Sleepwalkers |  | Director: Mick Garris
Actors: Brian Krause, Mädchen Amick, Alice Krige, Jim Haynie, Cindy Pickett
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $9.95
Buy Used: $1.60
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Rating:  46 reviews
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Letterboxed, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), French (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Georgian (Subtitled), Chinese (Subtitled), Thai (Subtitled), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 99
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Picture Format: Letterbox
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 91 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5 x 0.6
MPN: D05815D
ISBN: 0767859480
UPC: 043396058156
EAN: 9780767859486
Theatrical Release Date: April 10, 1992
Release Date: January 16, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
A MOTHER-AND-SON TEAM OF STRANGE SUPERNATURAL CREATURES COME TO TOWN TO SEEK OUT A VIRGIN TO FEED ON.
Amazon.com
Stephen King's Sleepwalkers is about a half-human, half-cat race of shape shifters called, for no apparent reason, sleepwalkers. Hunky Charles Brady (Brian Krause) and his incestuous mother (Alice Krige) are sleepwalkers, and they've come to the small town of Travis, Indiana, where they've somehow acquired a nice house and false identities. They need virgin souls to survive and have fixated on local beauty Tanya (Madchen Amick from Twin Peaks). That's about it for the story--from then on it's a series of chase scenes full of badly done gore. King must have been sleepwalking himself when he wrote this screenplay--the dialogue is terrible, the characters are cardboard, and the plotting is clumsy. Combine that with mediocre acting, thoughtless direction, slapdash editing, and cheesy special effects, and you have Sleepwalkers. Amick comes off reasonably well and there are cameos by King, Clive Barker, and horror directors John Landis (An American Werewolf in London), Joe Dante (Gremlins), and Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). But really, if you're interested in were-cats, see the original The Cat People, starring Simone Simon; it's both sexier and scarier. --Bret Fetzer
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 46
 wow August 3, 2009
Matthew David Ritchey (Hollywood, CA USA)
Three stars???? Proof once again of people's low standards and Hollywood's ability to shove steaming crap into the public's mouths and have them swallow happily.
Another on my list of Top Ten Worst Movies I've Ever Seen.
 A Must See Movie April 16, 2009
Jacqueline L. Lee (Twin Falls, Idaho)
I really enjoyed this movie. It is a typical Stephen King movie. I love the fact that it involves cats.
A Fun B-Flick October 20, 2008
Greg Anderson (Raleigh, NC USA)
Even Stephen King has to have a few B flicks in his catalog and this cetainly fits the bill. It is a fun and quick way to pass 90 minutes if you want mindless monsters and cats galore.
It''s interesting however... March 17, 2008
Popcicle (Los Angeles, CA USA)
This movie is one of the Stephen King's horror films and this movie was interesting. The whole story was cool but some scene was disgusting. I like the cat. However this movie was a little shortage and it's not exciting.
 This is Barely a Horror Movie, but it is VERY Entertaining August 11, 2006
Lead Cenobite (Cape Breton, Canada)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Sleepwalkers has all the elements of a horror movie, and yet it isn't one. The first scene is very effective, and sets the tone for a good horror movie. We see Mark Hamill (unrecognizable from his Luke Skywalker days) as a cop checking out some odd goings-on at a house. But I wonder - did the girl scream or was she already dead? Or was it a dead body that screamed? The music and imagery during the opening credits is great. There's a definition of a sleepwalker from an old occult encyclopedia. The ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and art look really cool. The sketch of a sleepwalker breastfeeding an infant looks scary. The thought that the infant might actually be a human being makes the sketch even more unsettling. Anyway, that first scene and the opening credits create an atmosphere of dread that we would expect to last throughout the rest of the movie. But Stephen King (who wrote the script) and director Mick Garris wanted to make a movie that was campy AND scary at the same time. Unfortunately, they failed to deliver with regard to the scares, but they do provide us with some good laughs. Sleepwalkers is a good movie, it's just not as good as it was meant to be. It's almost impossible for a movie to be both campy and scary, but I regard House of 1000 Corpses as a rare exception.
I think of Sleepwalkers as more of a comedy than a horror movie, just because there are so few moments that anyone would find scary (even though this movie terrified me when I was a kid). There's a lot of moments when this movie tries to be scary, but falls short, because the suspense is undermined by jokes or humorous incidents. All the murders are amusing for one reason or another. How can a murder be amusing? Watch this movie and you'll see what I mean - a lot of the murders look really silly, like when a Sheriff is bodyslammed on a picket fence. I think this movie works best as a comedy anyway. If the guys that made Sleepwalkers cut out all the funny stuff and just tried to go for the chills, then I think I would have enjoyed this movie a lot less.
In a nutshell, a mother and son are demonic shapeshifters called sleepwalkers that feed off the life-force of virgin women. Normally they take the form of human beings, so that they can go about daily life unnoticed. The incestuous behaviour of Mary Brady (Alice Krige) and her son Charles (Brian Krause) is disturbing, but for some reason it doesn't have any shock effect at all once it becomes apparent they aren't human. I suppose it's because I expect non-humans to do things that humankind considers perverse. But I also liked the way this movie made a nice instrumental like Santo and Johnny's `Sleepwalk' sound evil and creepy. Enya's `Boadicea' makes for good background music in the opening scene, but not when it shows Charles leaving the theatre - it just doesn't seem to suit the light-hearted nature of that scene. But when it plays at the end of the movie it suits that scene perfectly, and it runs on through the end credits.
I also like how the heroine Tanya Robertson (Madchen Amick) is a klutz, socially awkward, a nerd, and can resort to extreme acts of violence to defend herself. And I like how the teachers use corporal punishment on the kids, like rapping their knuckles with plastic rulers, or dragging them by the ear to the principal's office. The entertaining teacher Mr. Fallows (Glenn Shadix) has a few hilarious exchanges with Charles. Even Mr. Fallows' fatal run-in with Charles is somewhat of a light-hearted moment, thanks to Charles' wit. And the high-speed chase with the stressed out patrolman Andy Simpson (the excellent Dan Martin) is hilarious. I've seen Dan Martin in all kinds of stuff, so why is he still not getting the recognition he deserves?
The scene where Andy gets out of his car and stands in the middle of the deserted highway was good, but it would have been more effective if the viewer didn't know that Charles' car was invisible until AFTER Andy drove away. And that scene would have been more effective if he didn't curse (and say some really goofy words) out loud. A rather chilling scene was when Mrs. Brady puts the rose in Tanya's hair and says "There. It finishes you somehow." The coolest scene of the movie is when it shows Mrs. Brady lying on the ground, completely engulfed in flames. The most disturbing scene is when Tanya's arm gets cut on the broken glass of a police car window. And it was pretty cool when Mrs. Brady blows up the police cars, even if there was no realistic way they could have blown up like that.
I like cats, but all the cats in this movie are annoying. The scene of the cats running down the street to the Brady house is completely preposterous. But if there were no cats in this movie then there would be a problem, because a cat's scratch is the only thing that can harm a sleepwalker. I'm not sure if sleepwalkers are an actual legend or if Mr. King dreamed them up himself. If he did, why would he make a cat's scratch the only thing that can kill a sleepwalker? Something a little less complicated would have been better.
The guys that made this movie deserve a round of applause - it's hard as hell to make a movie that's funny AND scary, but in the case of Sleepwalkers they weren't just trying to be funny - they were trying to be HILARIOUS. Can a movie that's hilarious be scary? Some (but certainly not all) movies work because they don't take themselves seriously, like Sleepaway Camp 2. But in the case of Sleepwalkers it tries so hard to be funny that it can't be scary.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 46
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