TALISMAN is yet another late 90s Full Moon release that was filmed on location in Bucharest, Romania (no doubt a cheaper place to produce these 'B' horrors). This one was directed by David DeCoteau under the name "Victoria Sloan," the same alias he used to direct two other Full Moon releases - SHRIEKER (1997) and CURSE OF THE PUPPET MASTER (1998). Now Mr. DeCoteau has had an interesting enough career, I guess. He started out making gay porn under the name "David McCabe" before churning out some popular cult classic 'Scream Queen' movies in the late 80s/early 90s. He then moved on to Full Moon Studios for a period of time before forming his very own studio called Rapid Heart Pictures, which specialize in (awful) homoerotic horror flicks that are basically just thinly-disguised excuses to feature hairless young men running around in their underwear. This effort, which is better than anything DeCoteau would make with Rapid Heart, is more of a happy medium. While there are a couple of the expected underwear scenes here, there's also some blood, a plot, a good filming location and a couple of actors who seem to actually be actors instead of Calvin Klein models who couldn't emote if their life depended on it.
At a European boys school, supposedly a place where wealthy people drop off their trouble-making kids, mysterious new student Elias Storm (Billy Parish) has just enrolled. Most of the other students are away at break, aside from about a half-dozen guys. There's a friendly black guy named Jacob (Walter Jones), a bully named Burke (Jason Andelman) and a couple of Eastern European guys who seem to have been horribly dubbed. The school is run by the stern and strict Mrs. Greynitz (Oana Stefanescu), who has a shy, attractive young daughter named Lilia (Ilinca Goia) she forbids the students from talking to. There's also some some bald demon dude who roams the halls, has red glowing eyes and rips out hearts. It all has something to do with a talisman necklace, human sacrifices, the new millennium approaching and flashbacks to when Elias saw his parents trying to perform some ceremony in a graveyard. Unlike what DeCoteau started putting out a few years after this, there are decent sets, OK special effects and a few bloody moments (including eyeballs getting poked out). Though most of the younger male actors are predictably awful, the performances from the Romanian actors - Goica, Stefanescu, Claudiu Trandafir as the school's doctor and (especially) Constantin Barbulescu as the caped demon - help to carry the film pretty well.
So while this is nothing special and runs only 72 minutes (barely over an hour if you exclude the credits), it's still watchable for the most part and that's more than I can say for the director's endless series of boxer brief "horror" films of late. For the faithful, you do get some guys doing push-ups in their underwear, but that's about it.
At a European boys school, supposedly a place where wealthy people drop off their trouble-making kids, mysterious new student Elias Storm (Billy Parish) has just enrolled. Most of the other students are away at break, aside from about a half-dozen guys. There's a friendly black guy named Jacob (Walter Jones), a bully named Burke (Jason Andelman) and a couple of Eastern European guys who seem to have been horribly dubbed. The school is run by the stern and strict Mrs. Greynitz (Oana Stefanescu), who has a shy, attractive young daughter named Lilia (Ilinca Goia) she forbids the students from talking to. There's also some some bald demon dude who roams the halls, has red glowing eyes and rips out hearts. It all has something to do with a talisman necklace, human sacrifices, the new millennium approaching and flashbacks to when Elias saw his parents trying to perform some ceremony in a graveyard. Unlike what DeCoteau started putting out a few years after this, there are decent sets, OK special effects and a few bloody moments (including eyeballs getting poked out). Though most of the younger male actors are predictably awful, the performances from the Romanian actors - Goica, Stefanescu, Claudiu Trandafir as the school's doctor and (especially) Constantin Barbulescu as the caped demon - help to carry the film pretty well.
So while this is nothing special and runs only 72 minutes (barely over an hour if you exclude the credits), it's still watchable for the most part and that's more than I can say for the director's endless series of boxer brief "horror" films of late. For the faithful, you do get some guys doing push-ups in their underwear, but that's about it.