The Terrors of Topanga Canyon: B-Movie Monster-Maker Paul Blaisdell’s Fleeting Sci-Fi Film Career

 Artist and sculptor Paul Blaisdell is fondly remembered by fans of mid-century sci-fi cinema for his memorably outlandish B-movie creatures.

In the mid-1950s, Blaisdell earned a reputation among independent genre film producers like Roger Corman for quickly designing and cheaply fabricating movie monsters, leading to his rapid rise and brief reign as the go-to monster-maker among Hollywood’s low-budget sci-fi/horror filmmakers. Often donning his monster suits to play the beasts on screen, Blaisdell’s special effects work was too frequently uncredited, and just as quickly as he rose within the industry, the rapacious nature and changing fortunes of the movie business conspired to drive a disillusioned Blaisdell entirely out of the entertainment field by the early 1960s, never to return.

Today, his then-largely unsung contributions to the field are acknowledged and heralded by modern Hollywood.

Members will be sent an invitation to the zoom session on the 14th of May. visitors are welcome, please contact <president@monsffa.ca> for the link to zoom.