Saturday, December 29, 2012

The Masks of Famous Monsters - Issue # 43

Welcome to the nineteenth installment in The Masks of Famous Monsters Series. Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine was an absolute treasure trove of early mask history. By combing through the 191 issues published between 1958-1983, it's possible to gain a good understanding of the decades of evolution and history of Don Post Studios and Topstone monster masks. The eventual goal of this series is to catalog and archive each monster mask appearance in the pages Famous Monsters.
Issue # 43 of Famous Monsters would feature another "Men Behind the Monsters" written by Verne Langdon. This time, the featured artist would be the legendary Ellis Burman. By '67 Burman was a veteran make-up man and monster maker.

The article was brief at only two pages, fortunately one of those pages contained a beautiful full-page photo of Burman working on a number of clown masks and a full body monster suit. Of note to Don Post Studios fans, the article mentions that Burman currently worked as the Chief Lab Technician at Don Post Studios, where his many duties extend to the design and creation of many Don Post character masks...



2 comments:

  1. Any relation to John Burman..??
    Some of the early Distortions projects were (at least in part thanks to him, ... some of his films include the Beast Within... and Gargoyles (1972 made for TV)...

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  2. There was definitely relation. I know that it was Ellis' son Ellis Burman Jr. who worked on the '72 Gargoyles and Tom Burman worked on the '82 release of "The Beast Within"

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