Sleepwalkers was Stephen King’s first screenplay written directly for the screen. No adaptation, no existing story to pull from. And it shows in the best possible way. The movie feels unfiltered, like King dumped his notepad straight onto film without anyone asking him to explain the mythology or smooth out the rough edges.
For the uninitiated: a mother and son who are shape-shifting energy vampires drift from town to town, feeding on the life force of virgin women. Their one weakness? Cats. Regular house cats can see through their disguise and have hissy fits. That’s the entire setup. No ancient prophecy, no elaborate backstory, just monsters who need to eat and the neighbourhood felines who want them dead.
The mother-boy angle between Charles and Mary Brady isn’t played for shock value or cheap thrills. It’s just there, matter-of-fact, another piece of their arcane monstrous nature. They’re the last of their kind, turned completely inward, feeding off each other in every possible way. Alice Krige plays Mary with this perfect mix of desperation and predatory grace, while Brian Krause makes codependence look easy.
King insisted Columbia hire Mick Garris to direct, and that led to Garris steadily directing prestige King projects for the rest of the decade, from The Stand TV mini series to Riding the Bullet.
His is an autobiography I’d love to read. Mick Garris has been rubbing shoulders with industry greats since the late 70’s, writing for Cinefantastique and Starlog and eventually landing a receptionist gig with George Lucas in 1977. That led to hosting a show on L.A.’s Z-Channel, where he interviewed John Carpenter, Joe Dante, and Steven Spielberg. He directed making-of features for Scanners, The Howling, Halloween II, The Thing, and Videodrome. Spielberg hired him to write for Amazing Stories in 1985. He co-wrote The Fly II, worked on Tales from the Crypt, and directed Psycho IV before King tapped him for Sleepwalkers. In 2002, he started organizing regular dinners with horror directors including John Carpenter, Larry Cohen, Don Coscarelli, Joe Dante, Guillermo del Toro, Stuart Gordon, Tobe Hooper, John Landis, and eventually expanded to include Dario Argento, Eli Roth, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Rob Zombie, and others. These dinners led directly to him creating Masters of Horror for Showtime in 2005.
The guy had been documenting horror, writing horror, and learning from horror masters for fifteen years before he got this shot.
That’s what I miss about movies like Sleepwalkers. They weren’t trying to be anything other than what they were. King wrote his monsters and Garris filmed them like a seasoned craftsman. This was the 90s, but nobody winked at the audience or apologized for the premise. They just made their weird little movie about incestuous were-cats and trusted us to lap it up. I certainly did.
-Pop
Sleepwalkers landed on Home Video this week in 1992, after an April 10th theatrical release.