed there for the rest of his life. Blaisdell never forgot that day:

  The kind of chemical smoke we used to make in chemistry class will give out a beautiful cloud of smoke … as long as you don’t pour it on living tissue. I was assured that “Brett Smoke” contained a new type of chemical that caused no harm whatsoever. The only mistake Tom Conway and I made was in taking the prop man’s word for it. After the scene was over, I told Eddie, “Look, I’m going to have to go to the dispensary and get this wrapped up if we’re going to finish this picture,” and he said okay. Fortunately, the studio had a good dispensary. They also had a nurse named Peggy that had been versed in theatrics for a long, long time, and she had treated injuries of this nature. I ended up down in the dispensary with Marla [English], who was really having a tough time with the flu. We ended up with our cots smacking head to head and exchanged commiserations with each other. Peggy the nurse was a really wonderful gal. She patched my leg up, and she got Marla up on her feet again so she could finish doing Voodoo Woman. Like I said, it was a real hard-luck picture. Everybody on that film ended up recovering from something.

  Eddie Cahn wanted Voodoo to look larger than life, so Blaisdell brought along the special lifters he had made for the She-Creature. Cahn got the effect he wanted in those scenes where the village natives take one look at the monster and run for the hills. With the camera positioned directly behind Blaisdell for an over-the-shoulder shot, the natives appeared puny while the monster seemed enormous.

  Blaisdell plodded along in the lifters for several scenes, and in one shot very nearly lost his balance, which could have resulted in a serious injury—not only to himself, but to Mary Ellen Kaye. For the scene in which Dr. Gerard commands the she-monster to abduct his wife, Cahn wanted Blaisdell to carry Mary Ellen under one arm so the audience could see how strong this female fiend was. Blaisdell was a small-framed individual, but he was muscular and a lot stronger than he appeared. He sized up the situation and decided he could do it.

  “Yah, good,” Cahn said. “Now, go put on the lifters.”

  Of course, Paul hadn’t counted on that. Picking up Mary Ellen Kaye in one arm was one thing, but doing it in those foot-tall lifters was something else. He started to argue, but Cahn was adamant. He had to wear the lifters. Tom Conway was in the scene as well, and Voodoo had to look big.

  In the end Blaisdell pulled off the stunt, but not without a bit of a strain. In the finished film, after the monster grabs Kaye she goes shuffling off through the jungle. And she goes shuffling off slowly. “I had to walk as carefully as possible during that scene,” Blaisdell said. “One misstep and Mary Ellen and I would’ve ended up horizontal instead of vertical, possibly with a broken limb, or broken teeth, or who knows what? And I had no desire to visit the dispensary again, and neither did she.”

  Blaisdell wasn’t the only one who wore special lifters to appear taller on screen. Costars Mike Connors and Lance Fuller were enjoying a friendly sort of rivalry, and each wanted to look taller than the other. Every time the actors reported to the set, one of them had somehow gained an extra half-inch or so of height. The crew wondered what the hell was going on because every day someone different was taller. Finally Connors admitted he and Fuller had been putting lifts in their shoes, wondering when somebody was going to catch on. No one ever told Eddie Cahn that over half of his movie had been shot with costars whose heights changed literally from scene to scene.

  While Cahn was directing Voodoo Woman, Roger Corman was finishing up The Undead and AIP was designing ad campaigns for both pictures. In most situations the films were booked together as a double feature. Invariably, Corman’s feature scored higher marks from audiences, who seemed to warm to The Undead’s skewered storybook peculiarities, while Voodoo Woman, for the most part, was dismissed as “dull and hackneyed.” Variety called the story “routinized” and pointed out, “There’s little worry to make things credible.”

  After he finished The Undead, Corman went to work for Allied Artists, directing Attack of the Crab Monsters from a script by Chuck Griffith. Corman invited Blaisdell to design the title creatures—gigantic crabs born of (what else?) atomic radiation—but Paul declined after looking at the script. While it was obvious there would be only one full-size monster required for the film, he thought the budget appropriation for special effects was just too skimpy. Paul just didn’t see how he could do it justice. (Although there was supposed to be a whole “invasion” of crab creatures, Griffith’s script, written to Corman’s formula, ensured that there was never more than a single monster on camera at one time.)

  Blaisdell did accept Corman’s offer to work on the cofeature, however. It was another science-fiction entry, this time based on a script coauthored by Griffith and Mark Hanna entitled Not of This Earth. Blaisdell found the assignment appealing because there were no oversized monsters to build and no full-bodied costumes to wear. Instead, he would be designing a few key props and a single alien entity that would be shown on-screen for less than sixty seconds. It was an opportunity to take a break from all the headaches that had become part and parcel of the latest AIP projects.

  Although Not of This Earth was made by a different motion picture outfit, it was still a rushed production. After all, anything Roger Corman was involved with always turned into a rush job. The distributor, Allied Artists, never put much money into its films in the first place. Allied Artists had begun life as Monogram Pictures, the source of some of the worst movies ever to come out of Hollywood during the 1940s. Revitalized in the 1950s and rechristened Allied Artists, the company was still making bottom-line films. Some of them were just lousy, and others—the ones made by Corman, for example—ranged from forgettable to forgivable.

  Not of This Earth turned out to be one of Corman’s better 1950s features. It was made with the same brevity as most of his other productions, but the Griffith/Hanna screenplay contained enough off-the-wall elements to make it seem fresh and exciting. The story begins with the murder of a young girl on her way home from a late-night date. A strange man in dark glasses blasts her brain out of existence with one look
from his solid-white eyeballs. Death is instantaneous. Leaning over her still body, the killer opens a metal briefcase and unsheathes a needle-tipped tube. A moment later the victim’s blood begins spilling into one of the glass containers inside the briefcase.

  Paul Johnson (Paul Birch), the stranger with the dark glasses, visits the offices of Dr. Frederick Rochelle (William Roerick) to request a blood transfusion. Johnson claims to be dying from a rare blood disorder, but refuses to submit to a routine blood test. He hypnotizes Dr. Rochelle and explains that he is from a planet called Davanna. On this world, humans are dying from a disease that grew out of severe adventitious effects generated by a prolonged nuclear war. The blood in their bodies is literally turning to dust. Johnson has been sent to Earth to determine whether human blood is compatible with his own. If it is, the entire human race will be put through a pasteurization process to supply the millions of gallons of plasma that will be needed to sustain the lives of the Davannians.

  Rochelle’s nurse, Nadine Storey (Beverly Garland), begins Johnson’s treatments by functioning as a live-in nurse on loan from Rochelle’s office. Johnson’s manservant, an ex-con named Jeremy (Jonathan Haze), has the hots for Nadine, but she’s dating a cop named Harry Sherbourne (Morgan Jones), who is suspicious of Johnson and Jeremy as well. Nadine thinks Harry is overreacting, but the longer she stays in Johnson’s house the more she begins to wonder—what is Johnson really up to?