Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

SYFY’s mermaid tale Siren is kicking off in the UK with a double bill tonight – and it seems as if the legendary creature has come to these shores.

To tie in with the series, SYFY discovered that nearly 1 in 8 people believe they’ve had encounters with some sort of mythical creature – with 5% meeting fairies, and 3% mermaids. The one by the River Thames yesterday wasn’t quite so mythical – the Siren was portrayed by actress Samantha Engelbrecht who spent over four hours getting into make-up and costume which including contact lenses, fake teeth, gills, barnacles and almost full body scaling, created by make-up artist Florence Carter. The prosthetic scales, fins and gills were created using latex moulds with the whole effect taking over three weeks to bring to life.

Check out our review of Siren episode 1 here