I know a lot of you out there probably don't know the name Paul Blaisdell, but I bet you know the films that he worked on. Paul Blaisdell was a sketch artist and fine arts painter and a monster maker.

Some of you out there made know a man who became Paul Blaisdell's agent, Forrest J. Ackerman, who got Paul Blaisdell his first job making a monster for Roger Corman's low-budget film, The Beast With One Million Eyes. Yes, Paul Blaisdell was the King of the low-budget monster makers.  He made some of our favorite monsters for American International Pictures schlock 1950’s sci-fi horror movies. Mr. Blaisdell was known especially for The She Creature, The Day the World Ended, Earth Versus the Spiders and, one of my favorites, Invasion of the Saucer Men.

He and fellow horror enthusiast Bob Burns started a magazine called Fantastic Monsters of the Films, sadly it was short lived, but Paul had a feature in it, a how to section he called the Devil's Workshop.

I don't know how you feel about the schlock film monsters that Paul brought to life but one thing that we have to agree on is that this man made monsters come to life with absolutely no budget and none of the modern materials that special effects artists have at their disposal today and he literally scared us silly. Paul used glue, Styrofoam, paper mache, and thermal underwear to make his creations come to life. I have heard modern monster effects artists say that they would hate to have tried to make the quality of monsters that Paul was capable of with only those types of materials available. It would have been time consuming and literally, a painstaking effort to create the monsters that Mr. Blaisdell created. 

Which brings me to Paul Blaisdell's last movie and I tell everyone that it is my favorite movie of all times, even though it has been listed in the 20 worst movies ever made. It has something special, something very special, you actually see Paul Blaisdell take off the mask from The She Creature and see him appear in the movie.

There is one other reason that it's one of my favorite films. It heralded the end of the teenage exploitation movie and the sci-fi horror pictures of American International Pictures before the introduction of the Technicolor Frankie and Annette beach party movies that dominated American International Pictures through the 60’s.

With the help of an actor friend of mine, Daniel Roebuck (also a collector and enthusiast of horror), I had the huge honor of meeting both Bob Burns and Forrest J. Ackerman at their homes in Burbank and Hollywood, CA, and seeing the actual props from many of the sci-fi and horror movies that I loved so dearly as a kid. We saw the Capitol building from Earth Versus the Flying Saucers, one of the only surviving mechanical skeletons from the original King Kong (with Faye Ray) from the 1930’s, and the actual Time Machine from the movie starring Rod Taylor (which was recently used on The Big Bang Theory). We had the opportunity to meet one of the movie’s co-star’s, Alan Young, as well. We saw the headpiece to Klaatu, the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still, as well as the flying saucer from the great movie starring Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal and Sam Jaffe.

There were two extremely special treats that Forrest J. Ackerman had, one of Bela Lugosi’s capes and the Dracula crest ring from Dracula. But the best treat of all was a completely restored martian head mask and the hand that injected the alcohol into Frank Gorshin, used in the movie Invasion of the Saucer Men which were made by Paul Blaisdell himself. We were also privileged to see hundreds of props and models that these men had saved literally from being destroyed or thrown away by the studios that made the pictures.

I am a huge fan of Mr. Paul Blaisdell, not because his movies were Oscar quality pictures, but because they weren't, but they were absolutely the best fun a kid could have watching on Fantastic Features a horror movie in the dark in his living room, late on a Friday night.