Sleepwalkers (1992 film)

Plot

Charles Brady and his mother/lover Mary are sleepwalkers, nomadic shapeshifting energy vampires who feed off the lifeforce of virgin women. Though they normally maintain a human form, they can transform into human-sized bipedal werecats, their natural form, at will. They have powers of both telekinesis and illusion. Domestic cats are their only weakness, and the two species are mutually hostile. Cats see through their illusions and violently attack them, inflicting severe to fatal wounds on them with their claws and teeth.

Charles and Mary live in Travis, a small Indiana town, having recently fled Bodega Bay, California, after draining and killing a young girl there. Charles attends the local high school, and meets Tanya Robertson in his creative writing class. Many of the girls at the school fancy Charles. Charles feigns romantic interest in Tanya in order to take her lifeforce for himself and his starving mother. Their teacher, Mr. Fallows, is suspicious about Charles and tells him he knows that his older high school certificates and transcripts were fakes; he also attempts to sexually assault Charles as blackmail, but Charles kills him.

On their first date, at a picnic at a nearby cemetery, Charles attempts to drain Tanya's lifeforce while kissing her. Tanya tries frantically to ward off Charles by bashing his head with her camera, scratching his face, and plunging a corkscrew into his left eye, though nothing she does seems to cause Charles more than temporary discomfort and annoyance.

Deputy Sheriff Andy Simpson is driving by the cemetery. When Tanya flees to him for help, Charles kills Simpson. When Charles resumes feeding off Tanya, the deputy's cat, Clovis, enraged by his master's death, violently scratches him in the face and chest. Mortally wounded, Charles staggers back home to his mother, who is able to make both of them "dim" (almost invisible) and thus keep Charles from being arrested when the police storm their house. Clovis and a small number of other cats begin to gather outside, only kept at bay by the leghold traps the Sleepwalkers have set.

Knowing that the only way for her dying son to survive is to feed, Mary attacks the Robertson household, killing several deputies and state troopers and severely wounding Tanya's parents. She kidnaps Tanya and takes her back to her house. Charles is near death, but Mary revives him, and Charles makes a final attempt to drain Tanya's life force. However, Tanya plunges her fingers into his eyes, finally killing him. Tanya escapes with the help of the sheriff, whom Mary later impales on the picket fence surrounding the house. The cats that have been gathering around their house, led by Clovis, jump on Mary and claw and bite her until she bursts into flames and dies. Mary with her final dying breath, cries out that Tanya has killed her only son. Tanya hugs Clovis, her savior, as the other cats depart, leaving Mary's body lying ablaze on her former driveway.

Cast

• Brian Krause as Charles Brady
• Alice Krige as Mary Brady
• Mädchen Amick as Tanya Robertson
• Lyman Ward as Donald Robertson
• Cindy Pickett as Helen Robertson
• Ron Perlman as Captain Soames
• Jim Haynie as Sheriff Ira Stevens
• Dan Martin as Deputy Andy Simpson
• Lucy Boryer as Jeanette
• Glenn Shadix as Mr. Fallows
• Sparks as Clovis
• Stephen King as Cemetery Caretaker
• John Landis as Lab Technician
• Joe Dante as Lab Assistant
• Clive Barker as Forensic Tech
• Tobe Hooper as Forensic Tech
• Mark Hamill as Sheriff Jenkins (uncredited)

Production

Sleepwalkers was the first film written by Stephen King to not be based on one of his preexisting works. Columbia Pictures initially approached Rupert Wainwright to direct, but at King's insistence Columbia offered the film to Mick Garris, who had previously directed the horror films Critters 2: The Main Course and Psycho IV: The Beginning. Garris eagerly accepted the position as he had wanted to work with King on a movie for awhile. Garris theorized that his work on Psycho IV: The Beginning may have led to his hiring as like Sleepwalkers that film had a heavy focus on the mother-son relationship.

The film was shot in Franklin Canyon Park in Los Angeles, California.

Garris said there were a couple of ideas he put into the film that hadn't been in King's original script. One is the introduction and title sequence from that page in the "Book of Arcane Knowledge" (which he invented) to give it a little backstory. The other was the scene where the Sleepwalkers are making love.

Cameos

Garris had initially planned to include cameos from other director's who had made Stephen King adaptations, but schedule conflicts and a lack of connection to Garris meant they didn't happen. John Carpenter had been offered a cameo, but at the time was busy filming Memoirs of an Invisible Man. George A. Romero had initially been planning to film a cameo, but this was cancelled as Romero was sick at the time. Instead, Garris filled out the planned cameos with friends and colleagues with whom he had worked such as Tobe Hooper and Clive Barker.

Post production

As a result of the film's violence and sexuality, Sleepwalkers had to be submitted five times before the MPAA would award an R-rating. Among the sequences truncated include Mary Brady biting off Captain Soames' fingers with the chewing still in the final film but not her spitting them out or showing them hitting the floor. Another violent sequence that was heavily altered was the sequence where Tanya Robertson stabs a corkscrew into Charles Brady's eye with the sequence of the eye and its connective tissue being pulled significantly cut. Additionally, Garris said a sex scene was so explicit he had to cut it to avoid an X-rating by the Motion Picture Association.

Soundtrack

The original music score was composed by Nicholas Pike.

(Side 2 of the cassette begins at track 9)

Reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 29% based on 17 reviews, giving it an average rating of 4.4/10. On Metacritic the film has a score of 38% based on reviews from 12 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Variety called it "an idiotic horror potboiler". British horror critic Alan Jones gave the film a scathing review in the Radio Times, saying that "Garris tries to inject life into the pathetic script... but this underdeveloped material is so poor he's constantly fighting a losing battle. There's little to engage the attention in an idiotic potboiler off the creaky King conveyor belt. From the daft prologue set in Bodega Bay where Hitchcock filmed The Birds to the soggy moggy climax, this is absurdly unscary and confusingly dull." In Horror Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Slashers, Vampires, Zombies, Aliens, and More, John Kenneth Muir praised the first half of the film, stating: "Sleepwalkers starts out in fine form, as a serious, grim, involving horror film about the last two survivors of a species doing what they must to survive, Krige is incredibly sensual as the half-crazed mother who must be 'fed' through the act of sexual intercourse with her son." He then says that the latter half of the film "devolves into a campy disaster."

Proposed sequel

In April 2020, on his Post Mortem podcast during a listener Q&A session with producer of his podcast Joe Russo, Garris confirmed that there was discussion from Columbia Pictures about a sequel, saying in full, "There was a little bit of talk. I mean, the movie was successful, it was the #1 movie the week that it came out. I never heard the studio talk about it, but Tabitha King, Stephen King's wife, actually wrote a treatment for a sequel to Sleepwalkers that involved a women's basketball team somehow. I'm not sure how, I never read it, but King was very excited that Tabby came up with this. But it was a sequel that nobody at the studio gave a shit about. You know, they liked the money that Sleepwalkers made, but it was not a prestige release by any means, so they never even thought about Sleepwalkers after." Both Garris and Russo then discussed a potential reboot, with Garris expressing surprise that there was seemingly no interest, with Russo admitting that "We had a very flirtatious conversation with a production company about a year ago, maybe. It was nothing more than flirting."

References

References

1. Wood, Gary L.. (October 1992). "Stephen King's Sleepwalkers". Fourth Castle Micromedia.
2. Warren, Bill. (April 1992). "Sleepwalkers Awaken". [[Fangoria]].
3. (April 12, 2017). "HDTGM: A Conversation With Mick Garris, Director Of 'Sleepwalkers'". www.slashfilm.com.
4. (October 24, 2019). "From the incestuous 'Sleepwalkers' to 'The Shining' you don't remember, inside secrets of the most underrated Stephen King movies". www.yahoo.com.
5. (1992). "Nicholas Pike - Stephen King's Sleepwalkers (Music From The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)".
6. "Sleepwalkers". [[Fandango Media.
7. "Sleepwalkers".
8. "SLEEPWALKERS (1992) C+". [[CinemaScore]].
9. Variety Staff. (1 January 1992). "Sleepwalkers".
10. Alan Jones. "Stephen King's Sleepwalkers". [[Radio times]].
11. Muir, John. (2013). "Horror Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Slashers, Vampires, Zombies, Aliens, and More". Hal Leonard Corporation.
12. "82: Ask Mick Anything from Post Mortem with Mick Garris {{!".
13. (April 2, 2020). "Tabitha King wrote a treatment for Sleepwalkers 2".