Seriously, what the Hell were they smoking when they made this?!
Concocted from the imaginative, yet bizarre, mind of Stephen King, Sleepwalkers is a bizarre oddity of a movie involving vampire-cat hybrid creatures, actual cats, soul-draining, incest, teen-romance and even invisible cars. When it was released back in 1992, Sleepwalkers got panned by critics and wasn't a smash-hit at the box office, but now years later, it's garnered more of a reputation as a hilariously bad horror-comedy amongst viewers. It's possible that King intended for this to be a straight-forward horror film, and if that's the case, then he has completely failed at both fronts. It succeeds far more at producing laughs than scares, and the plot is anything but straight-forward.
There are plenty of contrivances and illogicalness scattered throughout (the mythology surrounding these cat-vampires make no sense whatsoever!), making up its own nonsense as it goes on, but what glorious nonsense it is! There is so much bizarreness unfolding on-screen that it's fascinating to watch, having so many WTF moments to count, such as bumbling cops getting caught in cat traps, gory scenes of limbs being torn off in a ridiculously OTT fashion, normal cats attacking the cat-vampires and even one scene where one cop gets stabbed by a corncob! Whenever there's a quiet and calm moment, that's only just the build-up to the spontaneous surprise the movie gives when it whacks you over the head with something that's utterly mad, and the climax especially is a symphony of madness. Even the actors involved like Brian Krause and Alice Krige give performances that are hilariously aware of the silliness happening around them. Hell, there's even a cameo from King himself, just to add to the insanity of it all!
Sleepwalkers is a cacophony of insanity and bloodshed, and it is all the more amazing for it. Even for all of its wackiness, it has a lot of passion and energy poured into it that it's hard not to be charmed and won over by it. Is it a legit good movie? Hell, no! Is it a great experience, though? Absolutely! This should be seen on a movie double-bill with King's other laugh-inducing horror-flick Maximum Overdrive!
Dir: Mick Garris
Scr: Stephen King
Cast: Brian Krause, Mädchen Amick, Alice Krige
Prd: Michael Grais, Mark Victor, Dimitri Logothetis, Nabeel Zahid
DOP: Rodney Charters
Music: Nicholas Pike
Country: US
Year: 1992
Runtime: 91 mins
Sleepwalkers will be released on Blu-Ray on October 19th
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