Sleepwalkers (1992)
The cult classic that never was.
If you’ve been around here for a bit, you may recall seeing this movie on my top ten Halloween movies list, coming in at number ten. As I said in that article, there’s a part of me that wanted to rate it much higher. So what’s the deal? What makes it so amazing? After a lot of soul searching, I think it’s really just a case of feeling nostalgic for me. It puts me right back in front of a tube TV with a VHS in hand, ready to watch a not-so-great horror movie that had cool cover art on a Saturday night. I was definitely not out of elementary school when I got my hands on this film and probably shouldn’t have been watching it. Even with that said, I feel like Sleepwalkers never got the love that similar movies of the ’80s and ’90s commanded in the horror community. Sleepwalkers delivers a who's who of horror community cameos, were-cats, and, while I wouldn’t call it Stephen King’s best work, it absolutely deserves a second look.
A couple of important disclaimers before we dive too deeply into this film: no cats were harmed in the making of this movie. I feel odd having to say that, but strange disclaimers all exist for a reason. Next, this article will have a fair bit of spoilers, but I do omit most of the ending. It’s been out over 30 years, so I don’t feel too bad about being a bit more plot-specific.
In the Scream Factory Blu-Ray release, director Mick Garris described his style as "Norman Rockwell goes to hell," and by the final act, it certainly delivers. This is Stephen King’s first original screenplay and opened at number one at the box office its first weekend. Though it fell to number four the following weekend, it was edged out of the number three spot by Beethoven.
Directed by Mick Garris, who you may know from Critters 2: The Main Course or Psycho IV: The Beginning, King would later enlist the help of Garris to direct his made-for-TV miniseries The Shining (1997) in an attempt to more accurately reflect the book. Mädchen Amick, who plays our final girl Tanya Robertson, delivers the best acting of the film. While the other leads, Brian Krause and Alice Krige, weren’t terrible, Mädchen totally steals the show. Also, one of the things this film really does well is the amazing soundtrack. The inclusion of “Sleepwalk” throughout key moments of the film is one of those very clever nods that show you people actually cared while making this movie.
Now, can we talk amazing cameos? Let’s just start with our opening act: Mark Hamill in an uncredited role as the police officer who discovers the soulless bodies of previous victims. But wait, there’s more! Stephen King, the graveyard caretaker, and Clive Barker, the forensic technician, share a scene. John Landis, director of An American Werewolf in London, appears as a lab tech. Then Tobe Hooper, of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as another forensic technician.
Not sure what the whole story behind this anomaly was. Did these guys just hang out a lot and decide to mess with everyone by being in one movie? Did Stephen King call in some favors to try and get more hype behind his first screenplay? I am aware some of these answers can be found in Post Mortem with Mick Garris, a podcast the director put out that ended in 2023, but being brutally honest here, I have not had a chance to check it out yet.
The film, in its time, was not received well. I was able to come across a Los Angeles Times article from April 13, 1992, where they claimed the movie would have never been made had it not been for King’s name being attached. They went even further, calling it morbid, ultra-violent, and silly. The preceding decade produced a lot of movies that were a lot more gruesome and violent, so I find this response confusing. Maybe they were expecting The Shining but instead got something completely different. Luckily, more recent reviews have been a bit kinder.
The opening sequence sets us up for the creatures we’re dealing with. We’re treated to flashes of ancient Egyptian accounts of the monsters—helping to establish the mythology. Flashing back to seeing this through my adolescent eyes, I remember thinking, “Oh damn, this is some real shit—the Egyptians knew!”
Our mother-son duo has taken up residency in Travis, Indiana, living in a house surrounded by cats who obviously sense the impending threat. One small gripe here is that throughout the film, you can clearly see they are nowhere near Indiana and are clearly in Southern California. Our lead cat creature, Charles Brady (Brian Krause), has set his sights on Tonya Robertson (Mädchen Amick), whose soul he needs to feed his mom. I guess we can address the super strange incest relationship between Mary Brady (Alice Krige) and Charles Brady here. I really don’t know how it advances the plot or why this was added. Frankly, a typical overbearing mother type could have been written into the script to make this less weird for all of us.
One of my favorite scenes of the entire movie is one that actually feels like it doesn’t even belong in the film. It’s the “movie theater” scene. Instead of feeling like a critical horror setup scene, it feels much more akin to a late ’80s coming-of-age drama where a girl dances with her Walkman. Mädchen Amick kills it with the dance moves, and the soundtrack puts it over the top. And, of course, we get Enya to close out the scene. The movie theater is also our chance for hunter and hunted to meet each other’s acquaintance.
Charles later decides to drive like a complete asshole through town, where he gains the attention of the local police. This is when we’re all introduced to the real star of the movie—Clovis, the attack cat, whose mere presence causes Charles to start shapeshifting in an uncontrolled manner. While looking back, the CGI appears pretty bad; it was actually some very new tech at the time, only being used on one previous occasion: the Michael Jackson music video “Black or White.” Charles is then able to pull over and make his entire car invisible, thus evading Officer Simpson and Clovis for now.
Tanya arrives at the Brady residence unannounced and is given the grand tour by the all-too-creepy Mary Brady, whose true identity is revealed when looking in the mirror. The couple decides to leave and head out on their preplanned graveyard first date. While I’ve never lived in small-town Indiana, I can assure you a cemetery picnic would have sent off some major red flags in my head. This is where shit hits the fan, and Charles reveals his true intentions. While the attempted soul thieving is ongoing and Tanya is kicking ass, Police Officer Andy Simpson recognizes the Trans-Am parked out front of the graveyard. This leads us to the pencil kill and Clovis showing up in a big spot to save the day. Charles then makes his escape, badly injured. The following moments are when we get the Stephen King–Clive Barker screen share. While I think King is a horror mastermind, by seeing this one scene alone, I can safely say acting is not his primary talent.
Following the horrific attack, the police manage to fuck this up about as badly as anyone could. Not only can they not find Charles or his mother due to their shapeshifting skills, but the officer charged with protecting Tanya decides to get a bite to eat while on the job and promptly earns a corncob through his back for his negligence, while Ron Perlman loses a hand. The final scenes are chaotic for sure—Mary Brady manages to blow up two cop cars with a single bullet apiece and abduct Tanya. I won’t fully spoil the end here, even though it’s been out thirty years, and if you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen it.
Hopefully, you’ve read this and are now scouring streaming services to catch this often-slept-on Stephen King original. Sleepwalkers is absolutely not on par with a lot of King’s other famous works, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth watching. With so many other movies that are objectively worse being placed on pedestals, one can’t help but wonder why this movie was left behind. It could be because 1992 actually had such a stacked horror resume, with films like Dracula, Candyman, and Hellraiser III being released, that a campy, fun film about cat people couldn’t compete. Or maybe it’s just as simple as horror fans of the world preferring dogs. Either way, I will continue to pound the proverbial table until I see Clovis the cat get the respect he has been denied the last thirty years.