Stone Cold
Blu-ray | DVD
Director: Craig R. Baxley
Screenwriter: Walter Doniger
Cast: Brian Bosworth, Lance Henriksen, William Forsythe, Sam McMurray, Arabella Holzbog, Richard Gant, Tom Magee
Columbia Pictures | Olive Films
Rated R | 83 Minutes
Release Date: June 23, 2015

“God forgives, the Brotherhood doesn’t.”

Point Break, Lionheart, The Last Boy Scout, Double Impact – 1991 was a hell of a year for action movies. Joining those immortal classics is Craig R. Baxley‘s Stone Cold, starring former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Brian Bosworth.

“The Boz” plays Joe Huff, a bad-ass Alabama cop with his own brand of justice. While on suspension for insubordination, Joe is recruited by the FBI to go undercover and infiltrate a Mississippi white supremacist biker gang known as The Brotherhood. Gaining the trust of The Brotherhood’s barbaric leader, Chains Cooper (Lance Henriksen, Aliens), won’t be easy. But Joe Huff doesn’t do “easy.”

The overuse of CGI in movie making has gotten so bad that even legends of the art of practical effects are walking away from the game entirely.

We may never see a day where Hollywood stops relying almost entirely on digital effects—because money is worlds more important to the big studios than what movie fans actually want—but there are some who continue to fight for the use of the far superior practical effects in movies, including Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. of studioADI. The Academy Award winning talent behind great PFX movies like Starship Troopers, Tremors, and Alien³ took to Kickstarter a couple of years back to help fund a creature feature titled Harbinger Down, and succeeded.

A new international trailer for the movie, which stars the great Lance Henriksen, has been released online. You can check it out below.

Pumpkinhead (Collector’s Edition)
Blu-Ray
Director: Stan Winston
Screenwriters: Mark Patrick Carducci, Gary Gerani
Cast: Lance Henriksen, Jeff East, John D’Aquino, Kimberly Ross, Joel Hoffman, Cynthia Bain, Kerry Remsen, Brian Bremer
Scream Factory
Rated R | 86 Minutes
Release Date: September 9, 2014

While Pumpkinhead received a limited theatrical run in 1988, it’s mostly remembered as a VHS release; the kind of little-known, low-budget horror movie you would take a chance on at the local mom ‘n’ pop video store.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about Pumpkinhead is that it’s the directorial debut of special effects artist Stan Winston. Best known for his work in films like The Terminator, Predator, Aliens, Monster Squad, and Jurassic Park, Winston won four Academy Awards for his groundbreaking work in the makeup and special effects fields.

A little over a year ago we ran a Kickstarter Spotlight for a creature feature titled Harbinger Down from Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. through their studioADI.

The movie celebrates the art of practical effects by creating all of the creatures that appear in the movie with human hands instead of inside of a computer, and only using digital effects to enhance the visuals, as it should be.

Now a trailer for Harbinger Down has been released, and can be seen below along with a movie poster.

Another great Kickstarter project to take a peek at if you’re looking for something new to back, Harbinger Down is a horror movie that promises to have not one single CGI creature.

Most movie purists loathe the over-saturated world of CGI that we now live in, and crave the practical effects that are being used less and less every day as movie studios sacrifice quality to save a little coin. This makes a project like Harbinger Down all the more appealing.

The movie is being made by Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. and their company Amalgamated Dynamics, a practical effects workshop that has worked on many movies, including Tremors, Alien 3, Starship Troopers, and the recent remake of The Thing. They’ve also got some industry friends who are going to help them make the movie who have worked on movies like Aliens, Terminator 2, and The Empire Strikes Back, just to name a few. Between them all, they have four Oscar wins and ten nominations.

Continue reading for more info and to see a video from the filmmakers on why you should pledge and help them make this movie.