Curse of the Talisman (2001 TV Movie) User Reviews

Come On Chaps It`s Not That Bad

[Theo Robertson · 5/10 · 12 August 2003]

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 ?

Don't play with gargoyles unless you're bored.

[HUMAN1TY · 3/10 · 12 October 2005]

Jeremy (Jesse Spencer) has an awesome job at an odds and ends occult/Halloween party surplus store. His best friend Darryl (Max Garner Gore) is a nerd, and his love interest, Fiona (Sara Gleeson), is a babe. Jeremy is late for work, and his boss is angry. Is Jeremy's pay going to get docked? No! He just has to babysit a stolen Medieval gargoyle statue and accompanying talisman kit. Jeremy's not sure at first but finally gives in, taking the 'gnarly little dude' home with him. Stashing the gargoyle in his basement, Jeremy retires to his room to play with the talisman. Oh no, look at that, he pricks his finger on it and now all hell breaks loose.

What follows is series of less than spectacular scenes with the gargoyle flying around and killing dogs, people, and staring lovingly through a window at his kin on display in the local museum. By the end of this movie I didn't know whether to cry or applaud it for its effort- because the results are a mixed bag. On one hand, it's not such a bad way to waste ninety-two minutes. On the other, you could've spent that ninety-two minutes writing a script for your own horror movie that would more than likely be better than this one.

I say if you find yourself in the same predicament I did and this movie is on Sci-fi at five o'clock in the morning, you might as well watch it because even with its horrible script, it's more entertaining than watching Tony Little and John Basedow talk about themselves.

Better "luck" next time, Talisman-people

[Coventry · 3/10 · 20 December 2005]

"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.

A nice time-waster.

[Individ_Paddel · 24 November 2002]

Hmm... This movie was nice, but not very intelligent. The guy who wrote it doesn't seem to have understand the difference between alchemy and black magic. The only really cool thing about this movie, is that the main character drives a VOLVO, without even having a drivers licence! As a Swede, this makes me very warm at heart...

Slightly embarrassing

[F1ame · 3/10 · 2 August 2002]

Oh dear, what a disaster.

So we have a bunch of gargoyles shipped over from Yorkshire. They have a talisman serving as the blue touch-paper. Use blood to light. The gargoyles break out into little beasties that will devastate a chosen town as some kind of retribution for collective sins. Spawned in Medieval times using black magic. Oh yes. And let nobody ask for any more detailed information than that, as we only spent 10 minutes on back story.

Billy from 'Neighbours' faffs about with his poor accent. Though I shall go easy on the lad. Aussie talk is English with a twang. US talk is a different twang coupled with over pronunciation. Still, Selina from 'Home and Away' manages quite well.

Oh, the film. Starts ok. Beastie gets free, whole movie plummets. It becomes slow, we all know what's going to happen. Scenes are crowbar'd in to explain stuff. Subplots are thin and awkward. Beastie vision is like looking through a pint of snakebite'n'black. Beastie will viciously wolf down sausages and cooked meat, but kills dogs with a slight graze of the belly and leaves them.

Just once in one of these movies I want a crazy character to rant and rave about totally implausible demon, and the other guy not spit on him and call him a drunk loony, but instead just randomly help him hunt his demon as they've got nothing better to do.

I shall blame the director for the excessive cheese factor towards the end. People just don't behave in the way that is filmed here. A mild recovery is made in the last 10 seconds, which makes me think the story was told from the wrong point of view.

The plot had potential, which is probably why it is now a movie. But it needed more thought and filling out. About 70% will laugh at it, 10% will love it. 20% will be checking the skies for flying... what's that.. aaaaggh.

Remarkably lame supernatural chiller

[harveyfan · 3/10 · 30 October 2002]

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.

This is a BAD Movie!

[suebh · 2/10 · 27 December 2002]

This is a very bad movie, with B-grade Australian actors and a very bad script. The story is based in a small "American" town, which is so obviously Sydney, Australia! The Aussie actors attempt (poorly) American accents and their Aussie accents shine through often, especially Jesse Spencer's. Also, the attempts at making the cars appear like they're left-hand drives and driving on the "other" side of the road (ie the right-hand side of the road) is poorly done. I was embarrassed to be an Australian watching this crud!

Hilariously cheesy

[Leofwine_draca · 4/10 · 2 April 2015]

CURSE OF THE TALISMAN is a hilariously cheesy family-friendly horror adventure movie that seems to have been shot in Australia with a mainly Australian cast, although it masquerades as an American flick. The cast is headlined by ex-NEIGHBOURS actor Jesse Spencer (he played Billy Kennedy in the long-running Aussie soap) who plays a high school student who accidentally comes into possession of an ancient talisman and the associated gargoyle that goes with it.

I don't know where to start with this one but the script would be a good place. CURSE OF THE TALISMAN belongs in the 1980s with the cheesiness of the dialogue and the constant one-liners along the lines of "Kiss my ass, dork!". Of course nobody has ever talked like this in real life, only in the fantasy world of movies. The acting is pretty horrid, with stilted line delivery throughout, and more than a few cast members seem distinctly awkward at being present.

The horror of the storyline comes from the gargoyle monsters who populate the movie, and boy are they poor. A central monster is kept hidden beneath a desk for a good while and for good reason: CURSE OF THE TALISMAN employs some ultra-poor CGI effects that are about on par with the quality of a Playstation 1 game. Still, there's a lot of action here, and goofiness, which makes it a film that's hard to hate; it's just not a very good one either.

Cool effects, not-so-cool acting

[doergeek189 · 9/10 · 13 April 2004]

Caught this on Sci-Fi a month or so ago. This movie has a somewhat intriguing storyline pretty much ruined by actors doing bizarre American accents (Is that a Canadian, British or Australian accent lurking below?) and many not-so-terrific line readings, unfortunately, mostly by the lead actors, who range from passable to really awful. The computer visual effects on the other hand... are big-screen quality in places (the ending especially when the creatures come to life, and a scene of the creatures chasing a car.) So scan through the actors and enjoy the effects I guess!

Middle-of-the-road Sci-Fi Channel feature

[slayrrr666 · 7/10 · 4 August 2007]

"Curse of the Talisman" is a decent enough creature feature.

**SPOILERS**

Attempting to do a favor, teenager Jeremy Campbell, (Jesse Spencer) is given a strange statue from his work and keeps it in his basement. Given a box of strange charms as well, he becomes fascinated with a strange talisman found inside. Using it as leverage to meet Fiona, (Sara Gleeson) and Miranda, (Tempany Deckert) from school and get invited to a Halloween Party, he becomes convinced that the statue has come alive and produced a hibernating bat. Tracking down the collection, priest Eccleston, (Rob Mullinar) arrives in town to see that the statues are safe, which really contain a race of gargoyles from the Middle Ages that were to destroy the world before being turned to stone. It manages to get loose from his basement, it launches a reign of terror through the community that doesn't seem to end. Realizing the true intentions of the gargoyles, they race to stop them before they complete their mission.

The Good News: Though there wasn't much, this here does a few points to it. Once the creatures get on screen, they're not all that bad looking. With the dragon-like face, horned beak, demonic eyes and a scaly, feather-covered skin that makes them look quite nice. While their ugliness may be called into question with how they look, they're at least acceptable-looking in their design. Realization is different, but the look itself is enough to get over. The initial resurrection of the horde inside the museum is quite good, as the low-light from the flashlights illuminating the statues and makes for an eerie scene. The sight of the crackling and breaking statues within such a spooky-looking setting already adds more to the scene that's there. The first trap to take them out is a nicely action-packed with a pretty ingenious plot to take them out. The film's at it's best point, though, when it's at the conclusion in the museum. This includes the resurrection scene as well as several others that are included which are quite fun and features some great scenes fighting off against the creatures. Even the method to take them out completely is fun, is quite unexpected and really comes out logically in the situation and really throws up a lot of positive points for it. These are fun encounters which really help the movie immensely and really deliver it on most of it's potential. Overall, this was a pretty fun little film.

The Bad News: This one here doesn't have a whole lot of flaws, but what's there is important. The main one is that the film, as a whole, gives off a really cheap feeling. The fact that there's not a whole of scenes with the creatures speaks a whole lot, as there's something about the lack of time with them that simply speaks that it's cheap. That there's so few and are so short makes them seem all the more that they're not at all the focus of the story. The fact that they're all spread out at the end of the film makes it even more obvious, since the beginning is quite boring. That most of it is taken up with a really lame and quite clichéd love story really kills the majority of the film is spent on that kind situation. Though here it's not as painful as others, the sheer fact that it still makes an appearance will warrant a strike against it. The shortness of the film's action scenes is one of the other really big factors as well, which makes the film really feel all the more cheesy. Things begin to get interesting and a short-cut is found to end the scene before it gets too loaded down for it's own good, further lessening the film and it's attempts at providing an exciting shot. These here are the film's biggest flaws.

The Final Verdict: A simply cheesy creature feature that offers up nothing new, it does have a few moments within which are at least watchable. See this one only for the cheesy creature feature lovers, while all others should avoid this one or proceed with the most extreme caution.

Rated R: Violence and Language

Abject nonsense

[lorenellroy · 30 August 2002]

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.

Very NIce Movie

[tanishashah85 · 10/10 · 6 February 2010]

I really don't understand why people hate this movie so much but the fact is its rather a good movie I watched this movie a long time back and from very that moment was in search for its DVD but unfortunately this movie is yet not released on DVD anywhere I wonder why...this movie is quiet different than a typical horror movies thats why some people are giving bad ranking to it as people are used to watch all typical horror movies...which sucks by the way...anyways do somebody know where I can download this movie or can even watch it online as it been ages I haven't watched this movie ...as its very hard to find it...So bottom line is WATCH THIS MOVIE.

Better than it gets credit for

[Eagles_Fan_1 · 6/10 · 24 November 2004]

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.

The BEST film about gargoyles from Yorkshire I've ever seen!!!

[purple prole · 1 December 2002]

Ok this film is bad. It's terrible if we're being honest.

But in it's favour I did watch it all the way through, which puts it above numerous others that I could mention.

You see, it has that 'so bad it's funny' quality than can be greatly entertaining if you're in that kind of mood. For example, when the monster first emerges from a statue, the lead character's initial response is to say 'Cool!' and then go and get his best friend to come and take a look. This is later explained away by them saying they thought it was a hibernating bat, because as we all know bats regularly hibernate inside statues. He soon realises that it wasn't a bat, after reading a book entitled 'The beginner's guide to what bats look like, and it's NOT that!'. Or something.

As for the monster, I was disappointed that there was just one for a start. The plot that I'd read said 'a town is over-run by demonic gargoyles', and this was a low-down lie. There are more eventually, but for the majority of the film it's just one of the critters flying about in search of the Talisman so that it can bring the others back to life. Suffice to say the monster looked rubbish. The kind that whenever there was a close-up of it it opens it's mouth wide and goes 'WRAAAK!!!' in an oh so scary fashion.

Trying to stop it are the Australian Scooby Doo gang. A few schoolkids who all used to be in Australian soap operas. Oh and a priest from 'Yorkshire, England'. Every time he told someone he was from 'Yorkshire, England' I burst out laughing. This would be the 'Yorkshire, England' that's just next to Australia I think.

Everything else that happens is of similar high quality. The trap that they set up to catch the creature, taken directly from an episode of Scooby Doo. The parent's Halloween costumes (Bill Gates and the Queen, no kidding). The bizarre funny climax.

It's all great. Or at least it would be if it weren't so very very poor.