It seems impossibly retro in this computer-generated age, but at least one guy is still creating creepy movie effects out of resin and blood bottles.
His name is Cleve Hall, and he’s the title figure of “Monster Man,” a workplace reality series that has its premiere on Wednesday night on Syfy. It’s not a great show, but it’s interesting in an experience-it-before-it-vanishes sort of way.
Mr. Hall, whose co-workers include his two daughters and his former wife, dresses the part, affecting a B-movie goth look that includes yellow eyes. In the first episode he has two projects on his plate: conjoined twins who have to rip themselves apart and a two-headed shark that has to munch on bathing beauties.
The show unfortunately lapses into trumped-up family tensions and equally trumped-up races against the clock, wearyingly familiar gimmicks for these types of series.
Mr. Hall and his daughter Constance, who is his effect-designing equal, clash a lot, or pretend to. And on both projects the crew hurries to meet a deadline with the urgency of a medical team bringing a heart to a dying patient. Who cares about your deadlines? It’s only a movie, as they say, or in this case, two movies.
But amid the same old, same old you do get the pleasure of hearing Mr. Hall reach important realizations, like this: “In order for the two-headed shark to wreak as much damage as possible, the jaws had to be kept as separate as possible.” And then there is the delightful on-set instruction he gives to the two bikini-wearing actresses who end up in the shark jaws:
“Girls, get your mouthfuls of blood. When the jaws come down on you, spurt.”
Monster Man
Syfy, Wednesday night at 11, Eastern and Pacific times; 10, Central time.
Produced by Gurney Productions. Scott Gurney and Deirdre Gurney, executive producers.
