Travel Channel takes horror/sci-fi fans behind-the-scenes in “Making Monsters”

Tom Comi

15 years ago

You would think that watching how creatures are built for movies, concerts and Halloween masks would somehow make them less creepy, but Travel Channel’s Making Monsters dispels most of that notion.

Witnessing the aliens and monsters being sculpted from scratch is fascinating, but it hardly diminishes the lure or horror-factor after seeing the end products. And most of that is a testament to the artists themselves. This series traces the talents of Distortions Unlimited owners Ed and Marsha Edmunds, sculptor Jordu Schell and Distortions comic book artist Daniel Crosier.

The Colorado-based company, the world’s largest animatronics creator, is famous for building hundreds of creatures yearly, while Schell is known to — actually, make that worshiped by — horror flick enthusiasts for his work in Hellboy, The Thing (2011), Feast, Cabin in the Woods and The Mist.

Airing as part of a four-part series that began two weeks ago, Sunday’s episode (8pm ET) of Making Monsters is called “Aliens, UFOs and the Enigma.” Here we get to see the Edmunds deliver an alien creation to the UFO Museum in Roswell, NM (pictured above). Also, the brilliant Schell designs a live mask sculpt for a shock performer called the Enigma (pictured left).

In last week’s installment, viewers got to go behind the scenes to see the process for designing the props for rocker Alice Cooper’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” tour. This included a 12-foot puppet modeled after Cooper himself called “FrankenAlice!”

So the next time you watch a gory movie or see a scary mask, there’s a good chance Schell and the Edmunds had something to do with it. Just don’t think watching this Travel Channel series is going to diminish the horror factor, because it won’t.

Boo!

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Credit: Travel Channel