Gargoyles

I honestly have to say that this movie blows. The special effect look almost ten years old, the script is choppy, the acting is minimalist, the cinematography is thin, the lighting is less-than-stellar, the camera angles are amateurish and the foley editing (sound effects and sound editing in general) sounds like it was done on a Mac Power PC without a decent sound board. Lots of the dialogue has a tinny, thin sound to it, like it was almost telephoned in or the person was talking into a tin can from across the room (especially Michael Pare's voice). The music score sounds like someone tried futilely to imitate the stylings of Danny Elfman and failed miserably in the attempt.

The actresses are all fairly attractive, which makes for mediocre eye candy, but that's about the only thing this movie has going for it.

In this movie, the gargoyles deserve to take the earth. It feels like they're the only one taking this whole movie seriously.

The premise of the film is gargoyles which are mythical creature; they fall somewhere between demons, bats, dragons but just looks like a meaner Dracula in the bat form from Van Helsing. These gargoyles then meaninglessly kill a lot of people. And, it's up to our hero to save the day and the world.

The CGI is awesome and it's stuff right out of "Van helsing" with the bat/human flying creature and the countless spawns flying around. The sets are awesome. The action scenes and car chases are tight.

But, the acting is really bad. The way the movie is between the action scenes is really bad. Also, the story is really bad. But, the gargoyles are really mean and they do some really cool stuff.

The main action here's lethargic way of dialog makes him seem dumb; the blond girl doesn't look sexy enough or forceful enough - she just feels ordinary and without an interesting character; the girl who plays the scientist doesn't really act like one.

This is really low on quality in the genre of monster movies - except for the monster itself.

Not really worth watching.

I don't think I'm spoiling anyone's experience of this film by telling you not to see it if you have anything better to do, like clean under the stove. It gets dirty under there and you've gotta clean it sometime.

I think the movie suffers from a lack of sex and violence, though there is one car chase stunt that looks so dangerous it could only have been filmed in a country where life is cheaper than beer. "Gargoyle"'s heart is in the right place, but its aspirations are conservative. It is at least not pretentious. But I had a great time acting in it, playing the perennial idiot in the horror movie who says "What's down this hole?" and dies for his hubris. Plus I got to meet Michael Pare. Every film junkie should work with a B-movie staple at least once before death. And Romanians are the loveliest people I've met. Literally the loveliest. Walk down the street in Bucarest: if 7 of every 10 women aren't absolutely beautiful, you're walking down a street I didn't come across; and be consoled by the fact that at least 5 of the 10 are available for drinks.

Part of the film was shot in Casa Radio, an abandoned, unfinished Classic Communist Bloc-cum-Georgian Nightmare edifice originally intended to house KGB propaganda ministries, i.e. Radio Not-so-Free Europe. The building's five stories tall and takes up a city block; best of all, while its facade radiates Big Brotheresque state solidity, it resides near the city center like a post-apocalyptic ruin in a jungle of burdock and hemp peopled by dozens of Gypsies and scores of wild dogs. Construction on Casa Radio was suspended when Caucescu and his wife were executed on TV in 1989, and still there are gaping holes that drop from the sun-baked top floor (offering surreal vistas of a modern quarter-mile stretch of concrete roof, decorated with jutting rebar and old car parts, overlooking a crumbling ancient city) all the way down to the damp, creepy sub-basement (which doubles in the film for the Gargoyle lair.) No American-style guardrails or warning signs for Bucarest.

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Casa Radio has hosted several non-union film shoots, including "Highlander III". It is attractive to producers because it's a cheap location, massive in terms of scale and available space, bizarre looking, and free of insurance headaches as it's still state property. Plus no one complains if you don't clean up after your production: anything left onsite is interpolated into the resident Gypsies' construction of their shanty town in this actual urban jungle.

An assistant director was bitten bloody by a wild dog during the shoot of "Gargoyle". The apples provided by catering were pressed into service by cast and crew as projectiles in order to keep the prowling dogs at bay. I too was bitten by wild dogs in Bucarest, once in a bar (!) and once in a city park. I also survived two car wrecks in two weeks, both in taxis and neither of which was seen by the drivers involved as grounds for stopping the cars.

GEEK NOTE: The Sci-Fi Network or Channel or whatever was one of the backers of this film (the smaller the budget, the more producers on set), so it's a little weird that nobody had a problem with the original title, "Gargoyles", until it was almost time to show it on the network, even though Sci-Fi already had an unrelated series of that name. The title was changed sometime relatively close to release, as I have a color-corrected copy labeled with the former title.

Michael Pare brings a believable hero to this screamer.The special effects were awesome. Tim Abell as a anti-hero looks like Aragorn from LOTR.Lots of religious connotations,really it reeks of honesty in story-telling.NO SEX, on Sci-Fi Channel debut...Maybe on DVD or VHS.The women are very pretty and serve as unwilling victims,actually 2 leads are strong in personality.Think it was filmed in Romania,The church and graveyard...Why,did they let you borrow for important scenes ?

Wynorski is probably at his most potent as a director ,this time out. I throughly enjoyed this movie,and almost wish I could give Earth back to the Gargoyles.

This movie is interesting maybe for 10 year old children, between 2 Pokemon cartoons series… It's so stupid that defies a logical explanation why was it even produced.

Oh, the initiative of an American-Romanian movie is welcome, as Hollywood can generate an improvement in the quality of our local productions, but NOT LIKE THIS! This joke of a movie has so many goofs in it that I've considered it as a comedy rather than a thriller after I've seen the first 5 minutes of it.

For instance, the gargoyles weren't even hared of in Romania before the last 15 years, when we got access to western literature and movies; there are no Romanian legends mentioning them or anything like them. About Vlad Tepes (a.k.a. Dracula) there are many legends, but none related to vampires or gargoyles, these are all western fantasies. And I don't have room here to describe all the mistakes and errors that are all too obvious in the movie and cannot be excused, regardless of the story or artistic interpretation.

The only white balls for this movie would be some nice special effects (but nothing impressive) and a few beautiful ladies that will catch the bored eyes of any male viewer…

I've rated this movie with 5 points: 3 points for the movie and the other 2 for the beautiful actresses that kept me watching the whole hour and a half of this bad SF joke called "Gargoyles"