Sleepwalkers (1992)

"Even Homer slept" is a phrase used to excuse the not-so-great works of great artists.  Homer, whoever he may have been in reality, had some benefits going for him.  One is that a couple millennia have passed since he wrote his great epic poems, meaning that his own creative blunders either burned with the Library of Alexandria or just shuffled out of existence and memory to be overshadowed by the greatness of The Iliad and The Odyssey.  I'm sure if Homer were to get shifted in time and find himself in the present his only objections would be that some other work he is proud of is forgotten and would not be at all embarrassed that certain parts of his bibliography are now dust.

It is modern times so, for Stephen King, that luxury does not yet exist despite the fact that he has taken some long creative naps himself, both due to not having enough people around him telling him no when it came to length and content of some of his novels and, in the past, some of the substances that had a hold on him.  He doesn't have the excuse of the latter with Sleepwalkers, which stands as the first script he wrote specifically to be filmed rather than adapted from one of his short stories or novels.  Having learned his lesson with Maximum Overdrive he wisely avoids directing this himself, but that job fell to Mick Garris, who has never been one of my favorite horror directors despite the various times he has often worked with King.  Despite the writer's fondness of Garris none of his movies ever seemed to capture what King was going for, and in this case I don't think either of them had any idea what that was. 

Charles (Brian Krause) and Mary Brady (Alice Krige) are, as far as they can tell, the last two representatives of a species called Sleepwalkers.  To feed they must drain the essence of virginal young girls.  In true form they resemble a mixture of human and cat, though cats are their natural enemies.  The two move frequently due to their activities and the fact that the local cats are drawn to seek them out and kill them.  The two have recently taken up residence in the small town of Travis, Indiana, hoping to begin their hunt anew.

Their relationship is not that of a typical mother and son, as it is more that of lovers, with Charles being sent out to hunt and then passing the essence on to his mother to help keep her alive.  They have a number of supernatural powers that help them survive, but Charles makes the mistake of catching the attention of Andy Simpson (Dan Martin), a local sheriff's deputy he antagonizes into a car chase, leading to an accidental reveal of his true form when Simpson's cat Clovis (Sparks) takes notice.  Charles is also trying to court a local girl named Tanya (Mädchen Amick) as the next victim, but she turns out to be a bit too much for him.  Her escape leads to a showdown with state and country police as the truth of the incestuous family is dragged out into the light. 

I hate it when my explanation of the film is better than the movie itself, but that's the truth despite recent attempts to revisit this as some lost cult classic.  It isn't.  It did decent money at the box office when it came out, and it is remembered by Stephen King fans, but not fondly.  It was good that he didn't direct this himself because while Maximum Overdrive is a fun b-movie if one can ignore Yeardley Smith's screaming, Sleepwalkers is just an absurd and frustrating mess.  Part of that frustration is that the first third of it is not bad.  It is when Charles tries to feed on Tanya that the whole thing goes off the rails.

This is where Stephen King, rather than Mick Garris, is at fault.  While Brian Krause doesn't strike me as the best actor around, that is King's dialogue that he is spouting.  He is trying his best.  It is supposed to be darkly comic, but there is no way that it can be anything but physically painful to hear.  In trying to imitate some of the old drive-in films he loves King trips over his own ambitions, making the audience cringe instead of laugh.  Alice Krige does her best with her lines as well, delivering them with a delicious sneer, but nothing can change the fact that Mary kills a man with a cooked corn on the cob and makes a quip afterward that would make Freddy Krueger wince. 

Ron Perlman is in this briefly as a no-nonsense state trooper and the audience gets to play spot-the-cameo with the likes of Mark Hamill, Clive Barker, Joe Dante, John Landis and, of course, King himself.  I wish Sleepwalkers was half the fun that everyone involved thought that it was.  I can see some enjoyment in RiffTrax getting ahold of this in the future, but the only reason I can see to share this with friends is not to laugh at it but as a cautionary tale of how not to make a movie.  

Sleepwalkers (1992)

Time: 91 minutes

Starring: Brian Krause, Alice Krige, Mädchen Amick

Director: Mick Garris