It Conquered the World (1956), The She-Creature (1956), and It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958)
For fans of the classic Universal monsters, Jack Pierce is a familiar name. But the artists who directly followed him don't always get the same recognition. A couple of decades after Universal's iconic monsters first appeared on screen, Paul Blaisdell was creating some of the 1950s' most distinctive creatures on a fraction of those budgets. His monsters became familiar sights to fans, even when his name didn't.
We're here to help change that.
In this episode, we're covering three films Blaisdell worked on and exploring his place in the history of movie monsters. Working in his garage, often with budgets of just a few hundred dollars and help from his wife, Jackie, and later his friend Bob Burns, Blaisdell brought some wonderfully strange creatures to the screen. What he lacked in resources, he made up for in imagination and ingenuity.
That's one of the reasons we started this podcast: to help people discover not just the films, but the talent behind the camera. So settle in as we celebrate Paul Blaisdell and the remarkable monsters he gave us.
Movies mentioned int his episode:
Alien (1979), Attack of the 50-Foot Woman (1958), Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957), Attack of the Puppet People (1958), The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955), Bog (1979), Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), Creature of Destruction (1968), Cruise into Terror (1978), Cult of the Cobra (1955), Day the World Ended (1955), Dracula (1931), Fiend Without a Face (1958), First Man Into Space (1959), Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow (1959), The Green Mile (1999), House of Wax (1953), How to Make a Monster (1958), Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957), Invisible Invaders (1959), It Came from Hollywood (1982), It Conquered the World (1956), It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), I Walked with a Zombie (1943), I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957), King Dinosaur (1955), The Little Shop of Horrors (1960), Old Yeller (1957), The She-Creature (1956), Up from the Depths (1979), Voodoo Woman (1957), Wizard of Gore (1970), Zontar: The Thing from Venus (1967)
