Sick Product of a Sick System

Highly Overrated But Still Good

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

What's a sleepwalker? How about shapeshifting energy vampires that survive off the energy of virgins, who can cast illusions, move things with their minds and transform into werecats? Oh yeah and their biggest weakness is cats, who can see them and kill them with their claws. And before we forget, the only way the males can feed their female mothers is by having sex with them. Got all that? Then if you can get your head around all of that, you're ready for Sleepwalkers.Charles Brady and his mother Mary (Alice Krige, the Borg queen!) are on the run, settling for a bit in Indiana. They've just escaped California, where they killed a young girl (who emerges as a screaming skeleton from a closet, shocking the police — including Mark Hamill among them) and left behind a house surrounded by dead cats.Somehow, Charles is able to fake the necessary paperwork (this is pre-internet) and attend the local high school, where he chases Tanya (Mädchen Amick from Twin Peaks). Is it love or is he just trying to feed his mother? Well, on their first date, he tries to suck out her lifeforce, so she jams a corkscrew in his eye. If that's not young love, what is?Deputy Sheriff Andy arrives, having been searching for Charles ever since he was speeding and trying to run down young girls (not to mention slicing. the hand off of a pedophile teacher). Oh yeah — the deputy has a partner. Clovis. A cat who sits in the front seat. As Andy attempts to save Tanya, Charles kills him, drawing the ire of Clovis, who scratches him. He staggers home, where his mother uses her powers to hide them from the police. However, the area cats are having none of this as they gather around the house.

If you like cats, you may like this movie. If you like movies, you'll hate it.It seems impossible to me that Stephen King wrote this. It seems even more impossible that someone filmed it. This disc should be shred, the pieces burned, the ashes buried at sea, and the sea set on fire.

I was 9 when I first saw this movie; a friend recorded it from TV with his VCR and then brought it to my place (it was ages ago, as you can see). It was pretty scary, or at least that's what the nine-year-old me thought.Last night, I saw it again for the first time in centuries. It went well, kinda.For some reason, I forgot about the relationship between mother and son and found myself a bit disturbed by it through the whole movie, it was probably because of how they portrayed it. The story was actually pretty interesting, although I felt they didn't explained it that well (the rose for example, why the dead girl at the beginning had one and why did the mother gave one to Tanya?). The acting was good, everyone gave their best with what they had; but, as much as I love Mädchen Amick, she wasn't that convincing as the leading/final girl. It's like they wanted her to act as dumb as possible.The effects were great, they might look dated nowadays but they were cool for the period. The sleepwalkers were menacing, but they kinda looked like a giant Sphynx cat; the scene where Tanya is at the Brady's house and they reflect on the mirror killed me, I screamed.The film's length was OK, not too long but not too short, and the pace...well, it was good for the most part.Everything was fine until Charles attacked Tanya and killed the officer in the cemetery, it went completely apeshit from there. It's like they thought ''OK, the movie started an hour ago and we haven't had enough action so let's do it all together RIGHT NOW''. It was non- sense; the mother went to Tanya's house, killed the officers, blew some cars up, killed Tanya's father, threw her mother through the window (I laughed, a lot) and stabbed the other officer with an ear corn (no vegetables, no dessert!); I couldn't catch a break, to be honest, it was all too much in so little time.And then, the final showdown; it was hysterical, for reasons unknown to me I found the fight scene with the cats really funny, with the neck snapping and everything. I gotta admit I was really scared when the mother told Tanya to dance with the dying Charles.Oh, I almost forgot about the cameos! I loved Stephen King's scene.All in all, it was a pretty entertaining movie and I would definitely watch it again.

Stephen King's Sleepwalkers has a reputation as one of the lesser quality adaptations of his work, which led me to put off watching it for years. Well I don't know what film the critics saw, cause the one I watched was wicked good. Nestled in that perfect area of 80's horror where the blood was corn syrup, the flesh was latex, there wasn't a pixel or rendering in sight and atmospherics mattered more than excessive violence, this is one serious piece of horrific eye candy with the backbone of King's wicked imagination to hold it steady. The story tells of a small Midwestern town (is there any other kind in the man's work?) That falls prey to a pair of vampire werewolf hybrid creatures who subside off the blood of virgins and morph into slimy behemoths that conveniently show off the impressive prosthetics. Brian Krause is one of said creatures, drifting into town with his creepy mother (the wonderful Alice Krige) and setting his sights on severely virginal schoolgirl Madchen Amick, by dialing up the charm past eleven. People and animals start to die all over town and the suspicions arise, but the pair are cunning and have most likely been doing this for centuries almost unnoticed. It's nothing too unique as far as the concept goes, but the fun of it lies in the gooey special effects and one demon of a performance from Krige, a veteran stage actress. She is one part beautiful seductress (even to her son, in one unsettling scene) and one part volatile banshee, setting your nerves on edge time and time again throughout the film. Krause does the demonic James Dean thing nicely and Amick shows blossoming reilience beneath the required mantle of terrified scream queen. The three of them run amok in a beautifully realized fever dream of psycho sexualized terror, small town atmospherics and a classic old school horror climate. This film loves it's cameos, so watch for Clive Barker, Ron Perlman as a grouchy state trooper and King himself as the world's dumbest graveyard caretaker. Baffles me why this was panned upon release. It's actually one of the best films I've seen based on King's horror work, and there's a lot to compete with.