Imagine Charles realizing he may have gone a little too far in corrupting you. You, who used to be so sweet, have become a bit of an exhibitionist. The Sleepwalker hadn’t expected to see you flash him from the passenger seat of your friend’s car.

Brian Krause as Charles Brady

Sleepwalkers (Mick Garris, 1992)

Sleepwalkers (1992)

Directed by Mick Garris

Screenplay by Stephen King

Music by Nicholas Pike

Country: United States

Running time: 91 minutes

CAST

Brian Krause as Charles Brady

Alice Krige as Mary Brady

Mädchen Amick as Tanya Robertson

Sparks the cat as Clovis

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

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

I have no beef with Stephen King, let’s get that out upfront. I’m not one of those “Yeah, but it’s not proper books is it?” chancers who churlishly resent his Medal for Distinguished Contribution (lifetime) to American Letters. Nope, not me. But Sleepwalkers is a real honker. It’s stoopid, hyuk-hyuk, pick your nose in church, comic book bullshit. And purposely so. Crap like this doesn’t happen by accident. And King is totally responsible for this. There’s no “Wah! Someone took my script and made a shitshow of it” excuse here. Sleepwalkers is often called (as it is onscreen) Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers; the guy’s all over this one. It’s even an original script (maybe, I hear, based on an unpublished story; I didn’t check but I’m pretty sure the only things remaining unpublished by Stephen King in 2019 are his notes to the milkman. And they are due out next year from Subterranean Press, in a limited edition that costs more than a week’s shopping for a small family.) The script is his and so is the director; King personally pushed for Mick Garris, and King got Mick Garris. Even the songs on the soundtrack are pure Stephen King too; old timey R’n’R like at the sock hop where Cindy Lou showed you her woo-woo, mixed with that special kind of shitty heavy rock liked by confused men who think having hair like a girl in a shampoo advert is a signifier of raw masculinity. Other than composing and playing the instrumental score on a home-made kazoo personally, could Sleepwalkers be any more Stephen King? No.

For some unhappy reason whenever he gets any substantial control over a movie King’s IQ plummets to room temperature and all his worst impulses leap to the fore like randy cats. (I submit to the jury Maximum Overdrive (Dir: Stephen King, 1986), m’lud; the prosecution rests.) I think (maybe) King, bless his cotton socks, is trying to recreate the cinema of his youth; stuff like The Blob (1958), Them! (1954), Invaders From Mars (1953) and I Married A Monster From Outer Space (1958). The pulp fun cinema of a dead age. Unfortunately for King, those people back then were trying to make the best movie they could; the pop culture magic which ensured their success and longevity  was purely unintentional and completely impervious to intelligent creation. King’s forays into movies seem to be trying to reverse engineer serendipity; a fools’ errand that results in foolish movies. Movies like Sleepwalkers.

The impulse to gravitate to camp seems ingrained in Cinematic King. Even when he just does one of his almost ubiquitous cameos, he often fails to resist the temptation to goof about like some brain damaged hayseed on a 1960s sit-com. If someone, Criterion maybe, went back and dubbed a pant-ripping fart over all Alfred Hitchcock’s onscreen cameos we’d be approaching the same ballpark of screen disruption as a Stephen King cameo. Of course he has a cameo in Sleepwalkers. A talking cameo at that as a “cemetery caretaker”, and King confounds expectations by playing it like some brain damaged hayseed on a 1960s sit-com. Even better, his unnecessary cameo bounces off unnecessary cameos by Tobe Hooper and Clive Barker; it’s like the business of the movie pauses for a couple of minutes purely so King can piss about with his mates. This is swiftly followed by cameos from John Landis and Joe Dante who, er, say some “lab” stuff I missed because Joe Dante’s hair is so…fascinating. I don’t mind cameos as long as they are unobtrusive but these might as well be announced by dancing girls and a marching band. At least all the characters aren’t called stuff like “Officer Hooper” or “Mayor Corman”; that shit gets old real quick.

As anyone who has ever cleaned out a litter box can tell you, another kind of shit that gets old quick is cat shit. There are a lot of cats in Sleepwalkers, the hero even turns out to be a cat, Clovis by name. In fact Sparks the cat, as Clovis, gives the third best performance in the movie, behind Mädchen Amick  and Alice Krige. Mädchen Amick is undeniably great here. She’s totally pleasant and nicer than nice without making you want to choke on your own fist. There’s an exuberant scene of her dancing to a song Stephen King obviously likes, in the lobby of a cinema, which is a very lovely scene and she continues to be a refreshing presence throughout the movie. Alice Krige is also good value, striking a nice balance between vile and vulnerable; she acts like her no doubt soon-to-be-fired agent told her she’s in a serious movie. Everyone else seems to have received a script with “Camp It The Fuck Up, Daddio! Love, Steve-o” scrawled across it, probably in crayon. Were that the case, then everyone performs superlatively. The usually fine actor and generally welcome screen presence Ron Perlman, particularly, thunders through every scene he’s in like subtlety is a crime.

Maybe in the world of Sleepwalkers subtlety is a crime. Because the world of Sleepwalkers is a funny world, one where werecat son and werecat mom Charles and Mary Brady (Brian Krause and Alice Krige) wander about feeding off the psychic energy of virgins, enthusiastically incesting and driving fast muscle cars. For some reason they also feel it necessary for Charles to attend school which, you might  think, would create a lot of complications for a nomadic couple who need to keep off the authorities’ radar. If you did think that, you would have put more thought into this set up than Stephen King. These werecat people can make themselves invisible; okay. They can also make their car invisible; um. And they can make their car change into another car; er, no; sometimes it will turn back into the old car if they don’t concentrate; so, wait, the car is real but also an illusion? But how can they drive an illusion? So it must be a real car, but…oh God, make it stop. And mom werecat has to stay at home while son werecat goes out and gets the virgin energy to feed to her. If the mom werecat can only be fed by her offspring, how did she survive long enough to have offspring? Or is it just that mom werecats are all agoraphobic? Also, the werecat people look like humans unless they are reflected in a mirror (but only when the script remembers) and they, uh, still leave mirrors up in their house so visitors can narrowly miss seeing their true nature. Oh, yeah, obviously, normal cats are the werecats’ natural enemy and in the world of Sleepwalkers police officers can have their cat in the car with them, which is lucky because the proximity of a normal cat also causes the werecat to reveal its true nature.  Unfortunately, once revealed, their true nature of a werecat is remarkably similar to someone with jaundice who has lost an enormous amount of weight very rapidly, all topped by a big bald cat head. In summary: ancient Egyptians liked cats, cats are magic but werecats are nasty and really bad and not very good at keeping their existence a secret, but they do their homework and drive cars Stephen King would doubtless describe as “bitchin’”.

I should probably say that Mick Garris’ direction is fine, and sometimes very good indeed and I did enjoy his use of ‘80s horror movie lighting techniques. But I really want to point out that Mick Garris has written some very good horror fiction himself; well worth seeking out. As is Sleepwalkers; but you need to know what you are getting: entertaining nonsense, a kind of retro-crap honestly proffered in the spirit of drive-in goofballery. Essentially though, you can never shake off the feeling that Sleepwalkers exists purely because Stephen King came up with the scene where someone is killed by a corn on the cob and then built a ramshackle movie around that. Unfortunately it’s not a very good movie. But it is entertaining. M-O-O-N, that spells entertaining. Laws, yes!

Sleepwalkers (1992)

Sleepwalkers is insane. Its premise is delightfully loopy, which makes for numerous memorable scenes. It'll surprise you over and over. It's everything you want in a film that's so bad it becomes good again.

Written by Stephen King, it’s the story of two Sleepwalkers, shapeshifting vampire-like creatures with a strange connection to cats. Mary Brady (Alice Krige) and her son\lover Charles (Brian Krause) -yes, you read that right- must feed on the energy of virgin women. The two have just moved into a new town and they’re famished. Their first target is Tanya (Mãdchen Amick), a nice young woman who falls under Charles’ charms immediately.

At first, Sleepwalkers appears to be a good, if flawed, movie. The concept is original, with its pseudo-vampires, incest thing, and the romance between Charles and Tanya. You can tell he resents his domineering mother but doesn’t dare/is unable to stand up to her. He doesn’t feel like just some mad killer biding his time to kill an innocent, naive young lady, he actually seems like a genuinely conflicted monster. As for Tanya, she’s charming, fun-loving and flirty; not some dumb bimbo, but a smart, artistic woman looking for love. Brian Krause and Madchen Amick have terrific chemistry. You cheer for them despite knowing this can't end well. At first, you assume this is a sort of doomed romance\horror movie. Actually, those shining moments between the leads are the goodies in an otherwise perplexing tale that includes a man being killed with a corn-on-the-cob, 180-degree shifts in personality, a police officer who drives around with his pet Clovis “The Attack Cat” and Charles dancing with a corpse. Just when you think you’ve got this movie figured out, it goes completely nuts!

Baffling is the knowledge that Sleepwalkers isn't yet another example of Stephen King's epic tomes turned into an unintelligible mess by some hack screenwriter. It’s an original story written for the screen, meaning the school teacher who, after a single class realizes that Charles is not what he seems and goes to confront him, is not a crucial plot point that was butchered. It's an idiotic plot point that comes out of nowhere so hard and fast even after it’s over will have you wondering if the sequence was the character’s imagination or a dream or something.

The Sleepwalkers’ powers are vaguely established and seem to be whatever the plot demands them to be, which leads into the best part of this motion picture: the Sleepwalker’s weakness. Throughout the film, Charles and his mom reiterate multiple times that cat scratches are lethal to them. They set up traps outside their houses and take every precaution to avoid felines. Unfortunately, cats are naturally drawn to Sleepwalkers and are always following them. There are numerous scenes where a house cat comes to someone's rescue. You haven’t truly laughed until you see a wannabe vampire try and fight off a family pet. 

Sleepwalkers is a horror movie that descends into such complete all-out hilarity. It’s a must for bad movie fans. It contains some of the most ludicrous fight scenes I’ve ever seen. This film must have been made to be a comedy, but you sure couldn’t guess it from the quote they have on the front of the DVD, “Sexy, Sleek and Horrifyingly Scary”. You’re right Jim Whaley of Cinema Showcase; those are exactly the words I'd use to describe a mother-son monster incest, wild accusations that turn out to be true and result in a high-speed car chase between a vampire, a cat and a police officer, and killer corn. (On DVD, June 2014)

‘Deadpool’ Creator Liefeld, Gossett, Marz, Fajardo, Wong Among Top Creators At Inaugural 2019 Wizard World Bay Area, November 22-24

(photo credit: Luigi Novi)

Industry veterans Rob Liefeld (“Deadpool,” “Cable,” “X-Force”), Christian Gossett (“Star Wars,” “Call of Duty”), Ron Marz (“Silver Surfer,” “Thor”), Alexis Fajardo ("Kid Beowulf," Senior Editor of publishing at the Charles M. Schulz Studio), Andrew Farago (“Batman the Definitive History,” “Looney Tunes Treasury”), Joe Wos (“Mazetoons,” “An Animation Celebration: The Top 100 Animated TV Characters”), Shaenon K. Garrity (“The Zombie Gnome Defense Guide,” “Willowweep Manor”), Walden Wong (“Batman,” “Captain America”) and Albert Nguyen (Upper Deck, Marvel sketchcards) are among the leading creators scheduled to populate Artist Alley at the inaugural Wizard World Bay Area at the Oakland Convention Center, November 22-24. The weekend will also feature many demonstrations and discussions at the Creative Stage, as well as numerous local Bay Area creators.

Other notable artists and writers among the 50+ attending are Kevin Glover (“Fractured Scary Tales,” “Supered-up Monster Kids”), Michael Calero ("Tandar," "All New Fathom"), Jimmy Tran (“Ultimate Spider-Man vs. The Sinister 6”), Megan Withey (“Myths of Legend”), James Pascoe (“Thor,” “Gambit”) and Jon Del Arroz ("For Steam and Country").

In addition to Wong, Nguyen, Del Arroz, Tran and Pascoe, local Bay Area creators on hand include Dennis Bolen (jewelry design), Thomas Chiaramonte (“Wrongrobot”), Zizani Cochran (pop art), Melissa Pagluica (Above the Clouds), Sara Hurley (woodworking), Devin Hughes (“Bremen”), Brandon Lyons (“Bastard Gunman #1), Jamie Firenze (“Yojambo”), Alexis Villanueva (fine art), Huy (Jack) Nguyen (“Metalsouls”), Jack Le (“Metalsouls”), Lawrence Washington (pop art), Rob Gardner (pop art), David Farrar (fine art), Darren Murata (pop art), Deborah Blandino (“Badass Girl”), Brittni Paul (watercolors, inks), Shawna Arzadon (jewelry), Bonnie Collins (steampunk/gothic), Steph Dere (prints), Neal (“Lopan 4000”) Bergmann (“Basnectar”), Gitano DePaola (pop art), Arezu Sarvestani (pop art), Kim Kelley (jewelry) and Levi Craig (pop art).

Wizard World Bay Area will also include non-stop live entertainment, gaming, exclusive Q&A sessions with select celebrities and autographs/photo ops with top stars such as Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park, Independence Day), Jewel Staite (“Firefly,” “Stargate: Atlantis”), Sam J. Jones (Flash Gordon), Brian Krause (“Charmed,” Return to the Blue Lagoon), Claudia Wells (Back to the Future), pro wrestler Kevin Nash, Barry Williams (“The Brady Bunch,” “A Very Brady Renovation”), Thomas Ian Nicholas (American Pie, Rookie of the Year), Samm Levine (“Freaks and Geeks,” Inglourious Basterds) and more, along with Wizard World’s Master of Ceremonies, Kato Kaelin.

Wizard World events bring together thousands of fans of all ages to celebrate the best in pop culture: movies, television, gaming, live entertainment, comics, sci-fi, graphic novels, toys, original art, collectibles, contests and more. The 14th and final event scheduled on the 2019 Wizard World calendar, Bay Area show hours are Friday, November 22, 4-9 p.m.; Saturday, November 23, 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sunday, November 24, 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Kids 10 and under are admitted free with paid adult.

Wizard World Bay Area is also the place for cosplay, with fans young and old showing off their best costumes throughout the event. Fans dressed as every imaginable character – and some never before dreamed – will roam the convention floor and participate in the famed Wizard World Costume Contest on Saturday evening.

For more on the 2019 Wizard World Bay Area, visit http://wizd.me/BayAreaPR.

365 Day Movie Challenge (2017) - #309: Sleepwalkers (1992) - dir. Mick Garris

Is Sleepwalkers the craziest horror movie I’ve ever seen? No, but it comes pretty close. It doesn’t make much sense why Stephen King, who wrote the original screenplay, decided to use sleepwalking as the main descriptor for the film’s antagonists since the more important detail is that they’re shapeshifting cat people, but I guess that title was already used a few times.

Virginal high school girl Tanya Robertson (Mädchen Amick) thinks she’s struck gold when a hunky and seemingly sensitive transfer student, Charles Brady (Brian Krause), moves to her small town of Castle Rock and shows interest in her. Unfortunately, during a date in the local cemetery (yes, really), Charles shows his true colors when attempts to suck her soul out of her body. Definite mood killer, obviously. Tanya spends the rest of the film fighting off the murderous advances of Charles and his mother Mary (Alice Krige in glorious scenery-chewing mode). The mother-and-son team is even ickier when you factor in their incestuous relationship, a symbiotic bond they need in order to help each survive.

For a while, Sleepwalkers is a real WTF headscratcher. You can’t tell if the campiness is intentional or not. But once you realize that the film is silly on purpose, delivering a sick and twisted comedy that both worships and mocks the holiness of horror genre tropes, it’s a lot easier to endure. Plus you can’t really go wrong with Mädchen Amick, looking absolutely dazzling in one of her first post-“Twin Peaks” roles. (Peaks Freaks will be delighted to notice that Santo & Johnny’s “Sleep Walk,” which is featured in the end credits of “The Return’s” Part 7, is used throughout Sleepwalkers as Charles and Mary’s “romantic” theme.) Watching her dance around to the Contours’ “Do You Love Me?” is perhaps the highlight of the entire film; even if the horror stumbles under the weight of its grotesque weirdness, at least the narrative’s vivacious heroine is a champ. Bonus: there are small roles and cameos by Mark Hamill, Ron Perlman, Glenn Shadix, Tobe Hooper, Clive Barker, John Landis, Joe Dante and Stephen King himself.

La Nuit déchirée : un film avec Brian Krause à découvrir en ligne

Si vous faites partie des fans de Brian Krause, sachez que le film « La Nuit déchirée » dans lequel il interprète le personnage de Charles Brady, est en ce moment disponible sur PlayVOD Sénégal. Ce long-métrage est répertorié sous la rubrique « Thriller » du site.

Sleepwalkers - USA, 1992 - reviews

Sleepwalkers – USA, 1992 – reviews

Sleepwalkers aka Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers is a 1992 American supernatural horror feature film directed by Mick Garris (Nightmare Cinema; Bag of Bones; Psycho IV; Critters 2; et al) from an original screenplay by Stephen King. The Columbia Pictures production stars Brian Krause, Mädchen Amick and Alice Krige.

Plot:

Charles Brady and his mother Mary are Sleepwalkers —…

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Cat Horror Purrr-fection: Stephen King's Sleepwalkers Comes Out On Blu-Ray

Cat Horror Purrr-fection: Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers Comes Out On Blu-Ray

Inspired by the Santo & Johnny song “Sleep Walk,” (the Sleepwalkers dance to a record of it in the movie), Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers is the first screenplay he wrote for the screen instead of adapting one of his books or short stories. Directed by Mick Garris, in the film Charles Brady (Brian Krause) is new to Travis, Indiana when he meets Tanya Robertson (Twin Peaks‘ Mädchen Amick) and invites…

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Sleepwalkers (1992)

Imagine being reluctant to have sex with Charles after finding out he’s a werecat. Even after he repeatedly states he doesn’t have to be feline all over when aroused. 

Charles: “Come on, I’ll use a condom.” 

You: “Barbed pen/is.” 

Charles: “I’ll eat you out?” 

You: “Sandpaper…” 

Charles: *desperate* “Finger/ing?” 

You: “Retractable claws?” 

Charles: *frustrated* “Eat my a/s/s.” 

You: “…Okay.” 

Note: Reach around shows he wasn’t lying.

𝔖𝔩𝔢𝔢𝔭𝔴𝔞𝔩𝔨𝔢𝔯𝔰 (յգգշ) 𝔴𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔫 𝔟𝔶 𝔖𝔱𝔢𝔭𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔎𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔡𝔦𝔯𝔢𝔠𝔱𝔢𝔡 𝔟𝔶 𝔐𝔦𝔠𝔨 𝔊𝔞𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔰

𝔖𝔩𝔢𝔢𝔭𝔴𝔞𝔩𝔨𝔢𝔯𝔰 (յգգշ) 𝔴𝔯𝔦𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔫 𝔟𝔶 𝔖𝔱𝔢𝔭𝔥𝔢𝔫 𝔎𝔦𝔫𝔤 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔡𝔦𝔯𝔢𝔠𝔱𝔢𝔡 𝔟𝔶 𝔐𝔦𝔠𝔨 𝔊𝔞𝔯𝔯𝔦𝔰

Imagine Charles having the urge to bite your neck whenever you’re ovulating.