Sleepwalkers (1992)

[choochoo_the_wonder_slut 740]

A guy and his mom move into a small town. They bang each other and are also shapeshifting monsters who survive by killing hot virgins. The only things that can kill them are housecats.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYauIxtmXc0

[choochoo_the_wonder_slut 740]

Also this happens

 

[NeilMiddleton 13]

Great movie. It's so bad and makes no sense at all. I've always wondered what Stephen King was on when he wrote this. I've got to go back and check this out again if only for the many cameos: Stephen King, Clive Barker, Tobe Hooper, John Landis, Joe Dante, even Mark Hamill shows up as a cop right at the beginning. This movie makes me giggle...

[therealjayknox 26]

This is a pretty good candidate because Stephen King was golden (I assume the book/short story was a best seller) and I actually remember this was a fairly mainstream and well marketed film,

yet,

It was astonishingly bad. I mean it's just awful. full of bad acting, stupid ideas, poorly directed, stupidity like a corn cob through the spine. But i also recall a lot of 'nothing happening' scenes and that 'face changing' scene was nearly the only exciting special effects moment?

Wow what a bad movie!

[choochoo_the_wonder_slut 740]

Actually this one wasn't pulled from any of his published work. I think most of the budget for this one went to the making of fake cats.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEGJFDxxiys

[NeilMiddleton 13]

He started out writing it as a short story then just turned it into a screenplay. So, it's kind of based on a short story, but not really...

[seanotron 2307]

Oh god, that final scene. Someone probably appears in the credits as 'cat tosser'.

[therealjayknox 26]

Oh god, that final scene. Someone probably appears in the credits as 'cat tosser'.

 

Seeing that last clip and the hilarious cat tossing - the one tossed underhand right to the her face.. holy fuck that made me laugh out loud!

[thestray 361]

This movie legit scared me when I was a kid.

[choochoo_the_wonder_slut 740]

This was on Youtube in it's full glory, but Sony blocked it because it was costing them thousands of pesos a year in lost revenue apparently. It's a shame because this would make for a great episode.

[easttexas 3]

I went and saw this with my mom. Seriously. We had no idea. Great movie for the podcast.

[choochoo_the_wonder_slut 740]

Wow. If there's a top 10 awkward movies to see with your mom list, this should be on it right under Spanking the Monkey.

[robinsbruce 4985]

Oh god, that final scene. Someone probably appears in the credits as 'cat tosser'.

 

perhaps credited as a cat "grip"?

[PhillipMedoc 648]

perhaps credited as a cat "grip"?

I'm dying here. I'm dead.

 

If you guys think Sleepwalkers is crazy, check out The Carrier:

 

 

Not related to King or Sleepwalkers but cat crazy in general. Here's the plot, from Mondo Digital:

 

"In a small town called Sleepy Rock apparently stuck in some sort of alternate universe of the 1950s, young man Jake Spear (Fortescue) escapes an attack from a strange beast from the woods. Though he seems unharmed, Jake is horrified to discover that he has acquired a highly unusual contagion that contaminates any object he touches and dissolves anyone else who makes contact with it. Soon the entire town is in a panic, unaware that Jake is the source of their problem as these "red objects" (named become a source of terror that can only be exposed by using cats(!) as weapons to identify them. Clad in plastic and heavy cloth, the townspeople soon divide into two warring factions that threaten to destroy the entire community forever."

 

Emphasis mine. This leads to INCREDIBLE lines actually spoken in a film such as "Give us your cats!" and "Cats or die!" and others I'm forgetting. Oh my shit, this movie.

[choochoo_the_wonder_slut 740]

Holy shit! Is that movie real!? You win 100 internets, cat & beard! Suggest this movie!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcQ3QyGH4rU

[robinsbruce 4985]

gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "as difficult as herding cats"

[PhillipMedoc 648]

Holy shit! Is that movie real!? You win 100 internets, cat & beard! Suggest this movie!

It is real, a Michigan indie from 1988, back during the straight-to-VHS R-rated horror movie boom. It is unfortunately, pretty obscure and hard to find though, so I don't think it'd be a good pick. It is completely worth watching using any method available because it is, as they say, next-level bonkers.

[Johnny Unusual 525]

Here's the original trailer for Sleepwalkers.

 

[Worldfamous 12]

I was actually in this movie as an extra! I'm the dude running to school in the first school scene. Look for the white dude in the letterman jacket walking down the stairs as the girls leave class to see my background artist over-acting.

[seanotron 2307]

I was actually in this movie as an extra! I'm the dude running to school in the first school scene. Look for the white dude in the letterman jacket walking down the stairs as the girls leave class to see my background artist over-acting.

 

That's awesome! How many days did you work on this?

[Worldfamous 12]

 

That's awesome! How many days did you work on this?

It was 2 days. It was pretty fun. I got to sit in the classroom for the scene where he reads his story too. It's funny, even though I knew nothing about film, I remember thinking the director seemed clueless. The A.D. constantly had a distraught look on his face. It seemed the whole crew was pretty much in acceptance that they were working on a piece of garbage.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

This was a pretty good bad period for Stephen King-branded movies, with this, "Lawnmower Man", "Pet Sematery 2", and "Children of the Corn" parts 2 through 28 all coming in right around this time. Sure, you had "Shawshank" pop up a couple years later, but man, most of the 90's King-related stuff was pretty terrible.

 

This reminds me, a few years back I remember seeing an article on some news site or another that talked about the Top 10 best and worst theatrically-released Stephen King films, and the best ones tended to be films where he had no actual involvement in it besides having written the book. If he wrote the screenplay or directed or came up with an original story for a film, it usually ended up being not very good.

[seanotron 2307]

Yeah, adaptations of King's work tend to be all over the place. For every Misery or Carrie you get a few Thinners. Though I don't think his involvement necessarily signals quality one way or another. Lawnmower Man has nothing in common with his story other than the title, and it's pretty god awful. And I don't think he had any involvement in most of those sequels, they just kept slapping his name on them.

 

I just think his more complicated stories don't translate to the screen very well. I heard they want to do a movie version of The Stand, and that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. The miniseries couldn't even cover all that material, so how they plan to do it in a movie is beyond me.

[seanotron 2307]

It was 2 days. It was pretty fun. I got to sit in the classroom for the scene where he reads his story too. It's funny, even though I knew nothing about film, I remember thinking the director seemed clueless. The A.D. constantly had a distraught look on his face. It seemed the whole crew was pretty much in acceptance that they were working on a piece of garbage.

 

Well, based on his resume I'd say your gut instinct was dead on. He basically went on to direct 2 more terrible King adaptations (The Stand & The Shining) and that's about it.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

Yeah, adaptations of King's work tend to be all over the place. For every Misery or Carrie you get a few Thinners. Though I don't think his involvement necessarily signals quality one way or another. Lawnmower Man has nothing in common with his story other than the title, and it's pretty god awful. And I don't think he had any involvement in most of those sequels, they just kept slapping his name on them.

 

I just think his more complicated stories don't translate to the screen very well. I heard they want to do a movie version of The Stand, and that sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. The miniseries couldn't even cover all that material, so how they plan to do it in a movie is beyond me.

I understand what you mean about him not having much or anything to do with many of the films that have his name attached or are sequels to films he's more closely associated with, which is why I call it the King brand, because there certainly is a lot of rubber stamping going on. I recently listened to a great review of "Lawnmower Man" on "Yeah, It's That Bad", and from what I understand (even from what I knew back then), all the original story and movie had in common really were that a man and a lawnmower make an appearance in both.

 

For "The Stand" to be long enough to work as a feature a film, I think there'd need to be a LotR-type commitment made, like a guarantee that there would be 2 or 3 films or whatever, but those are always pretty risky, because if that first one doesn't do well, it kind of dooms the rest.