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96 comments in total

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22 out of 29 people found the following comment useful :-
As Much as I Want to Hate This Film, I Love It, 6 February 2007

Author: Gavin Schmitt (gavin6942@yahoo.com) from Kaukauna, Wisconsin

A shape shifting young man (Charles Brady) and his mother (known as "sleepwalkers" for some reason) arrive in a new town. But the mother needs to feed, so her son Charles must find him a pure young woman. But who will he love more, his mother or the beautiful Tanya? Right off the bat, I want to call to everyone's attention two things: first, that Stephen King movie adaptations are cursed. Some work wonderfully, while others are just utter crap. We know it's not King's writing, or we wouldn't have such classics as "The Green Mile" or "Shawshank Redemption". Yet, we still get horse apples like "The Langoliers". This film takes somewhat of a middle ground. Not a great film, but worse has been done.

Who can we blame for this lack of greatness? Subpar director Mick Garris, that's who. The man who not only created the "Masters of Horror" series but is also running it into the ground in his own little way. This might be the only thing Mick Garris will be remembered for (at least in my mind) and that is a sad thing.

This film also has the distinction of some great cameos: Cindy Pickett and Lyman Ward, the parents from "Ferris Bueller" -- also the parents in this movie, and married in real life. Mysterious. Who else is in here? Mark Hamill ("Star Wars", "Silver Bullet") and many horror notables and directors: John Landis, Stephen King, Joe Dante, Tobe Hooper, Clive Barker.

Ron Perlman ("Hellboy", "Pro-Life") plays a cop and doesn't get nearly enough screen time. In fact, the most time goes to the female lead, who has a mysterious beauty (the kind that is both alluring yet retracting). She is quite good and I wish she was in more horror films. Her little dance in the movie theater really makes the whole movie for me, and traps the film in a timelessness. While filmed in the early 1990s, this could take place any time and anywhere.

This review is all over the place. But here's the point: this film is not good, and most people will tell you to avoid it. As for me, I love it. It's one of my guilty pleasures, a film like "Head of the Family" I know to be awful but yet worth watching again and again. Maybe it's all the cats or maybe just the way the film melts in my mind like cotton candy. I can't explain it.

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10 out of 14 people found the following comment useful :-
Surprisingly Good for a Horror Picture, 20 January 2004
Author: Baron3000 (Baron3000@comcast.net) from Chicago

`Sleepwalkers' is a film whose main plot thrust comes from the pre-opening credits description of what the film's title means. Just about all character backstory and motivations are given here, and we are then treated to a ninety-minute entertainment vehicle that plays out these events in a simplistic but interesting manner.

The film's acting, for a horror picture, is remarkably good. Brian Krause and Alice Krige give standout performances as the titular feline troublemakers who also share a disturbing Oedipal relationship, cult favorite Madchen Amick gives a wonderfully nuanced performance as Krause's troubled love interest, and the cameos by many famous faces from the horror world will give fans something to look for and smile about. Even the supporting cast members seem to be having a good time, including Ron Perlman and Glenn Shadix in relatively small but amusing roles.

The make-up effects are very good, although not top-notch. They're certainly nothing amazing, but they serve their occasionally-gruesome purposes well. The optical effects look pretty dated by today's standards, but it's still interesting to see CG effects in some of their earliest forms. The transformation sequences now look like something out of a made-for-TV movie, but they don't significantly detract from the film.

Where this picture does tend to fail is in its plot and dialogue. Just about all of the mystery of the story dissipates by its halfway point, leaving the audience to predict and anticipate just about everything that happens in the rest of the film, essentially destroying the tension and suspense aspects. And since this is a horror picture written by Stephen King, one would expect these two elements to be the strongest components of the film. The dialogue is at times campy and at other times overly-serious. This has the effect of making some of the characters unbalanced in many ways, something that detracts from the film as a whole. It seems the director and/or writer was/were having difficulty deciding whether or not to play this film up as a comedy or a true horror movie, and so as it stands it awkwardly lies somewhere in between.

`Sleepwalkers' is not horror at its finest, either in terms of ability to truly frighten or to provide fun campiness. It straddles the line between the two, existing somewhere equidistant from both. It is never too over-the-top for us to laugh out loud with it, nor is it ever truly scary enough to make us shiver. As it stands, it is an extremely simple and very entertaining work of filmmaking, something that horror fans will enjoy and others should probably avoid.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
not spectacular,but entertaining, 23 January 2008

Author: disdressed12 from Canada

this Stephen King adaptation was entertaining but not great,by any means.it's worthwhile to pass time.it''s probably as weird as any of the King adaptation i have,and even weirder than others.this movie sort of felt like a fairy tale to me.although not a kid's fable,obviously.i did like the cast,many of whom have gone on to other things,since then.Brian Krause also appeared in the TV show Charmed,Madchen Amick (who could be Kim Delaney's twin sister)has been in several smaller budget pictures.Alice Krige was seen most notably as the Borg Queen in Star Trek:First Contact,while Ron Perlman was previously seen in The TV series beauty and the Beast.his most notable role(In my opinion)was in Hellboy as the title character.like in most King movies,king himself appears in a cameo.at least three other modern horror masters(Jon Landis,Joe Dante,and Clive Barker also have cameos.anyway if you wanna pass 90 minutes or so,i'd say this movie is worth it.for me,Sleepwalkers is a 6/10

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Cat Scratch Fever, 3 February 2009

Author: wesconnorsehny from Earth

This film begins with a helpful definition of Stephen King's "Sleepwalkers": "Nomadic shape-shifting creatures with human and feline origins. Vulnerable to the deadly scratch of the cat, the sleepwalker feeds upon the life-force of virginal human females…" Then, in Bodega Bay, California (an obvious reference to Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds"), officer Mark Hamill (in a cameo appearance) discovers a home populated by hanging dead cats. From there, director Mick Garris moves the action to Travis, Indiana...

We are introduced to shirtless hunk Brian Krause (as Charles Brady) and his still hot mother Alice Krige (as Mary Brady). They are obviously a nostalgic duo, evidenced by their slow dancing to Santo & Johnny's 1959 hit "Sleep Walk". A likely choice. Anyway, the son and mother are also lovers. But, Mr. Krause needs to suck the life force out of a virgin female to satisfy Ms. Krige, who is "famished". Krause is too old for high school, but he attends anyway; and, after rebuffing his gay teacher, he decides to hook up with implausible virgin Mädchen Amick (as Tanya Robertson).

Horror novelist King and some others appear in small roles. Together, Ms. Amick and Krause look a little like older versions of Brook Shields and Christopher Atkins. Hmmm. In Bodega Bay, with "The Birds" and the cats. It all must mean something, but what?

***** Sleepwalkers (1992) Mick Garris ~ Brian Krause, Mädchen Amick, Alice Krige

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4 out of 6 people found the following comment useful :-
The Cat in the Hat Goes Splat, 3 April 2008

Author: Jonny_Numb from Hellfudge, Pennsylvania

Director Mick Garris has commented on how "Sleepwalkers" was a troubled production, and one only has to watch in disbelief to see what he means. Before its 1992 theatrical release, I remember the film being heavily hyped as Stephen King's first foray into cinema with a completely original screenplay (and as was true with most adaptations of his work--with or without his involvement--at the time, the reviews were less than sympathetic). Ironically, Garris would become better known for helming TV-miniseries versions of some of King's best-known works ("The Stand"; "The Shining"; "Desperation"), directing right from the author's own scripts. Needless to say, these made-for-TV works outshine "Sleepwalkers," which simply further proves that King's writing style (heavy with internal dialogues and detailed, unspoken perceptions) is better suited to a format that can fully develop his themes and characters. This tale of an incestuous mother/son duo who shapeshifts into bloodthirsty felines, roaming from small towns to dine on virgin prey, is fairly decent for the first 50 minutes--King's use of 'local color' (and the resulting humor) is well-rendered, and Garris does a fine job of creating an atmosphere of mystery and intrigue. But just when "Sleepwalkers" seems headed for the zone of good (if not truly memorable) King adaptations, its final third devolves into overblown, ridiculous action sequences (as though the producers chopped away 30 pages of King's script for explosions and shootouts) and a queasy imbalance between absurd humor and sentimental melodrama. The end result hobbles the overall experience--had King's ideas been thoroughly fleshed-out, "Sleepwalkers" may have been a solid entry in his filmography...but as it stands, it feels like a lament over what could have been. The cats are incredibly cute, though.

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5 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Here kitty, kitty, kitty…, 26 April 2005

Author: Tressa Breen from United States

An incestuous mother and son (Krige, Krause) of preternatural origin move to a small town to find a young female virgin (Amick) the son may take the life force of and feed the mother with.

It's Stephen King, who wrote the screenplay, at his not bad best. Interesting music; I've never heard Enya in a horror movie before but surprisingly it works. As with Ron Perlman, I'd pretty much sit through anything with Alice Krige in it.

The down side is that although the mother and son are interesting beings the curiosity about them the movie arouses is not satisfied. What are they? A kind of feline lineage is hinted at as they can morph into variations of cat like creatures yet cats are their mortal enemies (a scratch can be fatal). Where are they from? Egypt is hinted at (the origin of the worship of Bast, perhaps). Why are they called Sleepwalkers (origins of the incubus/succubus/vampire mythologies)?

Despite the questions raised and unanswered the film is still an enjoyable gore-fest horror break from reality.

Worth a rent/buy used, especially for fans of Stephen King's work.

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6 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
There is bad, there is terrible and then there is this, 6 August 2007
Author: Diogenes81

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I am not one of those reviewers who give 1/10 to EVERY movie they don't like. Even when I dislike a film I try to be objective: I think few movies deserve the lowest possible rating. But Sleepwalkers...oh, my.

Unbelievably, this pathetic movie has been written by Stephen King, the master of horror himself. While many adaptations of his atmospheric books are mediocre, screenplays written by King *himself* have been Rose Red (a fun haunted house tale) and the memorably creepy The Storm of the Century : since I enjoyed both I had positive expectations. However, after watching Sleepwalkers I was not merely disappointed, but incredulous. This is an unwatchable film with no entertainment value whatsoever. And this is from a horror fan who doesn't mind gore and also enjoys a hilariously bad movie or two from time to time.

Young Charles (Brian Krause) and his mother Mary (Alice Krige) are vampire-like creatures, able to assume both monstrous and human appearances. They are also afraid of cats, their mortal enemies. The two monsters have just arrived to a small town. Charles befriends classmate Tanya (Madchen Amick), planning to kill her.

Not much really happens, so the movie tries to stretch itself as long as it can. Therefore, from time to time, we have long, boring and ludicrously gory scenes of the monsters killing extras, and interminable shots of cats meowing and running around the garden of the evil family.

Sleepwalkers is uninteresting, tasteless and silly: it's campy in a tedious rather than amusing way, and offers nothing enjoyable or even passable. Although a couple of scenes involving the fights of Charles and Mary against the cats could have been laughable in a "come on, this is ridiculous!" kind of way, the stupidity is also partly intentional, and this kills the fun. The poor actors desperately - and uselessly - fight to give decent performance in the midst of this monstrosity.

I suppose that, buried behind overacting, stupidity and bad taste, there is an attempt to "humanize" the monsters and to show their solitude and sadness: a potentially interesting idea, but it couldn't have been executed worse. Avoid this movie like a plague.

1/10

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Stay away from screen writing Mr. King, 21 May 2009

Author: samkay1 from Canada

In his work, Steven King is usually good at making nastiness into scariness. It works well in 'The Shining' and 'Misery', but not with Sleepwalkers, which is just pain vicious as well as cheap and gory. If this was written as a novel, Sleepwalkers might have worked. As a novelist, King is good at pacing, fleshing out characters, and making a story frighteningly subjective. As a screenwriter however, he is reduced from a genius to a cheap Hollywood story teller. Such a shame.

Charles Brady and his mother are new residents in a small Indiana town, coming from Ohio. They are the last of a dying breed of monsters, known as Sleepwalkers. Wherever they go, Charles is always forced to feed his mother. This time, his selected victim is Tanya, a girl in his class who likes artistic photography (and him). After a failed attempt on her life which leaves Charles mortally injured, Mrs. Brady (who is subject to the worst acting in the genre) goes crazy and lots of blood and guts follow. The shallow story ends in a lame showdown between her and the sheriff's department along with all the cats in town.

Like so many similar films, Sleepwalkers amounts, to little more than a gory, dumb, and even perverted piece of B-movie making, and is too grizzly to be fun. With Stephan King in the writer's chair, I had some hope, but that was a mistake. In the end, I suppose there is a little fun to be had with here (like seeing King act) but not enough to make it worth your time. Skip these vampires and try 'The Lost Boys' or 'From Dusk Till Dawn' instead.

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1 out of 1 people found the following comment useful :-
Underrated: among the best Stephen King films out there!, 29 March 2009

Author: FlorisV from Netherlands

Best Stephen King film alongside IT, though this one is more fun than scary.

This one's got it all:

-a great cast with a Alice Krige and Brian Krause and a fun cameo from King himself;

-well dosed horror in an amusing storyline;

-great use of music, Santo & Johnny's "Sleepwalk" in particular;

-likeable characters in a typical King setting: middle of nowhere village;

-lots of humor. You can't really get good scares here because it's too much fun and over the top;

-old but really nice makeup effects like they don't make anymore!

A 4,5 rating: I don't get it really. When was the last time a horror film was as much fun as this one?

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3 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Silly and fun, 31 March 2008

Author: rose-294 from Finland

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Although written by Stephen King, an overrated writer if there ever was one, this is actually quite entertaining B-movie. Vampiric, incestuous creatures who live in the candle-lit house and drain the life-force of virgins, great graveyard scenery, heroic cats and very pretty virgin. The soundtrack even has Enya's music, an idea which I found quite... nice. I'm sure King is disappointed to this little movie, although it HAS crappy dialogue and ideas, all of them from a true and tedious King potboiler. (Albeit Sleepwalkers, if I'm understood right, is a script without any novel or short story behind it). Still, those touches of sewer-odors show he DIDN'T use a ghost-writer after all...

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