Movie Info
Movie Name: Sleepwalkers
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Genre(s): Horror
Release Date(s): April 10, 1992
MPAA Rating: R
I love cats!
Charles Brady (Brian Krause) and his mother Mary (Alice Krige) have moved to the small Indiana town. They hold a secret…they are shapeshifters known as sleepwalkers that have lived among humans for years…becoming the stuff of legends. The sleepwalkers have one food source: the life energy of virgins! Charles has set his eyes on Tanya Robertson (Mädchen Amick) and must get her soul to help feed himself and his mother before it is too late. Sleepwalkers weakness is cats, and the cats and the authorities are moving in on Charles and Mary…Charles must have Tanya to keep himself and his mother alive.
That cat thing took Otho’s hand!
Directed by Mick Garris, Sleepwalkers is also often called Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers. The movie is based on an unpublished Stephen King story, and King also wrote the screenplay. The movie wasn’t very well received but made a modest profit.
Sleepwalkers is one of those movies you could see trailers and commercials and tell it was a stinker. The story, the acting, and the visuals all build up into a rather weak horror…at least it manages to be quick film.
It is nice to see a mother and son so close!
The story of the movie is ridiculous. It has this weird ’50s feel (both in style and music at points) combined with a modern movie. With the strange feel, the movie also has a stranger flow…The Charles character “loves” Tanya (while sleeping with his mother), but quickly turns into a psychopath after a quick trip to the cemetery…it doesn’t make much sense from the already strained plot. The movie then drags for the second half.
The acting like the movie is also weak. Brian Krause and Mädchen Amick just can’t carry the movie, but Alice Krige makes an honest attempt as the incestuous mother. The movie features real life couple (at the time) Lyman Ward and Cindy Pickett who also played Ferris’ parents in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off as Tanya’s parents who pretty much just become random victims of the script. Genre veteran Ron Perlman plays one of the officers and the movie features appearances by writer Stephen King, Star Wars vet Mark Hamill, and directors John Landis, Joe Dante, Clive Barker, and Tobe Hooper.
I don’t know what is more ridiculous…the morphing or the mountains of Indiana
The movie also is filled with ridiculous visuals. The movie (allegedly set in Indiana) is filled with mountains and prairies and resembles Indiana even less than Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Add to that the movie is one of the first uses of morphing technology which has the main characters changing into bad costumed creatures attacked by stuffed cats.
Sleepwalkers is a horrible film and loaded with horrible characters. It is so-bad-it-is-good so if you want some laughs you might check it out (there are a couple of forced jumps). Fortunately, the Sleepwalkers never came back after this outing…I wish the same was true of The Lawnmower Man.
