by Randy Palmer
AIP sent Buchanan four screenplays—Day the World Ended, It Conquered the World, The She-Creature, and Invasion of the Saucer Men—with instructions to make new versions under alternate titles.* Because they would be going directly to television, Buchanan’s films were made in 16mm at an average cost of $22,000 per picture. Produced under the moniker Azalea Films, the first of the four remakes was The Eye Creatures, sometimes known as Attack of the Eye Creatures, with “the” appearing by mistake twice in the title. (How shoddy can you get?) This was Buchanan’s reinterpretation (as opposed to a copy) of Invasion of the Saucer Men. Like the original, it’s an attempted mix of comedy and horror. But whereas Saucer Men managed to be both funny and scary, The Eye Creatures was neither. Instead, it was merely ridiculous. The costumes (which, as the title implies, were covered with eyes) were the work of Jack Bennett, a Dallas advertising executive who taught himself the rudiments of theatrical makeup and film technique. Bennett supplied creature costumes for all of the Azalea films. In at least one instance, a Bennett monster was used in two different pictures, recalling Blaisdell’s experience with the She-Creature. The big difference, of course, was that Paul’s monster costumes looked a hundred times better than the best thing Bennett ever did.
It would be redundant to capsulize the plotlines of the Buchanan remakes because they tell the same stories with almost exactly the same dialogue. In terms of differences, The Eye Creatures contained the largest percentage of new or rewritten material and dialogue. Buchanan added a couple of effeminate comic-relief soldiers who used some electronic eavesdropping gadgetry to spy on the teenagers necking at Lovers’ Point, but this was the only real addition to the story. The cast included a single recognizable name: John Ashley, who went to work for AIP in the 1950s and achieved a kind of semistardom in the early 1960s as second banana to Frankie Avalon in the Beach Party series. After that, it was all downhill, as his Azalea work testifies.
When The Eye Creatures was completed, Buchanan began shooting Creature of Destruction, a flaccid recitation of The She-Creature. Although in almost every instance cast members were rounded up from local amateur groups, oldtimer Les Tremayne, who had fought through The War of the Worlds and squared off against The Monster of Piedras Blancas, assumed the role of Dr. Lombardi (played by Chester Morris in the original). Like many actors, Tremayne had had his share of ups and downs, having appeared in a number of low-budget losers, but now he was scraping rock bottom. (Buchanan typically hired actors who found themselves no longer employable by Hollywood. John Agar and Tommy Kirk were two other actors abandoned by the industry who had to make their way to Buchanan’s doorstep just to keep working.)
The monster in Creature of Destruction might possibly have been the worst piece of work Jack Bennett ever contrived. With eyes made from ping-pong balls and rubber-tipped claws that bent every time there was a strong breeze, it looked like nothing so much as an assembly-line Halloween costume for undiscriminating trick-or-treaters.
It Conquered the World went through the Buchanan blender and became the infamously titled Zontar, the Thing from Venus. This time Bennett scared up a slightly better monster suit (and slightly is definitely the operative word), an insectlike creature with bat-wings. Buchanan, unlike Roger Corman, had the good sense to keep his Venusian inside the cave, even during the climax. But the rest of the film was so awful it’s difficult to imagine anyone staying awake long enough to see it.
The last of the Azalea remakes was In the Year 2889,† a horrendous retread of Day the World Ended. Jack Bennett’s atomic atrocity was no Marty the Mutant, but it did look a little better than his version of Cuddles, the Creature of Destruction. But it didn’t really matter what Bennett came up with; Larry Buchanan’s pitiful direction was so awful it destroyed any part of the picture that threatened to rise above the mediocre. It’s doubtful Buchanan lacked the technical know-how to make a decent film—he had, after all, been involved with the industry since the early 1950s—but with budgets that were less than that of The Beast with a Million Eyes and shooting schedules that never exceeded seven days, it was difficult, if not impossible, to bring in a decent product. (But let’s not forget that minor miracles have been worked under equally distressing circumstances. A case in point is Herk Harvey’s haunting Carnival of Souls.)
Paul Blaisdell was caught completely off-guard when he chanced across In the Year 2889 one Saturday afternoon in 1967:
I was trying to dial in the news when I caught that film by accident, and I damn near fell off my dinosaur. I probably would have just skipped right by it if I hadn’t recognized some of the dialogue that was coming out of the actors’ mouths because it was a direct steal from Day the World Ended. I sat there like an idiot in front of the boob tube, staring at it, and I just couldn’t believe it. I was absolutely spellbound. Believe me, the original Year 2889—the picture I was going to work on and had done the production illustrations for—had absolutely nothing to do with a remake of Day the World Ended.
When he learned about Azalea’s other remakes, Blaisdell said, “It’s just unbelievable that they did those. I don’t want to know a damn thing about them. I hope I never see them. One was more than enough!”
The Azalea pictures could never be called “tributes” to Paul Blaisdell’s work, and clearly they were never intended as such. Although Paul never lived to see it, director Jim Wynorski made a horror spoof for Roger Corman’s Concorde Films that was not only entertaining, but did contain a tribute to Blaisdell. The film was called Transylvania Twist. Wynorski, whose professional debut in the fantasy film field was as a writer for Fangoria, ended up going to work for Concorde, where he made a number of forgettable quickies that forfeited good storytelling for lots of low-I.Q. violence and a dash of T and A. Wynorski’s prolific but undistinguished output threatened to brand him as a “horror hack” until he got involved with Transylvania Twist. Inspired by a fun script written by R. J. Robertson, Wynorski grabbed the film and ran with it.
Transylvania Twist mixes good-natured, wacky humor with a campy story involving vampires, creaky castles, family curses, and even a touch of H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. Robert Vaughn, who once worked for Roger Corman in Teenage Caveman, returned to the fold to appear as Lord Orlok, a scheming bloodsucker who is surrounded by inanity as well as insanity. Orlok intends to invoke “the Evil One” as soon as he can lay his hands on the Book of Ulthar,‡ a forbidden tome that contains mystic spells to summon transdimensional demons. Most of the film is a deliciously silly romp with various characters trying to uncover the book’s location before Orlok can get his greasy mitts on it. Dexter Ward (Steve Altman) tracks down Orlok’s niece Merissa (Teri Copley), and together they journey to Transylvania, where Dr. Van Helsing (Ace Mask) helps them thwart the vampire’s evil plans.
The tribute to Blaisdell shows up in the film’s last five minutes, when Orlok reads an incantation from the Book of Ulthar. “Arrroooohhh … pah … pah … papa-ooh-mow-mow … in-a-gadda-da-veeeeeeedahhhh,” Orlok crows. With a guttural rumbling the earth cracks open, and out of the boiling gases and hissing vapors rises the Evil One, a fang-for-fang copy of the mushroom monster from It Conquered the World.
“It’s the Evil One,” Van Helsing gasps, “come forth to conquer the world!” (Obviously scriptwriter Robertson knew his Corman as well as his Lovecraft.)
Waving its lobsterlike claws in the air, the cucumbersome creature is about to step out of the crater (if it could step, that is) when the Book of Ulthar is destroyed in a fire, sending the Evil One back to the hell where it was spawned. Looks like the world won’t get conquered this time either.
Most viewers probably didn’t get the joke, but that’s okay; Transylvania Twist is funny enough without the inside jokes. Besides “Beulah 2,” the film featured Boris Karloff in scenes lifted from Corman’s 1963 quickie, The Terror, cleverly edited to match footage of Steve Altman as he enters a room and declares, “Boris Karloff? Gee, nobody’s seen you since 1969.” Karloff conveniently replies, “I
’ve been here for 20 years,” an original line from The Terror. Since Transylvania Twist was released in 1989, the references matched perfectly.
It’s nice to see Paul’s work lovingly venerated on the screen. The reference to It Conquered the World is respectful. Neither the film nor the monster is made fun of in any way, and for this we can thank Jim Wynorski as well as the executive producer, Roger Corman.
It might come as a surprise to learn that Beulah made “guest appearances” not only in Transylvania Twist, but in magazines and on postcards as well. In fact, several of Blaisdell’s monsters have turned up in the oddest places. In the early 1960s, the Venusian mushroom was featured on a humorous postcard, and the She-Creature turned up on a plastic button labeled “Teacher.” In the mid-1970s, a miniature rubber rendition of Paul’s Saucer Man could be had for next to nothing if you were lucky enough to get one of them out of a 25¢ gumball machine. I chanced across the Saucer Man myself and managed to get two out of the same machine. One I kept; the other I mailed to Paul. Typically, Blaisdell turned around and sent it to Angelo Rossito, who had played one of the little green men in the film so many years before.
Not surprisingly, Paul and Jackie never received a dime from the sales of such novelties. In fact, according to Bob Burns, most of these adaptations of Paul’s creations were done without the cooperation or knowledge of American International, which held the copyrights. In that respect, the items are “bootlegs,” and who’s to say how rare they might be?
By the early 1970s, the old AIP films had been played and replayed so many times on television that the sprocket holes were wearing out. Eventually they were retired, one by one, to TV limbo. With the films went the royalty checks, so Paul was forced to rely on income from other sources. He was still an artist—a very good one—but the 1960s had robbed him of the drive to further his artistic career. Fortunately, Paul owned an apartment building in Santa Monica, and it became a welcome source of income throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Paul inherited the building when his mother died in the mid–1960s, and it was a lifesaver for him and Jackie. The wishy-washy movie business could turn anyone into a prince or a pauper, depending on the roll of the dice or the whim of a producer. Unless you were lucky enough to strike it rich—which seldom happened to anyone other than actors who graduated to full-fledged stardom—you could well end up on skid row. Independently wealthy film directors were not common. There was Alfred Hitchcock, of course, and Orson Welles, and a few others. But as for special effects and makeup technicians—forget it. In Blaisdell’s day there were no makeup “stars” like there are today. If Dick Smith or Rick Baker or Rob Bottin or Stan Winston or Tom Savini or Steve Johnson had created their movie monsters and effects in the 1950s rather than the 1970s and 1980s, it’s doubtful their futures would have been assured, either. Who, other than Lon Chaney, Sr., Jack Pierce, and perhaps the Westmore brothers, could make a pre–1960 claim to fame? Makeup effects really only began to be noticed in 1968, when John Chambers invented the first “million dollar makeups” for Planet of the Apes. By that time Paul Blaisdell had been out of the business for almost six years, and his last major assignment—The Ghost of Dragstrip Hollow—was already nine years old.
Paul continued to fiddle around with amateur photography in his spare time. In the early 1970s, he was experimenting with a “black box,” an invention of his own that could be used to fix mistakes and add effects to previously exposed film. Paul built the device out of wood. According to Bob Burns, it functioned as a kind of super slide copier. With room to insert filters and mattes and the ability to compensate for under and over-exposure, the “black box” could significantly alter the look of the original photo. “It’s capable of doing all the things you wish you had done when you clicked the [camera] shutter, but didn’t,” Blaisdell said. He may have been thinking about trying to get the device patented and marketed, but as far as can be determined this idea never panned out.
Paradoxically, as the 1970s wore on and his Hollywood heyday dimmed further and further into the past, Paul began receiving more and more fan mail. Some of it was from youngsters who had ferreted out his name from occasional television showings of the AIP films; a lot of it was from older fans who had grown up watching his movies during their first run on “Chiller” and “The World Beyond.” It surprised Paul to be noticed at all; it doubly surprised him to be so fondly remembered and so well liked. “Where were you when I needed you?” he might have asked.
An original Paul Blaisdell pen-and-ink drawing presented to the author in January 1977.
“We were busy growing up” was all any of us could have answered.
There was one fan, however, who was almost able to lure Blaisdell out of “retirement” for one final fling with film fantasy in the late 1970s. Fred Olen Ray, a fan-turned-professional who always had a soft spot in his heart for the kind of drive-in fare produced by AIP in the 1950s, was about to go into production on one of his early sci-fi pictures, The Alien Dead. Fred adored Blaisdell’s movie monsters, and often sought out memorabilia on The She-Creature, Voodoo Woman, and other favorites. (Several of the photos in this book are from Fred’s personal collection.) He thought it would be great to get Blaisdell involved in his picture, which at the time was shooting under the title It Fell From the Sky. A friend of Ray’s (probably either Don Fellman or James Brummel) put him in touch with Blaisdell.
Ray introduced himself and asked if Paul might be interested in doing some effects work for It Fell from the Sky. As a matter of fact, he was. Many years had passed since Blaisdell’s last film project, but he hadn’t forgotten protocol. He asked Ray all about the movie and what he had in mind in terms of special effects.
The story called for an alien monster, which clearly would have been up Paul’s alley, but since Ray wasn’t working with much of a budget, he described instead a relatively straightforward scene in which a flaming meteorite strikes the earth. That sounded easy enough to Paul, and he offered to do the effect for a thousand dollars. Unfortunately, even this relatively minor sum was outside Ray’s projected budget. Negotiations never went any further. “I was sorry I couldn’t muster the money,” recalls Ray, who has recently been directing pictures for Roger Corman. “I was a big fan of Paul’s work and was anxious to have him associated with my film. I’d heard he was out of the business, reclusive, and not interested in the biz—but the impression I got [from talking with him] was just that maybe nobody was asking. I definitely believed that he was very interested in working [in film] again, but maybe only on small stuff. Or maybe our film was just a lark.”**
Through the perseverance of a few dedicated fans, magazine articles about Paul Blaisdell and the AIP films began to turn up in film publications. Fangoria published a two-part interview with Blaisdell in 1979. This was followed by articles in magazines like Filmfax and the British publication Halls of Horror. There was an in-depth retrospective of Paul’s work in Cinéfantastique in 1990. Unfortunately, except for the two-part Fangoria piece, Paul didn’t live to see the international press coverage or experience the resurgence of interest in his career these articles precipitated.
It is hardly surprising that he remarked at one point: “I certainly can’t be called ‘The Man of a Thousand Faces.’ I’m more like ‘The Man with no Face.’’’
Several years before his death, negotiations were under way with Fangoria to initiate a series of Blaisdell articles. Paul’s friend, producer Alex Gordon, had begun writing a column for the magazine, and the editors were keen on adding Blaisdell’s name to their masthead. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, Paul’s health began to fail him just after he and Fangoria touched base on the details of the column. Blaisdell wanted to set up a question-and-answer system with the readers. He would select the most interesting questions, compose the responses, and turn over the resulting manuscript to Fangoria, along with a photo or two. It could have almost been “The Return of the Devil’s Workshop,” if Prince Sirki had not stepped in to dismantle the proceed
ings before they ever got started.
* Buchanan also directed three original films for AIP’s television package. The first of these was It’s Alive! (not to be confused with Larry Cohen’s 1973 film about a mutant killer baby), a title that had already been registered by AIP for a planned horror-comedy to star Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, and Peter Lorre. Lorre died before the film went into production, so AIP used the title on Buchanan’s picture. Curse of the Swamp Creature and Mars Needs Women were the director’s other two nonremake titles for AIP.
† Recall that In the Year 2889 was the title of an original George Worthing Yates script for AIP about a group of American colonialists living in the future on Mars. Since AIP had paid to have the title registered, they decided to use it on Larry Buchanan’s remake of Day the World Ended. Naturally, nowhere in Buchanan’s film is there the slightest hint that the year is 2889. In fact, it looks a lot like 1966, which happens to be the year the film was made.
‡ A double reference to Lovecraft. Not only is the book obviously modeled on Lovecraft’s own Necronomicon, but one of the author’s earliest fantasy tales was called “The Cats of Ulthar.” In addition there are references to Arkham (a fictional town Lovecraft modeled on Salem) and a character named Dexter Ward, after Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.”
** Fred Olen Ray to the author, personal correspondence dated March 24, 1995.
16
Sunset
When I look back on it, I guess I can’t complain too much about leaving the film industry when I did. I was getting kind of tired of it anyway. Things had become so much different from when I was first starting out, and I’ll give you a for instance: I flew the Venusian bats from It Conquered the World, although technically I wasn’t supposed to because I was supposed to belong to the SAG [Screen Actors Guild], period. But union rules were getting tighter and tighter all the time, and they started sending out “watchdogs” whose job was to make sure there was no “funny business” going on on the sets. When we were shooting Invasion of the Saucer Men, I wasn’t allowed to fly my own spaceship, and that was made less than a year after It Conquered the World. Technically, it got to the point where I wasn’t even supposed to do makeup because I didn’t belong to the Make-Up Union. So, like many other people in Hollywood, I decided to quit, and I didn’t do it alone; there were a few others who jumped over the back fence with me. Everything about the industry and the entire composition of Hollywood was changing so rapidly, although to me, it seemed more like a decomposition.