Gargoyles

"Curse of the Talisman" is an endurable but completely pointless made-for-TV occult thriller that suffers a little too much from script-stupidity and it causes you to laugh during sequences when you ought to be scared. I'm sure the director as well as the young & enthusiast cast members all had good intentions to make this film a fantastic career move, but the subject matter is just too vague and the whole production completely lacks memorable aspects. The clumsy special effects and lousy acting performances are forgivable, but what's up with all this illogical nonsense the characters do and say? OK, question… In case you are requested to illegally guard a statue in your basement and some kind of living creature crawled out of it, would just assume it's an ordinary bat and start feeding it, no questions asked?!? Well, nobody would except for young hero Jeremy Campbell, who then regretfully discovers that the animal is a portentous gargoyle, still on its ancient mission to destroy the world along with the rest of his species. Together with his equally dumb high school friends and a very implausible priest character, Jeremy has to prevent the gargoyle from awakening his stoned friends in the museum. The story already isn't very interesting and then it still features the same old, annoying clichés like high-school popularity contests, the romance between the geek and the babe, the hippie bookstore owner and the entirely pointless & blurry dream-sequences! Yawn!! There are some incredibly imbecile plot-twists (for example, the priest suddenly comes up with an alternate and equally efficient way to destroy the gargoyles after a million fruitless attempts to stop them) and the "horrifying" monsters are actually pretty cute. They look somewhat like Gremlins with wings and shiny red eyes. The acting performances are quite embarrassing but Sara Gleeson is real beauty.

I couldn`t fail to notice the very harsh comments CURSE OF THE TALISMAN is getting on this page . Okay I admit a film featuring stone gargoyles from ye olde England turning up in Australia with murder on their mind isn`t going to be a classic movie but there were two things I should point out to everyone

1 ) The lack of gore . So it`s a TVM therefore there`s restrictions , but regardless of why it`s a nice change to see a horror movie without arms and legs getting bitten off every five minutes

2 ) Praise the lord there`s no CGI . As far as I could see the gargoyle effects were achieved by stop frame animation . I hope to see this special effect reintroduced into all films that require it because I got fed up with CGI in nineteen ninety something

Oh and weren`t those gargoyles cute ?

This movie has been getting a lot of bad reviews on here, I watched it last night and don't understand why. For a bunch of nobody's the acting was better than average, except for the priest who was dull and uninspired. The story was more original than most horror movies out there, and the animation on the gargoyles was a lot better than other movies with similar monsters. It may be due to the fact that I watched the movie between 1 and 4 a.m. with little sleep, but I actually thought it was fairly good, and better than most other horror movies. When I compare this to many other horror movies it is plain to see that this stands above many others. All in all the movie doesn't get the credit that it deserves, not great, but still good.

Poor on every level-effects,script and acting-this turgid flick sees a number of Australian actors,familiar to Uk audiences through daytime soaps,impersonating Americans (badly)and a Brit(slightly less badly)as they attempt to thwart demons released from imprisonment inside stone gargoyles shipped from Yorkshire to America as part of a museum exhibition It simply will not do.

A crate of medieval relics delivered to Elmsford Museum falls into the wrong hands, and young Jeremy finds himself in possession of a sinister talisman. When a strange bat-like creature escapes from his cellar he has to take time out from romancing Fiona to save the town from an army of demons.

Sure it sounds good but it couldn't be any less scary, and includes every horror film cliche in the book. The first two-thirds of the film really drags, I found myself checking my watch, which is never a good sign.