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Blaisdell, Paul

Entry updated 4 March 2024. Tagged: Artist, Film.

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(1927-1983) US painter, model-maker, actor and visual effects artist who designed the Monster suits for a number of 1950s US sf/Horror films. He often wore the creature suits as well, though almost always without any actor credit. Blaisdell served a stint with the US military after high school, then used the GI bill to attend the New England School of Art and Design. After graduation, he began submitting artwork to SF Magazines of the period, in the process attracting the attention of Forest J Ackerman, who became his agent. Ackerman successfully won him the job of effects artist for the low-budget Roger Corman film The Beast with a Million Eyes (1955; vt The Beast with 1,000,000 Eyes!). After this assignment, Blaisdell worked almost exclusively on similarly low-budget sf and sf/horror films including Day the World Ended (1955), It Conquered the World (1956), The She Creature (1956), Invasion of the Saucer Men (1957; vt Invasion of the Hell Creatures) and It! the Terror from beyond Space (1958). Reportedly growing disenchanted with Cinema, Blaisdell left the film world at the end of the 1950s, although he later co-published (with fellow fan Bob Burns) the high-quality Monster Movie magazine Fantastic Monsters of the Films from 1962 to 1963. Afterwards, according to some reports, he went into carpentry.

Blaisdell also sold cover artwork and interior art to several SF Magazines of the mid-1950s, including The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Other Worlds Science Stories (see Other Worlds), and Spaceway. His one recorded book cover was for Bernard Cronin's The Ant Men (1955) as by Eric North. [GSt]

see also: Fantastic Monsters of the Films.

Paul Blaisdell

born Newport, Rhode Island: 21 July 1927

died Topanga, California: 10 July 1983

about the artist

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