Sleepwalkers? More like sleep… inducing… walkers.

Yeah. Hmm. Lead balloon.

More below the cut.

Ok, Sleepwalkers is another movie Stephen King wrote for the screen. According to Wikipedia it is based on an unreleased King novel, but as it’s unreleased neither myself nor my esteemed King-loving roommate had ever read it (naturally).

After watching the movie I think I might have an idea why this one didn’t make it to the bookstores.

This movie suuuuuuuucks.

Ok, basic story: there is a creepy Mother-Son pair of supernatural creatures that the title card helpfully tells you are psychic shapeshifting cat-like vampire-like creatures (no, really). I do mean creepy, too. Not the monster makeup or the apparently then-cutting-edge special effects for their shapeshifting (which are fairly creepy). Certainly not the rubber Godzilla-esque rubber monster suits that represent their true forms. I mean, well, it’s the motherfucking.

The *literal* motherfucking. These two make the Bates family look like the Cleavers.

Now, these shapeshifting cat-vampires (or catpires) are called ‘Sleepwalkers’ for reasons never once explained or hinted at in any way. Their powers don’t seem tied to sleep, nor do they actually sleepwalk, or attack you in your sleep, or what not. Rather, they travel from one location to the next on a seemingly unlimited supply of funds, in search of their prey: virgin girls.

One other noteworthy detail: the Sleepwalkers are sort of mystically allergic to cats. The claws of a cat, specifically, work on them much like silver on a werewolf. In fact, despite the opening exposition-o-gram, they are much more like werewolves than vampires, except for the whole eating virgins thing.

Now, the younger catpire goes by the name of Charles Brady, and he and his mom have just put down roots in Travis, Indiana after a stint killing lots of their hated cat enemies and at least one little girl in sunny SoCal. Charles is up against a bit of a deadline in finding their next virgin entree, and he’s picked a hopefully ‘nice’ girl who works at the local theatre to be the catch of the day. In the meantime he and his mother are playing house, screwing like bunnies, and he poses as a normal high school student.

It’s a ‘Vampire Next Door’ setup, you’ve seen it a hundred times before in fiction and movies. Nothing special here, except they’re not vampires, they’re catpires. INCESTUOUS catpires.

(If you want to see a truly excellent vampire movie instead, drop this review and go netflix Let the Right One In. It’s an arty but not pretentious foreign film that’s quite excellent and very human. It’ll give you lots to think about.)

Ok, the catpire concept, points for trying. Their problems with cats are no less silly from a neutral point of view than werewolves with silver or vampires with crosses; it just feels sillier because it’s original rather than a longstanding myth. The main problem this movie has is that it’s boring; most of the film drags and drags.

The acting is ok. Charles is played by Brian Krause, later of Charmed fame, and he’s mostly forgettable. His mother (Alice Krige) went on to be the Borg Queen in some at least one Star Trek movie and the Voyager tv show, and she’s suitably unsettling. But you wait forever for anything to happen, and then all of a sudden you have hands being ripped off and throats torn out, and it’s looking up for about a minute before returning to boredom.

Directing is pretty unremarkable, though the movie does get negative fifty points for excessive dutch angles in the opening bit. Holy slanted camera, Batman! (The director, Mick Garris, has written a ton of horror for the small screen and is apparently directing an upcoming King movie Bag of Bones)

There is the tiniest sliver of an awesome movie buried under the pile of compost that this film represents. The incest angle is properly unnerving, the concept has some meat, but it never really gets the serious horror thing going. On the other hand, as a black comedy, there are parts that just shine. Brian Krause has a little rape-cum-murder-cum-dinner thing going on in the middle of the film where his lunatic acting is utterly hilarious. I’m not sure if that was intentional; I doubt it. Who cares. It’s riotous.

Later in the alleged climax of the film, where Alice Krige is snapping cat spines like celery sticks and turning big beefy cops into meat kindling? That’s frickin sweet.

Still, you have, at most, five minutes of that great, over the top, bone snapping blood spewing movie, and the rest is all ‘ooh look they’re scary in mirrors’ ‘ooh let’s foreshadow some more’. For 85 additional minutes.

Shoot me.

This movie really doesn’t make use of its casting. Ron Perlman is credited in the opening, but he’s here for about 2 minutes total. Glenn Shadix, whom I mostly recall from the So-Bad-It’s-Good Demolition Man, is also here and hams it up as a pedophilic (or at least jailbait loving) high school teacher.

One scene in particular is noteworthy for being utterly crammed full of cameos. Stephen King is here, of course, but so are Clive Barker, John Landis (most famous for things like Three Amigos and Animal House but also having done some significant horror work like An American Werewolf in London), Joe Dante (director of Gremlins, Explorers, etc), and Tobe Hooper (Poltergeist, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and apparently the upcoming From a Buick 8).

They’re all people involved in a little throwaway crime scene investigation bit. I honestly didn’t catch anyone but King (because I was looking for him), though it does seem a little odd at the time just how MANY people have to talk to the Sherriff in that sequence. I guess now I know why. This was/is utterly fascinating to me; it might be the most concentrated horror talent ever wasted on a single scene of all time.

So yeah. It’s cameo-heavy, but acting light. Alice Krige doesn’t get to do much but screw Brian Krause and act like a prisoner in her own home as the cats begin to surround the place. Perlman, as I said, is in and out of this thing in no time. Krause.. I dunno. He gives off an unbearably powerful douchey-vibe except when he’s slaughter happy.

These catpires deserve to go extinct though. They really do. For fugitive supernatural mankillers, they don’t know how to keep a low profile. Charles attracts all kinds of unnecessary attention to himself, playing speed demon in his sporty blue car, pissing off the local constabulary, even reading a truly awful short story that EXPLAINS IN GREAT DETAIL WHAT HE AND HIS MOTHER ARE to his high school english class, etc. Good thing the Scooby Gang from Buffy wasn’t here or he’d have been dead and buried by the second act.

I had one question over and over in this movie, as these highly cat-allergic individuals set bear traps out for the local feline population and cowered in fear: why don’t get they get a dog? A big, mean rottweiler, trained to hate cats? I mean, aren’t the bear traps both ineffective AND unnecessarily suspicious? A dog would have kept the blasted cats off their property, out of their lives, and not gotten all the neighbors ready to raise a lynch mob for the people who killed Mr. Whiskers with a big metal pair of teeth.

Yeesh. Dumbass cat-pires.

So, mostly, give this one a pass. It’s ok for Bad Movie Night, and there are about five great minutes, but honestly there are far better films in the King-o-Verse. Unless you have a particular need for, err, monster-incest. You can keep it to yourself, if so.

Next Week: The Dark Half. Oooh, another story about the perils of writing!
Last Week: Misery