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

by Randy Palmer

  How to Make a Monster was like a 75-minute-long advertisement for AIP movies. The story made extensive use of the Teenage Frankenstein and Teenage Werewolf makeups designed by Philip Scheer, threw in a new split-face monstrosity (also by Scheer), and stirred the ingredients into an entertaining, offbeat thriller. Paul Blaisdell did not work on any of the primary monster makeups, but several of his earlier creations were on display during the film’s fiery finale, peripheral calling cards for other AIP pictures as he later recalled: “Some of the props hanging on the wall were oldies, very delicately put back together for the climax of the picture. They didn’t last very long, especially Cat Girl, but at least they lasted long enough for How to Make a Monster.”

  The story line, self-serving as it was, at least offered something new. The film opens on a close-up of a snarling Teenage Werewolf. The actor under the makeup is Larry Drake (Gary Clarke), who plays an up-and-coming star at American International Pictures. Larry’s costar, Tony Mantell (Gary Conway, who played the role of the monster in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein), is another young actor who once had a bright future. Unfortunately, the boys’ starring roles in the new “Werewolf meets Frankenstein” movie will probably be their last, because this picture will be the studio’s final foray into fantasy. A new regime has taken over AIP, and the newcomers have decided the public wants musicals, not monsters. Before long, the new studio owners are stalked and murdered one by one.

  The Cohen/Langtry screenplay makes no bones about keeping secrets: the audience is informed right away that AIP makeup maestro Pete Drummond (Robert H. Harris) and his assistant Rivero (Paul Brinegar) are the culprits behind the killings. Drummond has discovered a means of bending any person to his will with the use of a new makeup foundation cream containing a chemical compound that temporarily destroys the victim’s moral code by blocking the firing of the brain’s synapses. Drummond uses his concoction on the actors playing the Werewolf and Frankenstein, secretly instructing them to kill off the new studio bosses. When an aggressive night watchman named Monahan (Dennis Cross) gets close to uncovering the truth, Drummond uses the makeup compound on himself. (But why? As the mastermind behind the murders, he obviously has no morals to be destroyed.) Hiding behind a weird split-face makeup, Drummond clubs Monahan straight into the next life.

  Spineless Rivero almost crumbles under the strain of a police investigation. Drummond decides that his assistant has just about outlived his usefulness. He invites Rivero, Larry, and Tony to a special get-together at his home. Here, Drummond maintains a virtual shrine to the most monstrous movie creations of his career. Larry and Tony compare notes and decide that Drummond has gotten a little too weird for their liking, but the door is bolted and now they’re trapped inside. Drummond knifes Rivero in a back room, then turns his attention to the other guests. Tony accidentally turns over a burning candle, catching the drapes afire, and Drummond suddenly descends into total psychosis. “What have you done to my children?” he gasps as the flames begin eating away at the plastic and rubber masks adorning the walls. In a frenzied effort to save his creations, Drummond becomes trapped by the blaze while the youngsters make it to safety, thanks to the timely arrival of the police.

  In a repeat of a promotional gimmick used in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein and War of the Colossal Beast, the fiery climax of How to Make a Monster was filmed in color. Paul Blaisdell provided several props to the filmmakers for use as background decor, including the original headpieces he built for The She-Creature and Invasion of the Saucermen, and the Mr. Hyde mask from Attack of the Puppet People. Also included was all that was left of It Conquered the World’s stalactite monster, Beulah. Much of it had rotted away by the time How to Make a Monster went into production, so only the face showed up in the new film. The “savior” mask made for AIP’s British import Cat Girl was also loaned to the production. Unfortunately, that was the last Paul saw of that particular creation. He had designed two disposable masks to be used for “throwaway effects” during the climactic scene, but the Cat Girl was never meant to be one of them. Things got a little hectic during the filming of the fire effects, and a confused stage hand set Paul’s Cat Girl mask ablaze by mistake. That was bad enough in itself, but to add insult to injury, nobody photographed it while it was burning. Perhaps worst of all was the fact that the cat-mask was never even seen in the film: it had been hung on a backdrop that faced away from the camera during the entire production.

  The masks that were created specifically to go out in a blaze of glory were sculpted out of wax. The heat generated by the gas burners that were being used to create the film’s fire effects slowly melted the wax, which dripped off its wooden supports in gruesome fashion. One of the masks, which Blaisdell nicknamed “Aunt Esmerelda,” got the lion’s share of the fiery footage. As the image melted and the wax fell away, a plastic skull underneath was revealed. Although it was never so stated in the movie, the effect suggested that at least some of Drummond’s monsterrific “children” were made out of a lot more than latex rubber.

  Blaisdell later recalled the scene:

  “Aunt Esmerelda” was created entirely out of wax from scratch specifically to go up in smoke. At the appropriate time when the gas burners were turned on by the prop men, the wax began to melt, and she went up in flames rather beautifully, I thought. The fellow who played Pete the makeup artist was an actor named Robert H. Harris, but I was calling him “Pete” through the entire production. I didn’t learn his real name until 1979. I guess he was either too shy to correct me, or he figured I was too ignorant to learn.

  As could be expected, the loss of an irreplaceable movie prop such as the Cat Girl mask left a bad taste in Paul’s mouth. Storage problems had already decimated the bulk of the mushroom monster from It Conquered the World, the carelessness of others had resulted in the near-total collapse of Marty the Mutant from Day the World Ended; and Forry Ackerman, who had been presented with Little Hercules from The Beast with a Million Eyes, kept it in a sun-bathed display case until it eventually fell apart, a victim of “heatstroke.” Of Paul’s earliest creations, only the She-Creature had survived intact. And when the folks at American International learned she was still “alive and kicking,” they decided to bring Blaisdell’s demonic debutante out of retirement for one final fling.

  10

  Missing Monsters

  There’s a term, “Runaway Production,” which basically refers to escalating film production costs. The kind of picture Roger Corman might have been able to make for $60,000 or $70,000 in 1955 began to cost upwards of $100,000 just a couple of years later. I guess I can’t blame Rog for trying to cut his costs any way he could, and that included finding even less expensive ways to come up with the real “stars” of the monster pictures. Of course, it wasn’t only Roger Corman; everyone was trying to find cheaper ways of doing things. That’s why the folks at American International began doing coproductions with England, like Cat Girl and The Headless Ghost and Horrors of the Black Museum. If they’d been made here, sure, I might’ve been involved with some of them. But to be perfectly honest, I was beginning to get a little tired of the whole game. AIP had made a lot of promises over the years, and I think they forgot most of what they said almost as soon as they said it.

  —Paul Blaisdell

  The decade of the 1950s would soon be drawing to a close, and with it would go the kind of monster movie that had been feeding the public’s hunger for horror for the last ten years. Big changes were in store for Hollywood and for the nation as well. Although he couldn’t have known it at the time, Paul Blaisdell would complete just two more major film assignments before the changing face of Monsterdom snuffed out his motion picture career forever. Bob Burns later spoke about Paul’s relationship with AIP:

  In the early years AIP kept telling Paul, “You’re part of the AIP family, you’ll grow as the company grows, and by this time next year you’ll be earning twice as much money.” Sam was always saying things like that, but his sentiments sure didn’t l
ast very long. Paul got upset because they never increased his salary or gave him a bonus. It wasn’t Jim Nicholson’s fault. If anything, it was because Arkoff was always so very businesslike. He didn’t leave room for personal feelings or well-wishes or that sort of thing. Sam controlled the purse-strings, and if that meant hiring cheaper monster-makers, then so be it.

  Blaisdell also commented on the range of film budgets:

  Some of the pictures I worked on in the ’50s could only be termed “stingy,” but the same kind of picture is still being made today. Star Wars is basically the same kind of picture, it’s just that the budget, comparatively, is tremendous. With larger budgets you get more time, and with more time there are larger and larger crews, and when you have a lot of people together working on them, you have more and better special effects. Actually, some of the crews have become as tremendous as the budgets. It’s totally unlike anything I was involved with, where you were sometimes asked to reuse the same monster suit in a second movie, or where you were asked to come up with something new in two days for two dollars!

  In 1959, Roger Corman started up his own film production company called “Filmgroup.” It was a move that would allow him to make inexpensive pictures that could be sold outright to AIP or other interested distributors. By using his own money and funds from investors, Corman was able to distance himself from people like Sam Arkoff and make movies without their comments, requests, restrictions, or influence.* It was a good idea that promised filmmaking autonomy, but now Corman had to work without AIP’s backing, which meant the budgetary belt had to be pulled even tighter.

  Corman called Blaisdell to tell him about a new picture his brother Gene was preparing to make called The Beast from Haunted Cave. Corman’s favorite screenwriter, Chuck Griffith, had come up with a script that was basically a mystery-thriller about a gang of thieves who encounter a mythical monster after they become snowbound on a remote mountainside. Griffith purposely designed the script so that the title Beast could be kept off-camera as long as possible. The majority of the film’s 75 minute running time would be spent with various story characters as they threatened to talk themselves (and the audience) to death. All that was needed was a pretty straightforward monster that could perform one or two actions before being toasted by the film’s hero. The creature didn’t even need to be mobile because it remained in the cave through the entire picture.

  Paul couldn’t believe what he was hearing. It all sounded suspiciously familiar. A monster that was required only to do one or two things? That’s what Corman had told him about The Beast with a Million Eyes. A creature that remained hidden inside a cave? He’d heard that when Corman was readying It Conquered the World. “Are you sure about all this?” Blaisdell asked.

  “Absolutely!”

  As was customary, Corman sent Blaisdell a copy of the film script. Sure enough, according to Griffith’s story, the monster wouldn’t be seen until almost the end of the picture. It didn’t move around much, and it never came out of the cave. In fact, it didn’t do much of anything, except die. The victims were going to be discovered wrapped in silk cocoons, with the Beast hovering over them like some kind of mammoth spider-fly hybrid. (In fact, the creature’s appearance was inspired by an insect called the Wingless Hanging Fly.) Blaisdell figured that Corman would expect him to build the cocoons as well as the title monster, but that was okay; he and Jackie should be able to handle it. Paul phoned Corman to tell him he would be available to do the picture.

  “Oh! Okay, good,” Corman said, sounding a little surprised. “You’ve talked with Gene about the budget?”

  No, Paul hadn’t talked with Gene about the budget or anything else, for that matter. “What about the budget?” he asked.

  “Well …” Corman sounded funny, as if he was trying to skirt the issue of salaries. Finally Paul asked him straight out how much his company intended to pay for its title beast.

  Roger quoted him a figure.

  “You’re kidding, I hope,” he told Corman. It was less than what he had been offered the last time he got involved with a Corman production.

  “That’s all I can afford, Paul.” As Corman explained, the fledgling Filmgroup company just couldn’t afford to pay the kind of salary Blaisdell was accustomed to getting from AIP.

  “Roger, I can’t do it for that amount,” said Blaisdell. “I’d like to help you out, but what you’re offering me would barely cover the cost of the materials. You’ll have to get somebody else.”

  That was the end of that.

  Filmgroup eventually got their beast from a fellow named Chris Robinson, who agreed to make the monster in return for just a screen credit. Robinson’s creature was made mainly out of chicken coop wire wrapped around a plywood base, with putty and crepe hair pasted to the exterior. The final touch was something called “Angel Hair,” an item usually marketed during the Christmas season as a tree decoration. Corman knew that Robinson’s monster failed to approach the standards set by Blaisdell, but he figured he had gotten too good a deal to pass up.

  Blaisdell never worked for Corman again.

  One rather cheesy science-fiction film that has managed to cultivate a minor degree of notoriety—for all the wrong reasons—is Teenagers from Outer Space, another picture that Hollywood wanted Blaisdell to work on for peanuts. Distributed by Warner Bros. as the bottom half of a double bill with Gigantis, the Fire Monster, this was an independent production masterminded by one-man-wonder Tom Graeff. Graeff was the film’s producer, director, screenwriter, editor, cameraman, sound editor, music composer, and special effects creator. He was also one of its costars.

  The title teens are an alien race who have been hot-rodding around the universe in search of a suitable spawning ground for their homegrown monsters, the Gargons. It turns out that Earth would make an excellent habitat because the Gargons would have a nutritious food supply at the ready (human beings, that is). Soon, the first Gargon is unleashed upon terra firma to graze among the human cattle.

  Graeff wanted Blaisdell to design the Gargon but couldn’t afford his fee, so the filmmaker ended up using silhouettes of lobsters to represent the alien species. Blaisdell routinely neglected to mention Teenagers from Outer Space during discussions of his Hollywood years, even though he did get involved peripherally by customizing a prop ray-gun and designing the film’s one-sheet poster. The ray-gun was a commercially available toy called the Atomic Disintegrator Cap Gun. Graeff bought a quantity of the guns to provide to the cast to use on camera. Blaisdell modified the firing mechanisms by inserting tiny pieces of mirrors inside. When the sun’s rays or the studio lights struck the mirror at the right angle, the reflection made it look as if the gun were actually firing. (The original Atomic Disintegrator Cap Guns are now highly priced collectibles, worth a lot more than the check Blaisdell received for his contribution to the film.)

  Teenagers from Outer Space was so cheap to make that it couldn’t help making a profit, but the same couldn’t be said for American International’s latest combination, A Bucket of Blood and The Giant Leeches (later retitled Attack of the Giant Leeches). AIP wanted Blaisdell to design the overgrown bloodsuckers for its leech movie, which was being produced by Gene Corman. Roger Corman had just wrapped A Bucket of Blood, which was the first in his black comedy film trilogy. (The other two were The Little Shoppe of Horrors and Creature from the Haunted Sea.) The Giant Leeches was being shot to fill the bottom half of the double bill. But once again the money just wasn’t there; neither was the time. “Gene needed several costumes, but it was one of those rush-rush jobs and it was just impossible. Besides, I couldn’t have made even one suit for what they were offering,” Blaisdell explained. Although he would never have admitted it in print, Paul felt insulted by the meager salaries he was being offered to work on the latest monster movies. Because he didn’t believe in airing “dirty laundry,” only those closest to him knew how he really felt.

  “AIP very much wanted Paul to make the monster suits for The Giant Leeches,” r
evealed Bob Burns, “but he declined, based on the amount of work involved versus the amount of money he would be paid. They were not offering much at all. I know Paul felt taken advantage of, because he had been giving them more than their money’s worth for years, but he was not one to complain, at least not publicly. But honestly, by this time he was so fed up, he’d just about had it.” Despite his affection for American International’s president, Jim Nicholson, Blaisdell wasn’t about to set a new precedent by accepting work at a lower wage. He told them to find another body to build their bloodsuckers.

  Finding a suitable replacement for Blaisdell turned out to be more difficult than anyone had imagined. No one knew how to build giant leeches. Finally Gene Corman went to Blaisdell and admitted, “Look, we don’t know what to do. How do you build these things?” Suppressing a self-indulgent chuckle, Blaisdell advised the producer to go to a surplus store and buy a bunch of black raincoats. “Get some block foam and make yourself some foam rubber ‘doughnuts’ and glue them to the raincoats, and those will be your leech suckers,” Blaisdell instructed, tongue shoved firmly in cheek. Corman thanked him and left.

  “Paul was really being facetious when he told them how to make the leech costumes, but that’s what they ended up doing,” recalled Bob Burns. “No one involved with the film had the technical know-how to pull off these cheap outfits the way Paul could, or with his type of ingenuity. Paul was just joking about the raincoats, but AIP didn’t know that. The funny thing is, although he would have used different materials, Paul probably could have made it work using raincoats.”