Jamie
Usually I like to pretend I’m writing this before I’ve actually seen the movie. But this story is too good. So my mom was at my house helping out for a bit and as happens evening rolls around and I’m like “wanna watch a movie?” She’s like sure, but then says that she doesn’t care what we watch. That’s she’ll “watch anything.” I put that in quotes because it’s important. I ask “are you sure? Because I have this real weird movie I need to watch for BMT.” She assures me that yes… she’ll “watch anything.” Flash forward to the next night as we finish up Sleepwalkers and she’s like out of her mind about how horrible the film is. Talking about how she didn’t even want to finish it but she also couldn’t stop thinking about how horrible it was so she felt she had to finish it to see if it continued to be as terrible as it was. And in the end it perhaps got even more horrible. So that’s where we were with Sleepwalkers. The movie that made my mom realize that she would in fact not “watch anything.”
To recap, Mary and Charles are mother and son shapeshifting werecats that feed on the energy force of virgins. They arrive in a small Indiana town looking to feed. They are, of course, incestuous and hope and pray to find others of their kind in order to procreate. Meanwhile, the incest (obviously). Attending a local high school, Charles scopes out Tanya with the end goal of feeding his mother. A few people, like his teacher, are suspicious of Charles, but when he confronts him Charles nonchalantly murders him. Meanwhile cats (the only thing that can kill or harm the sleepwalkers) begin to gather as Charles and his mother weaken. Charles attempts to subdue Tanya, but she is able to ward him off. The police arrive and while Charles is able to dispatch them a cat severely injures him. Stumbling back home, Mary is like “Oh no! But the incest!” Knowing that Tanya is the only thing that can help him, Mary storms Tanya’s home and kills her family (one of them by fatal corn cob stabbing… it’s dope). Mary brings Tanya back to Charles but before he can feed she kills him in his weakened state. The police attempt to help to no avail, but at Mary’s power dims she is attacked by numerous cats and the sleepwalkers are no more. THE END.
No matter what my mom claims, this movie is actually kind of fun and good. If not for the (arguably) unnecessary incest subplot and the unpleasant and brutal attack by Charles on Tanya in the cemetery, I think this film might have a better reputation as a cult film. I hate to leap to conclusions or make bold proclamations about objectively bad movies, but it does appear to me that Stephen King knew exactly what he was doing and making when he wrote this film. He wanted to make an old school exploitation horror film with some interesting special effects. He wanted to make a bad movie and he succeeded. This is a fun bad movie. It’s a hard needle to thread, but I actually think he was able to do it. By the time the corn cob stabbing happened I was all in on the film. One of the best of the year I daresay.
Hot Take Clam Bake! I’m going to say it. I don’t think they needed to do the incest. They clearly weren’t replenishing the earth with werecats no matter how hard they tried. So I think they could have probably cut it out and just, you know, maybe took a regular beau every once in a while and just… maybe… I don’t know, tried it out for a hot second. Maybe regular old sex would have felt fine. Maybe you didn’t need to do the incest. Hot Take Temperature: Steamy regular old sex.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! *gif of my mother talk about how much she hates this film and how gross it was and how she can’t believe we were watching it* Let’s go!
I’ve mentioned on multiple occasions that I don’t like horror films very much because I get so spooky scared. That doesn’t really have anything to do with this movie (I never thought this would be spooky scary, just silly). It has more to do with Stephen King and how I never really read his books because I thought they would be spooky scary. But turns out … books aren’t spooky scary. So I’ve read a bunch of Stephen King as an adult. I like his stuff. So getting around to Sleepwalkers is always enticing.
The good? Uh, I like practical effects. That’s nice. I like how silly it is as well. It is very very heightened and silly at times. The end bit is so crazy it finally gets around to being as wild and crazy as the premise suggests. I also like the idea of energy vampires in a way. They are something I’ve heard of, but they are done so rarely it is interesting to see them in the wild.
The bad? Well, the film looks like absolute garbage. For real, as good as practical effects are, when they are bad they are really really bad and this one is bad. The premise is so silly it feels like a comedy, but it isn’t funny. And then the film just turns on a dime. All of a sudden the main character is committing sexual assault in a graveyard and Stephen King cameos and the the movie kind of explodes.
The main issue is the film seems to be barely there for most of its runtime. It isn’t necessarily dull, but it is also a bit too weird and self-aware to be amusing for most of it. The end it fun, but even then, the corn cob murder seems more like it belongs in a horror comedy rather than what seems like a genuine horror film.
Regardless, the level of antipathy this film has towards this film will always make me smile.
Oh, also this film makes you wonder “how wasn’t Mädchen Amick the most famous 90s actress?” She was solid in Twin Peaks, and is fine in this, but her career never really took off. Kind of odd.
Anyways, a real deal Setting as a Character (Where?) for the small town of Travis, Indiana, a fun Indiana film at least. That’s it. I think this film is Bad, mainly for being poorly made and dull more than fun, which I think is about what I would have expected.
Learn about … cats? Maybe, about cats. In the quiz. Cheerios,
The Sklogs
Bad Movie Twins 