While Sleepwalkers fails spectacularly as a horror movie, it triumphs as a loopy camp comedy. Sleepwalkers gets crazier and crazier as it proceeds, which is saying something, as it starts out batshit insane.
Nathan Rabin, The Dissolve
I identify strongly with the British tradition of Christmas as a time for telling scary stories. I think you’re supposed to tell ghost stories around a roaring fireplace, but I interpret this age-old pastime as reading and watching as much horror as possible. Preferably Christmas- or winter-themed, but this time I picked something cat-related to share with you all. I learned my fondness for Stephen King from my mother, who picked up Carrie when she was twelve and never looked back. Sleepwalkers, released April 10, 1992 [1], is not on Carrie‘s level. But it is very cat-centric, and I had fun with it.
Sleepwalkers was Stephen King’s first screenplay [2] and the only Stephen King movie that isn’t an adaptation of one of his short stories or novels [3]. The titular sleepwalkers are shapeshifting, werecat-like psychic vampires that feed on the life energy of virgin young women [1-7]. They can look like normal people, although their true appearance is revealed in the mirror, and they can become invisible or case their shapeshifting spell onto nearby inanimate objects [4]. Their one great weakness? Cats. As a fictional encyclopedia entry at the beginning of the film tells us, the claws of the domestic cat are fatally injurious to sleepwalkers [2, 4]. Cats aren’t fooled by the sleepwalkers’ illusions, either [4, 5].
As he usually does, Stephen King has a cameo in this movie: he appears as the cemetery attendant [4, 5]. There are a surprising number of other celebrity cameos, too. Look out for Mark Hamill as a cop in the opening scene and Clive Barker and Tobe Hooper as forensic technicians [2, 4].
Plot Summary
In the movie, two sleepwalkers, Charles and his mother, Mary, move to a small town in Indiana after fleeing the scene of their last crimes, leaving dozens of dead cats and a mummified teenage girl in their wake [4]. Within minutes, the film makes it clear that Charles and Mary have a much closer relationship than any mother and son should [1-7]. Also, it’s Charles’s job to go out and seduce a virgin girl to bring home for dinner, while Mary stays home and attempts to fend off the increasing number of cats gathering around their new house [4].
Charles specifically picks out a classmate at his new high school named Tanya that he thinks will be the perfect target [4]. Given Tanya’s terrible choices throughout the film, I think he was probably right. But this little Indiana town is not going to make things easy for Charles and Mary. A local policeman and his mascot, Clovis the Attack Cat (that’s what it says on his collar) are onto Charles [4].
When Charles finally gets Tanya alone, Clovis and his human come to the rescue. Charles kills the policeman, first jabbing a pencil in his ear and then shooting him with his own gun, but Clovis nearly kills Charles [4]. Charles stumbles home to Mary, who decides to leave the house for once and take care of things. She kidnaps Tanya, brutalizing Tanya’s parents and magically stabbing a cop to death with a corn cob in the process (I can’t even) [4].
At Mary’s house, she puppeteers her nearly-dead son and makes Tanya dance with him as he tries to drain her life force, but help is on the way [4]. Outside, Clovis is leading every cat in town to Mary’s house, and all available police units are pulling into the driveway [4]. The police don’t fare that well, but the swarm of cats enter the house, led by Clovis breaking a window–somehow–and they claw and bite Mary until she bursts into flames–somehow [4]. Meanwhile, Tanya gouges Charles’s eyes out, and he finally dies [4]. I think. With her last words, Mary mourns the loss of her son. The cats disperse because their work here is done. Tanya picks up our hero, Clovis, and he starts making biscuits on her arm [4] and it is the cutest thing I have ever seen.
What’s the Deal with the Sleepwalkers?
The sleepwalkers take three primary forms in the movie. They usually appear human, but when threatened or on the attack their faces take on a feline aspect [4]. Their true form, as seen in mirrors and during the climax of the film, is a furless, two-legged creature with a sort of pantherine head [4]. Charles and Mary may be the last of their kind, as Charles laments, “We still haven’t seen another sleepwalker” [4, 5]. The opening credits hint that sleepwalkers may have Egyptian origins [4], but there isn’t really an explanation for where these creatures come from or, perhaps more importantly, why Charles and Mary are the way they are. A lot of things go unexplained, actually. Why are cats their one great weakness, when they seem to be of feline type themselves? They both shrug off bullets, but one cat and Charles was down. Why did Mary spontaneously combust when attacked by a whole army of cats? Have they never thought about, I don’t know, getting a hunting dog to chase off all these cats?
The premise doesn’t really gel, but it was nice to see cats come to the rescue in a horror movie. Usually, cats in horror movies are either scary scene dressing or the evil creature feature themselves. The only other one I can think of right now with a heroic cat is Hocus Pocus, and seeing as that was meant to be a kids’ movie, it’s pretty low on the scare-factor in general.
Sympathy for the Devil
Interestingly, Sleepwalkers focuses mostly on Charles and Mary, as off-putting as they can be. We don’t learn much about Tanya, even though she should be our protagonist. When Charles reads a thinly-veiled autobiography in their creative writing class, Tanya points out how sad it is that “They were always driven away. Because they were such outsiders” [4, 6]. Curiously, Tanya later tells Charles that she feels the same way, but the movie never explains why Tanya feels like an outsider. She is always shown enjoying a perfectly happy, middle-class life. Really, Tanya seems almost incidental to the plot of the movie. The main characters are the sleepwalkers.
Stephen Hoda wrote a great essay about the sympathetic otherness of the sleepwalkers for Sublime Horror. I highly recommend it. I’m not going to repeat everything he had to say here, but Hoda highlights the implicit queerness of the way Charles and Mary live, hiding in plain sight but also behind closed doors [6]. They are portrayed as unquestionably monstrous but also strangely sympathetic [6]. The first on-screen kill in the movie involves Charles defending himself from a predatory teacher, a much more pedestrian sort of monster with a human face [4, 6]. Hoda remarks that the arc of Charles’s death and Mary’s vengeance is an old story, hearkening back to the epic of Beowulf in the monstrous characters of Grendel and his mother [6]. More mainstream horror cinema is no stranger to this dynamic, either. Consider Norma and Norman Bates, Pamela and Jason Voorhees, Debra Salt and Billy Loomis [6].
Mary and Charles are both tragic and revolting. They are a train wreck you can’t look away from. And they only have each other, twisted and toxic as their relationship may be. In a movie that isn’t exactly Oscar-worthy, it gives you a little something to think about in the midst of all the bloodshed.
Cats in Sleepwalkers
Clovis is listed in the credits as being played by Sparks [4]. Alas, none of the other feline actors are credited, but American Humane provides a lot of information about the cats in Sleepwalkers on their Humane Hollywood website [7]. Lots of live cats participated in the filming, including one hundred of them in the scene where every cat for miles around has gathered at Mary’s house [7]. However, in any scenes where violence was done to a cat, mechanical, replica, or even taxidermy cats replaced live ones for all dangerous stunts [7]. In some scenes, this meant doing numerous partial takes, some with live cats and some with fake ones, like when Clovis breaks the window [7]. The cat that breaks the candy-glass window is a fake, but Sparks/Clovis is clearly the one walking through a moment later [7].
As I was watching the movie, I wondered how the live cats were induced to hiss at the sleepwalkers. I don’t think you can train a cat to hiss on cue. Well, I found the answer. Either the trainers would hiss, which made the cats hiss in return, or they held up one of the replica cats in front of the live ones [7]. I would probably respond similarly if a mannequin suddenly popped up in my face.
Final Thoughts
Let’s be real: this is not a great movie. The make-up and prosthetics are pretty good, and I suppose the effects aren’t bad for the early 90s. But the plot is full of holes, the characters are flat, and the dialogue is…well, Stephen King is a brilliant writer, but I don’t think screenwriting is his best medium. And I’m sorry, but you cannot stab a person with a corn cob. Then 100+ cute cats [7] cover a lot of sins, but I know some people will find the gruesome violence against cats too disturbing, even though none of it was real. And let’s not forget the incest. That’s just disturbing, full stop. Then again, I think that was rather the point. It is supposed to be a horror movie.
I personally enjoy a weird, campy horror movie, and I loved that Clovis the Attack Cat was the hero. I give Sleepwalkers three out of five paws. It was entertaining, and I wouldn’t be opposed to watching it again. It definitely isn’t for everybody, though. I wouldn’t say it ever manages to get scary, but it certainly achieves “unsettling.” If you like unhinged, B-movie horror, it’s worth a watch. Pop some popcorn, snuggle up on the couch with your cat, and tell them what a good job they do guarding your house from sleepwalkers.
References
- IMDb. (n.d.) Sleepwalkers. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105428/
- Ayala, N. (2020, November 23). Stephen King’s sleepwalkers: Why the creatures were afraid of cats. Screen Rant. https://screenrant.com/stephen-king-sleepwalkers-creature-cat-fear-explained-reason/
- Nonstop Nerd. (2023, October 12). ‘Sleepwalkers’: The wackiest Stephen King movie. https://nonstopnerd.com/2023/10/12/sleepwalkers-the-wackiest-stephen-king-movie/
- Garris, M. (Director). (1992). Sleepwalkers. [Film]. Columbia Pictures.
- Sleepwalkers. (n.d.). Stephen King. https://stephenking.com/works/movie/sleepwalkers.html
- Hoda, S. (2019, October 19). Sympathetic monsters: Queerness in Stephen King’s Sleepwalkers. Sublime Horror. https://www.sublimehorror.com/film/sympathetic-monsters-queerness-in-stephen-kings-sleepwalkers/
- American Humane. (n.d.). Sleepwalkers (1992). Humane Hollywood. https://humanehollywood.org/production/sleepwalkers/
