While Sci Fi’s monster mashes are generally known for showcasing computer-generated beasties, the network and the production houses that supply its features frequently call on Nicholson (seen in the first pic slinging guts for OGRE) to provide live-action props and crimson carnage. “Oh, yeah, they like the gore at Sci Fi Channel,” he tells Fango, “which is surprising. Working on other shows, they’ll be like, ‘Less guts, less gore,’ but on these it’s, ‘OK, half-eaten bodies everywhere!’ ”

His Sci Fi credits include three for director Paul Ziller: LOCH NESS TERROR (a.k.a. BEYOND LOCH NESS), YETI (stomping onto DVD next Tuesday, January 13; see review here) and the upcoming TROGLODYTE, “which is a complete gorefest,” Nicholson laughs. “It’s about a water-born creature that hatches from almost like a frog egg, and people start dying in this town by the lake. People get eaten by the big trog, and then there are these baby ones as well. It’s very similar to LOCH NESS TERROR, in the sense that Nessie had these babies that wreaked havoc too. The baby trogs have these long tongues, so we were wrapping them around people’s necks and using hand puppets and doing all this gruesome stuff. That’s the great thing about Paul as a director; we’ll be in meetings, and people will say ‘CGI,’ and he’ll be like, ‘No, no, I want puppets’; he likes having them in action with the actors, and we can also work with the CGI in conjunction with that.”

Of the Sci Fi movies he’s done, the practical FX quotient was probably the highest on YETI. “That was one of our bigger ones,” Nicholson says. “We made a practical creature suit, and that was awesome because the Yeti was supposed to be 14 feet tall. They kept saying, ‘CGI Yeti, CGI Yeti,’ and again, Paul said, ‘No, no, we’re gonna make a creature suit and we’ll just shoot it to make it look bigger with the framing.’ That was one where they didn’t do a lot of digital effects, except for the Yeti jumping through the air like the Hulk in Ang Lee’s movie.”

Also graced with the products of Nicholson’s Life to Death Effects, which he runs with his father Roy and Michelle Grady (that duo are seen in the LOCH NESS TERROR shot above), was OGRE and ODYSSEUS AND THE ISLE OF THE MISTS, “which had a lot of gore and creature stuff in it as well.” And even though these movies are aimed for basic-cable airing, Nicholson enjoys the fact that their makers don’t feel any particular urge to hold back. “From what I’ve seen of how the Sci Fi directors work, some of them shoot the gore and some may shoot around it, and then some of it is CGI. But some of this stuff is fairly intense for the Sci Fi Channel. With TROGLODYTE, I’m surprised at how gruesome it was; we were doing bodies ripped in half and other really nasty things, and for me, it was like being a kid in a candy store. It would be like, ‘Put more guts there,’ an intestine trailing out or something. It’s just a lot of fun working with them, because it brings back the old monster-movie-on-Saturday-night feeling. That’s why I think people love the Sci Fi movies, and I love them too.”