Weirdhouse Cinema Rewind: Sleepwalkers

In this classic episode of Weirdhouse Cinema, Rob and Joe discuss 1992’s Sleepwalkers, directed by Mick Garris and scripted by Stephen King. It’s a bonkers romp through the American Heartland and the secret world of secret soul-sucking werecats, starring Brian Krause, Alice Krige and Mädchen Amick. (originally published 4/25/2025)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. Rewind. This is Rob Lamb.
Today we're going to take you back to an episode
that originally published four twenty five, twenty twenty five. It
is Stephen King's Sleepwalkers. This is a bonker's romp through
the American heartland and the secret world of soul sucking
wear cats. I had never actually seen this one before

(00:29):
we did this episode, and I loved it so much,
so I just want to share Sleepwalkers with everyone. I
hope you enjoy this episode.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob Lamb.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
And this is Joe McCormick.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
For today's movie selection, we are returning to the early
nineteen ninety with well, what I think is one of
the weirder Stephen King films you could possibly ask for,
and that is Sleepwalkers, directed by Mick Garris.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Folks, you've heard of the ancient Greek play Oedipus Rex.
I think we could call this movie Oedipus Garfield. What
do you think?

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Maybe? Maybe? Yeah? This is a film that is notable
for its incestuous cat people, but there's a lot more
going on there. There's a lot it's a lot weirder
than just that, as we'll get into. This is one
I definitely remember the trailers for because I was already

(01:37):
a pretty dedicated Stephen King reader at this point and
pretty much believed he could do no wrong. I was
just reading like nothing but Stephen King books, and I
considered the checklist of his books in the back of
the paperbacks, where you could like send away for them.
I considered this be something of a syllabus for life.
Oh and I would do things like and this is

(01:57):
this is horrible, but I would have my lunch money
for the week, and instead of spending it on lunch
at school, I would pocket it all because at the
end of a week of not eating lunch, I would
have enough money to blow on a Stephen King paperback.

Speaker 3 (02:13):
Well, now that I am a parent, I can't quite
encourage that sort of deceptive behavior. But on the other hand,
that's beautiful. I mean, I love that.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
This is why I never read Cycle of the Werewolf,
because it was illustrated and therefore cost a little bit more,
and I was like, I can't, that's too rich for
my blood.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Oh man, yeah. I never got to that one either. God,
I remember that same thing that the old like order
form pages you would get in the end of a paperback.
That was whoever came up with that idea first is
brilliant marketing.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
I kind of encounter one every now and again in
an old paperback, and I'm like, I want to send off.
I al wants to see what happens. It's like writing
into the Mystery Science Theater three thousand fan club. It's like,
I want to do it. You've got that address, it's
got to go somewhere.

Speaker 3 (02:55):
Maybe it's still active. You ever read about those things
that are like they used to have those telephone hip
lines for like old computer games in the like late
eighties and early nineties.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
At least like nine hundred numbers.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, you could pay money to call in for like
tips on how to beat a computer game. And some
of these lines stayed active for a long time.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
Oh wow, Yeah, because it's just automated pre recorded messages, right,
I guess.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
So yeah, huh. Sorry that took us a feeling. Yes, Sleepwalkers,
I agree with you, Rob. This is a movie I
saw when I was younger, I think on cable and
revisiting it this week, it was so much weirder than
I remembered, and I remembered it being pretty darn weird.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Yeah, same. I must have seen it on cable back
in the day. I think I rented it on DVD
at some point, you know, in the past twenty years,
but I probably didn't give it a dedicated viewing and
you know, enough to really appreciate how deeply bonkers it is.
It's full of tonal whiplash, monster madness, Stephen King, late

(03:58):
twentieth century Americana, and also a good half dozen cameos.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah, you can tell this movie has the feeling of
like of a party for horror nerds. Yeah, Like it
feels like one of those movies that was for the
people making it more than it was for the audience.
And I'm not complaining now being part of the audience,
but you can tell it was just kind of you know,
throwing weird cameos in for really no reason at all,

(04:25):
except I think, just for you know, different horror authors
and people involved in in the you know, Stephen King's
social circle, to have fun, you know, just oh I
want to show up. I want to be in this movie.
Stephen King himself shows up, of course. And also I
think what you're talking about with the tonal whiplash, where
it just cuts from like a very serious, somber moment

(04:46):
to the weirdest goofiest one liners you've ever seen, like
right back to back. It feels just like people playing around. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Yeah, and then at the same time there are stretches
where it's like it's really serious. And we mentioned The
Incestuous Cat People. I will say that The Incestuous Cat
People is played pretty much straightforward. It's not played for laughs.
I think if it had been played for laughs, the
project would be ruined. I don't think it would be watchable.
I think it would just be super hammy and not

(05:17):
in a pleasant way. But it's played straight The goofiness
kind of arises from other aspects of the film, and
it's a large part of why it still mostly works.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
It's played very serious in every scene that takes place
within the Cat People's house. Yeah, but every scene that
takes place outside of their house has the chance to
go off the rails into zany town.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
That's good. That's a good observation. Now, folks, upfront, I
want to advise everyone that this is a cat movie.
This is a movie that has a lot of love
for cats, but I need to warn you that there
is a fair amount of simulated violence against cats in
the picture. It's all very much above board as far
as I understand. You can read about it at Humanehollywood
dot org. But you know, cats are the good guys

(06:02):
in this movie, but they got to take a beating
in order to have that big victory moment laid in
the picture.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Yeah, it might be under selling it a little bit
just to say some simulated violence. I mean you are
going to see like fake cats ripped in half, hanging
from ropes and stuff. Yeah, but they're fake. They're fake.

Speaker 1 (06:18):
The cats are all okay, I mean they're all dead
now because the cats don't live that long. But yeah,
but all the cat none of the cats were harmed
in the making of this picture. But if you're sensitive
to that sort of thing, you might want to skip it.

Speaker 3 (06:31):
But also, as you say, ultimately a cat really is
the hero of the film.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Absolutely, Yes, Clovis, who will get to in a bit.
Clovis and his fellow cats are the ones that are
going to ultimately save the day. So you know, you
could probably put together an elevator pitch that really stresses this.
But another way to think about this, this is a
film that is deeply about this strange relationship and this

(07:00):
strange bond between a monster and the monster's mother. So
in a sense, this is Stephen King's Beowolf, except there's
no Beowolf to play opposite Grendle and Grendall's mother. In
this case, we have Clovis the cat.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
Yeah, Clovis is the Beowolf. Clovis is Beowulf. You could
say that how does the rest work?

Speaker 2 (07:22):
It?

Speaker 3 (07:22):
The rest doesn't work so well. I guess you could
sort of say that Tanya and her family are like
Brothgars mead Hall and the monster attacks it, and then
of course they have to hire Clovis, the outside defender,
to come and kill the monster.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, and Clovis has other motivations as well, as we'll
get into. Clovis really one of the deeper characters in
this picture. This fits a film mostly about monsters and Clovis.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Do you remember the scenes where so Clovis is a
cat who we first meet as the pet of a
police officer and he's riding around in the police car,
which is he does ride along hilarious idea to begin with,
but also in every scene where they wanted to have
the police officer character like get out of the car
and walk around while Clovis is still supposed to be

(08:06):
in the car, it's obviously like a stuffed animal in
there because it's holding still.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Well, you know, cats are famously difficult to direct. You know,
you can hear this from everyone. The Coen Brothers were
very very adamant about this. For example, you know, they're
very difficult. It's very difficult to get a cat to
do what you want or anything close to what you
want in a picture. And this is a picture that
has scenes with hundreds of cats. I have no idea

(08:31):
how they ultimately pull these shots off.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
Clovis hits his marks. He's a good boy. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
We'll get into the feline actor behind the performance here
in a bit.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
But oh, folks, you might be confused because we've been
talking about the monsters in the movie as cats and
then also about cats. So this is a movie, to clarify,
that has a lot of straightforward animal cats in it,
just like the cats you're familiar with. But then also
the monsters are cat vampires. They're half human, half cat

(09:04):
magical beings.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Yeah, kind of like hairless cat human hybrids that are
also energy vampires and shape shifters and wizards in their
own right. Yeah, we'll learn in the second half of
the picture.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Yeah, the movie keeps introducing new powers for them, even
in like the last five minutes of the film. I
think it's literally five minutes from the end credits that
we learned they can they have telekinesis we have not
seen up until this point.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
I mean it makes a lot of sense because we
learned that they are old, they are ancient, they are
long lived. I mean, they're essentially demigods like the children
of bast and so forth.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
All right, should we do some trailer audio?

Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, let's listen to the trailer for this one, just
a bit of it. We'll get some of that great
early nineties narration. You cannot be in love with this grocial.

Speaker 3 (10:00):
You don't know me, Tanya.

Speaker 4 (10:02):
Behind their smile is a secret.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
Come in, I have something for you.

Speaker 4 (10:09):
I don't know who you are, but I know you're
not who you say you are. Behind the secret is
a hunger.

Speaker 3 (10:17):
Does it have to be her?

Speaker 1 (10:19):
And behind it all is the imagination of Stephen King.

Speaker 3 (10:31):
He killed one of my men.

Speaker 4 (10:34):
He was scared of a cat Stephen King's Sleepwalkers.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
All right, So if you're wondering, well, hey, where can
I watch Sleepwalkers before proceeding with the rest of the episode,
or maybe you want to, you know, get a copy
of it for later. Well, this was a major release
and a successful release of that, I should pinpoint this
movie made money. You can easily get your hands on
a digital or physical version. I rented the standard no

(11:21):
frills blu ray from Atlanta's own videodrome and picture looks great.
That's a great way to go about it. But Shout
Factory put out a special edition several years back, and
I think this one's absolutely the way to go if
you can get your hands on it. I couldn't get
it shipped to me in time for this episode, but
it features new poster art by Devin Whitehead that is

(11:42):
absolutely amazing. It has Clovis the cat front and center,
leaping out at you. I love this.

Speaker 3 (11:50):
Yes, Clovis is leaping out of a big wad of
pink magic energy. Also, the two main monsters in the
film are the Sun Monster are Grendall Charles Brady and
Grendall's mother, Mary Brady. They're leaping out of the magic energy.
And then also a car, yeah, Transam, right, the Blue
trans The Blue trans Am is the central cool car

(12:12):
in the movie, and of course that has to go
on the poster. The car is a major character in
the film, Yes it is.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
And oh man, some of you might be wondering what
kind of sucker pays extra to get like a cool
cover on a Blu Ray re release. Well, I am
that sucker. I am the kind of person who does that,
and I'm very tempted to find a copy of this
and get it shipped to me. But also yet, Devin Whitehead,
you can look him up on Instagram. Devin draws he
does a lot of these posters for re releases of

(12:41):
films and it's all amazing for her. Oh I should
also add the Blu Ray also has a ton of
extras that look really cool that I am also jealous
that I wasn't able to get my hands on before
we recorded here.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
I would like to learn more about this production, especially
given the cameo party elements we've already talked about.

Speaker 1 (12:58):
Yeah, yeah, I do have a couple of details about
that as we go on. But I don't know exactly
how all of it came together other than Stephen Kingscott
buddies and you know, he calls him in. You know,
you might have a cameo in a picture. You might
get to jam with him in a rock and roll band.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
It just varies. All right.

Speaker 1 (13:16):
Let's talk about the people behind this movie, starting at
the top with the director. It's Mick Garris born nineteen
fifty one American horror filmmaker and general horror officionado. During
the late seventies, he worked his way up through various
forms of sort of cinema adjacent media, including a local
LA cable access interview show called Fantasy Film Festival, in

(13:38):
which he interviewed such filmmakers as John Carpenter and Steven Spielberg.
You can actually find uploads of this on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
Is he a good interviewer?

Speaker 1 (13:46):
Ah, you know, I didn't. It seemed like he was.
I didn't watch enough to really get a sense of it,
but he seemed to have a good rapport with these
various directors. Like a lot of his peers, Mcgarris grew
up making like eight millimeter films, but his first credited
industry directorial work came in the form of making of

(14:08):
documentaries for such films as nineteen eighty ones The Howling,
eighty two's The Thing, and nineteen eighty five's The Goonies.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Huh, this is sort of making sense. Okay, so he's
interviewing horror filmmakers, he's doing making of documentaries about their films.
It almost seems like one of those fan turned creator arcs.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Yeah yeah, I mean all creators were fans at one point?
Are they better have been?

Speaker 3 (14:35):
So?

Speaker 1 (14:35):
From there, he goes on to direct a pair of
TV show episodes anthology episodes in nineteen eighty six, One
arison The Magical World of Disney. It is titled Fuzzbucket
and it's an imaginary friends story, you know, for kids.
And then he also did an episode of Amazing Stories
titled Life on Death Row starring Patrick Swayze. He followed

(14:56):
this up with nineteen eighty eights Critters Too The Main Course,
followed by some more TV work, including Psycho for and
then this film, the first Stephen King film based entirely
on an original screenplay by Stephen King.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
That is interesting, So this is the first one not
adapted from a novel or from some other media, and
I wonder if that difference contributes to the kind of loose, exploratory,
playful feel of this movie.

Speaker 1 (15:27):
Yeah, maybe so, Like it's I don't know that a
lot of information is really out there about how the
story came together. I think there's I've read some stuff
that seemed to indicate it might have been an old
story idea that King either didn't get published or didn't finish,
or you know, rework for some reason or another. But
you know, you can't help but watch it and wonder

(15:47):
what form it would have taken had he actually written
it as a novel. You know, what point of views
would we have, How much Clovis pov would we get.
I bet we would have had some. King definitely would
do animal pose in some of his books.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
I kind of wonder if it would have less of
the free wheeling zaniness if it were an adaptation of
a novel, because when you're adapting a novel, there's kind
of this feeling of responsibility, you know, taken to varying
levels of seriousness by different directors, but some feeling of
responsibility to the source material. Whereas this being its own

(16:21):
original thing, you could just kind of let it all
hang out I do.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
I have a strong suspicion that if we had seen
Sleepwalkers as a novel, we would have had a lot
more insight into the mindset of the character Charles Brady,
the grindle monster of the pair, and sort of his
place as a character kind of caught between two worlds,
between the world of predatory monsters and the world of

(16:47):
living humans that are their prey.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
That is hinted at in the movie, though it doesn't
feel like it really. It doesn't feel like the movie
really takes that theme seriously, if you know what I mean,
Because you know, he has a few lines about like, oh,
you know, am I actually falling in love with this
girl who's soul I'm trying to steal by sucking pink
magic out of her mouth? You know, it suggests that

(17:10):
in the dialogue. But then also he has shown to
be essentially a totally heartless, soulless character who just like
wants to like run down children with his car for fun.

Speaker 1 (17:21):
Yeah, And I think that's that's that's kind of a
big missed opportunity with this film, And that's where the
film really breaks down, is that is that we don't
we don't really explore his character all that much, and
he just we tease the possibility that there's more there,
but then he does just become a maniacal madman killer.

Speaker 3 (17:41):
So the madman stuff in the movie, or mad monster,
especially when you get to the Mary stuff later on,
is some of the most memorable stuff in the film,
Like it gets so wild. Now.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
From what I've read, Garris was King's pick to direct
this picture. There was somebody else that they were talking
to about it, but they were pushing for major changes
the King didn't want, and so Garrison Kings seem to
have a good remote creative process going on. I've seen
some interviews where Mick Garris talks about this and they

(18:11):
would like it was facts based. They were like faxing
the script back and forth and making some changes here
and there, and then they didn't actually meet in person
until they filmed the cameo later on in the picture.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
And the first thing Stephen King said to him was
pim fax machine joke.

Speaker 1 (18:33):
The partnership here would continue, with Garris directing the nineteen
ninety four TV mini series The Stand, the nineteen ninety
seven adaptation of The Shining two thousand and four's Riding
the Bullet, two thousand and six is Desperation, and twenty
eleven's Bag of Bones. Now, I have to admit I
don't think I've seen most of these. I've seen parts
of the Stand, and I know that that TV mini

(18:57):
series version of the Stand has its followers. And of
course I loved the book that was a core King
text back in the day.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
I remember. I don't know if I ever watched the
whole thing of that adaptation of The Stand, but I've
seen parts of it. It has the very famous opening
where you're at the Government lab and it's playing Don't
Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cold.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Oh yeah. But anyway, I believe that Mick Garris has
the record so far for feature film adaptations of Stephen King.
On top of this, he's also directed episodes of Tales
from the Crypt and Masters of Horror, which he also created.
His screenplays and story credits also include nineteen eighty seven's
Batteries Not included, nineteen eighty nine is the Fly Too,

(19:41):
in nineteen ninety three's Hocus Pocus. Garris has also written
some novels, but not nearly as many as The Gentleman
Behind the Screenplay Here and that, of course is Stephen
King born nineteen forty seven, the King of Horror himself,
the most successful horror novelist of all time and one
of the most successful novelist period, still writing, still publishing,

(20:04):
and you know, we can't hope to cover everything that
Stephen King has done here in this episode, So let's
sort of place ourselves around the year nineteen ninety two.
So at this point he'd already published something like twenty
five books under his own name and that of Richard Bachman,
as well as something like forty four short stories and
this and this all included some of his best known

(20:26):
work and some of his best work. And on the
film front, there were already multiple adaptations, including Stanley Kubrick's
The Shining from nineteen eighty. Other adaptations that he'd been
more involved in personally, generally on the writing side, but
sometimes acting as well include eighty two's Creep Show, eighty
five's Catsie and Silver Bullet, nineteen eighty six is Maximum Overdrive,

(20:50):
which is also his sole directorial credit, eighty seven's creep
Show two, and nineteen eighty nine's Pet Cemetery.

Speaker 3 (20:57):
Acting in creep Show being the central care in one
of the one of the vignettes there.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
That's right. His Oscar snowed performance is Jeordie Verel in
Creep Show. Yeah, not a cameo, but the title character
in that segment. A wild a wild performance for sure.
But generally he when he appears in something, it is
a little cameo. And actually his his screen credits go

(21:23):
back to nineteen eighty one's Night Writers, directed by George Romero,
in which he played the hogy man.

Speaker 3 (21:30):
I would say legitimately. In Sleepwalkers, his cameo is one
of the funniest parts of the movie.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
It's quite good. Yeah, King, you know King cameo's. They
vary in length and intensity, but King can be a
lot of fun. He shows up in Sons of Anarchy
at one point. Oh yeah, remember that he's what a
he's like a cleaner or a fixer.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
Yeah, he's like a weird guy who tries to cover
up crime scenes, I think. But yeah, in this movie
he plays a weirdo. Of course. He plays like this strange,
creepy owner of a cemetery where the monster attacks the
main girl in the movie, and after the attack is over,
he's walking around talking to various police officers, and just

(22:15):
anybody who will listen. He's like, look, I've got enough trouble.
I don't need this action.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yeah, it's a fun cameo. So if you're a King fan,
this film's worth watching for a number of reasons, including
that Sleepwalkers, of course, as we mentioned, was his first
produced original screenplay, again possibly stemming from an unpublished story idea,
but again I don't think he's ever said much about it.
I was looking around to find any interview segments where

(22:43):
he really gets into sleep Walkers and the genesis of
the idea, and I'm not sure it's really out there.
I did run across an interview where Garis pointed out
that King's wife Kabitha, apparently put together a concept for
a sequel to Sleepwalkers that somehow revolved around a women's
basketball team. But sadly, you know, that did not come

(23:04):
to fruition either. I would love to see that catsketball.

Speaker 3 (23:10):
Now.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
I do want to note that this film, Sleepwalkers, this
is an example of dead sober Stephen King. Stephen King
got sober in nineteen eighty seven after you know, struggling
with some substance abuse in the years prior.

Speaker 3 (23:24):
Which is funny because a lot of reviewers online, who
I guess are unaware of this timeline peg Sleepwalkers as
like peak cocaine madness Stephen King. And it is easy
to see how people could make this assumption because the
movie is so wild, and especially I think because of
the tonal whiplash that you already mentioned. But in reality,

(23:45):
I believe Stephen King has sort of identified the novel
The Tommy Knockers as his peak of struggles with drugs
and alcohol. That was one of the last things before
he got sober, and has since white like tried to
disown The Tommy Knockers, saying like, yeah, I wrote it,
but it's terrible. I don't know if he's ever disowned Sleepwalkers.

(24:07):
And maybe this, despite whatever whatever is kind of working
at weird frequencies within it, it does seem to be
an authentic product of the mind of Stephen King.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Yeah. I don't think reviewers were necessarily kind to it,
but it at the time, but you know, it was
a success, and I think a lot of people have
come back to it and appreciate it, and you know,
in some ways it is an outlier, but there are
a lot of familiar King themes present in this. You know,
of course we have the familiar theme of small town
America getting invaded by some sort of ancient evil, and

(24:44):
then more specifically, we're dealing with energy vampires, which you
see arguably and it you certainly see in the Dark
Tower series and also in Doctors Sleep, which features nomadic
energy vampires led by an enigmatic female leader. You could
almost think about Doctor Sleep as being a return to
some of the themes from Sleepwalker.

Speaker 3 (25:05):
I guess, taking it a lot more seriously and basing
it more on serious characters that he'd already created and
wanted to come back to, like Danny Torrens. Yeah. Yeah,
you could sort of look at Sleepwalkers as a gonzo
reinterpretation of Salem's Lot, but with monsters more less like

(25:26):
traditional vampires and more like the monsters in Doctor Sleep.

Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yeah, but also cats, and I should point out the
cats do feature into a number of number of Stephen
king works. Pet Cemetery of course, the Cat from Hell obviously,
Cat's i LT's theory of pets, and we you know,
we do occasionally get animal povs in his writing. And
again I can only assume Clovis would have given been

(25:51):
given this treatment if Sleepwalkers had come together as a
novel instead of a film.

Speaker 3 (25:56):
I like how in the outline you've included multiple pictures
of Stephen King holding a cat.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
Yes, yes, one of them. He's like crawling with cats.
I think he has a big cat in his lap
and then a kitten on his head and on his shoulder.
All right, let's get into the cast here. We're gonna
start with We're gonna take it in chunk. So we're

(26:21):
gonna start with our monster family, with the Brady family,
our Grendel character. Charles Brady is played by Brian Krause
born nineteen sixty nine, American actor who kicked things off
playing teens on TV and I believe nineteen eighty nine
at the age of nineteen or twenty, and by nineteen
ninety one he'd appeared in the sequel Returned to the

(26:42):
Blue Lagoon alongside Mila Djoviovic, and by the time of Sleepwalkers,
I believe he was twenty two or twenty three, which
I think is perfect because he feels slightly too mature
to be a teenager in this which is perfectly in
keeping with so many teen heartthrob films and and also
horror films of the classic period, the sort of films

(27:04):
that this movie plays off off to some degree. And
since his character is actually some kind of kind of immortal,
supernatural predator, it also feels right that he doesn't quite
fit in.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yes, but he also brings a thing that's come into
a lot of vampire type stories, which is incredible handsomeness
and charisma. Brian Kraus is a hunk, and the hunkiness
is just like blasting out of the TV screen when
he's in frame. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Yeah, first scene he's shirtless and then carve something into
his arm. We'll get to that now. Kraus would go
on to appear on TV's Tales from the Crypt, He
did thirty three episodes of Another World, and just lots
of TV appearances. Even pops up on Mad Men in
two thousand and eight, and he did voice acting for
the video game Fallout seventy six. In general, it seems

(27:53):
like he stayed very busy in a range of acting gigs.
Seems to play a lot of police officers these days.
We should do his hunkiness. I generally think he's quite
good in this, even when his character's riding veers off
in different directions. You know, he obviously he didn't write
the thing, but you know he rides it out as
best he can here.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
And sometimes he has to act with cat face makeup on.
So yes, that's another thing too.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Yes, I do love how there there's like different variations
of how cat like they are. There's like their true
monstrous cat form that we get glimpses of and then
get to see more in the finale, and they're just
like pure, you know, full blown monsters, a full bodysuit effect.
But then there are times when they're in a fully
human disguise and then other times it's it's like cat

(28:43):
face makeup, and the makeup is quite good. Well we'll
get back to the who's responsible for that? But in
general I loved all the practical effects here.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, they've got like nine different kinds of heads and faces,
and there's one scene where we get to see Charles
more through all of them when he is surprised by
a cat.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Oh yeah, at nine lives, why not? All right? Playing
Mary Brady, the Grindle's mother of the two, is Alice
Kriega born nineteen fifty four South African born actress who
went on to find success, first on the stage with
the Royal Shakespeare Company, I Believe and the small screen
for BBC Productions in the UK, before making the transition

(29:23):
into an eclectic mix of films and finally achieving greater
fame for a number of delightful villain roles in genre pictures.
In nineteen eighty one, she appeared in Chariots of Fire,
as well as John Irvin's Ghost Story, based on a
novel by King Buddy and Talisman co author Peter Straub.

(29:44):
She followed this up with nineteen eighty five's King David.
That's the one that has George Eastman in it?

Speaker 3 (29:49):
Oh does he play Goliath? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (29:51):
Yeah, George Eastman's Galacie?

Speaker 3 (29:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Who else would he play?

Speaker 3 (29:54):
I don't know.

Speaker 5 (29:56):
Seemed logical. She was in nineteen eighty seventh. She she
was in nineteen eighty seven's Barfly, but one of her
most iconic genre roles came later on in nineteen ninety
six in Star Trek First Contact, in which she of
course plays the Borg Queen, a delicious main antagonist, and

(30:17):
this is a character that she would later reprise on
TV's Voyager, as well as various voice acting gigs for
Star Trek shows and Star Trek video games.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
Now am I remembering this right? Of course, this would
not be a reflection at all on alis Kriega for
playing the role. But do I recall that the Borg
Queen is a somewhat controversial character among Star Trek fans
because it's sort of a violation of the principle of
the Borg that they don't have a top down control
or a leader or anything.

Speaker 1 (30:47):
Yeah, that's my understanding, and I'm not the biggest Treky
out there, but I was a regular viewer of Star
Trek the Next Generation and looking back, like, that's one
of the things about the Borg is that they're decentralized,
you know, they're use social in their format, and therefore
that's why they're inhuman and such a threat to our individuality.

(31:09):
At some point, Data's evil twin brother lare Like takes
over the Borg, and maybe for a while I thought, well,
that's why we end up with a board queen, because
Lore messed everything up. But then I was looking at
Memory Alpha and there's something about how the Board Queen's
supposed to have been around for ages, So I don't
know where what where the lowercase Lore ends up deciding

(31:31):
all of this, But I will say I remember when
Star Trek First Contact came out. Part of me was like,
the board can't have a queen. That's wrong. But then
her performance is so wonderful that like you're just one over.
You're like, Okay, you can have it. You're the queen. Yes,
I put up no resistance. Resistance is futile. Krika's other

(31:54):
genre credits include two thousand and two's Reign of Fire,
two thousand and six is Silent Hill, two thousand nine
Solomon Kane, and twenty thirteens for the Dark World.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Now, this is the kind of role that you could
imagine an actor having very different thoughts about. Either it
could be like this is the weirdest thing I've ever
done and it's great, I'm gonna have fun, or like,
what have I gotten myself into? Am I destroying my
career by participating in this? And it is? She seems

(32:25):
to embrace it, at least as far as I can tell,
Like she does she does the weird sensitive edible cat stuff,
and then she also just like goes full like terminator mode,
like she turns into Arnold Schwartzenecker in the last third
of the movie. Doing one liners and doing them with
evident relish. And yeah, so I thumbs up to Alis

(32:47):
Kriega in Sleepwalkers.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
Yeah, I love her in this just she's just absolutely
committed to this role, no matter how weird it is,
imbuing it with really like shakespeare in intensity at times.
I think her performing absolutely elevates the film, and it
helps that her character is also a good bit more
consistent compared to Charles. Though again she does go into
full blown terminator mode, but so does Grindall's mom. Like

(33:11):
that's it's fitting. You know.

Speaker 3 (33:13):
Does anybody get murdered with a corn cob in BeO Wolf?
I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Well, you know that might have been lost in some
of the translations. Well, no, obviously they wouldn't have had corn.
They you'd have to stab them with some other kind
of vegetable.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
Yeah, Is there like a solid sheaf of wheat of
some kind?

Speaker 1 (33:30):
There's probably you could be there's some sort of read
on this where like the Sleepwalkers as ancient fertility goddesses
or something. Oh yeah, the Cult of series. Sure, all right,
now it's time to meet the Robertsons. The Robertsons are
our you know, good old fashioned American family that's threatened
by supernatural evil, beginning with the teen daughter Tanya Robertson

(33:53):
played by mitchin Amak born nineteen seventy.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
This is basically our human protagonist. This is the main
good character who is threatened by the cat, the cat
energy vampires.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
Yeah. Yeah, she's a good girl, you know, good American
teenager working at the movie theater and you know, has
a certain weakness for really hunky students at her high school,
which is where our energy vampire happens to be hanging out,
and is currently enrolled in her creative writing class, as

(34:25):
we'll discuss.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
You know, one big media overlap I never noticed until
revisiting the movie this time is that Ammick plays the
role of Shelley at the Diner in Twin Peaks.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
That's right. Yeah, she's Shelley Johnson from both runs of
Twin Peaks as well as Twin Peaks fire Walk with
Me from nineteen ninety two. She was also in the
nineteen ninety three film Dream Lover, and early on in
her career, she also popped up on an episode of
Star Trek The Next Generation. I think just playing like
a random team, you know, one of probably one of
Wesley Crusher's fellow students. But she's gone onto a You're

(35:00):
on everything from like mad Men to American Horror Story,
and i'd say, you know, solid lead performance here, saw
pretty standard horror movie stuff, but she saw it.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Agree. She is a wholesome, well meaning character who is
hard not to love, and thus, even when the movie
becomes increasingly ludicrous, she does kind of ground it because
you are with her.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, all right, now let's meet her parents. First off,
we have mister Robertson, played by an actor we've discussed
on Weird House before, lyman Ward born nineteen forty one. Yes,
he was in nineteen eighty five's Creature that we discussed
on the show. But pretty much all of you are
going to know him, or at least recognize him, perhaps
even without realizing it. From nineteen eighty six is Ferris

(35:43):
Bueller's Day Off, in which he plays the dad, Tom Buhler.
Now Tanya's mother, Miss Robertson, is played by Cindy Pickett
born nineteen forty seven. You'll recognize her as well because
she plays Ferris Bueller's mom in Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Speaker 3 (35:59):
Oh Boy.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
She also appeared in nineteen eighty nine's Deep Star six
and nineteen ninety three Son in Law, as well as
a couple of titles I just have to mention these.
No shade here, someone has to star in movies like this.
But she's also in nineteen ninety six is Kid Cop
and nineteen ninety eight's Atomic.

Speaker 3 (36:15):
Dog is kid Cop a movie about a kid who
is a cop or a cop who enforces the law
on children the former.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
Now this all gets weirder. So first of all, again
Tanya's parents and Sleepwalkers are played by the same actors
who played Ferris Buehler's parents, and these two actors were
married in real life. Oh and then it gets even weirder.
They apparently met and fell in love during the production
of Ferris Buhler's Day Off and divorced the same year

(36:48):
Sleepwalkers came out.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
Could it be true? That doesn't that's so strange.

Speaker 1 (36:56):
I mean, I'm probably very wrong on this, and I
don't want to pry int anybody his personal life, but
it seems possible that Sleepwalkers finished a marriage that began
with Firis Bueller's Stay Off. I don't know, it's a possibility,
is all. I'm saying, we.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
Have to assume it was unrelated to sleepwalkers.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
All right, So that's the family. That's the good old
American family. Most of the other characters in this film
are cops.

Speaker 3 (37:20):
So un through so many cops, cops walking in and
out of frame, and have we seen this cop before?
I don't know, I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (37:28):
Yeah, and then we get like different divisions of law enforcement.
The main cop that we encounter is Sheriff Iris Stevens,
played by Jim Haney, who lived nineteen forty through twenty
twenty one American actor who worked in a lot of
TV shows, but also had memorable roles in Staying Together
in nineteen eighty nine, The Bridges Bridges of Madison County
in ninety five, and The Peacemaker in ninety seven. His

(37:49):
other credits include John Carpenter's The Fog from nineteen eighty,
nineteen nineties, Dark Angel, which we've covered on the show,
and even a bit part as a cop in nineteen
seventy nine's Time After Time that we all so talked about.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
He is the only cop in the movie who is
not primarily a comedic character.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Yeah, because the next cop character that we see quite
a bit of Is Deputy Sheriff Andy Simpson played by
Dan Martin born nineteen fifty one. Image Award winning actor
whose credits include ninety four Is the Stand, ninety five's Heat,
two thousand's Leprechaun, five in the Hood, and TV's The
Bold and the Beautiful. This is where he earned the

(38:28):
Image Award.

Speaker 3 (38:29):
He is one of the most entertaining actors in the
movie the way he's so. This is the owner of Clovis.
This is the cop who has the attack cat, who
rides along in his squad car. And he's also the
cop who first encounters our monster characters and sort of
forms a vendetta mission against them. But he also is

(38:50):
really funny because they just have a lot of scenes
of him muttering to himself and making up songs to
himself as as he drives around in his car. I
don't know what these songs are, just like vulgar little ditties.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a likable character. But we also
have a really unlikable cop character though he's state police,
and this is Captain Solmes played by Ron Pearlman movie Trivia.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
In Sleepwalkers, Ron Perlman achieved the world record for the
longest tooth to tooth jawstretch film history. Yeah, just about yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Born nineteen fifty. This is somehow our first Ron Pearlman movie,
but I think everybody knows Ron Peerlman rugged American character
actor with a very rugged look, great face, gravelly voice,
frequently cast as heavies and authority figures, but with some
key breakout roles, such as Amacor in nineteen eighty one's
Quest for Fire, Salvatore in nineteen eighty six is the

(39:51):
Name of the Rose. That's one of my favorites. He's
Great in nineteen ninety five's The City of Lost Children,
and of course he's hell Boy in Giermel del Toro's
two Hellboy films. He also famously played the Beast on
TV's Beauty and the Beast from eighty seven through nineteen ninety,
and his voice work has included such shows as Batman,
the Animated series and Adventure Time. I have to say, though,

(40:14):
this is one of your like, this is a small role,
and it's a pretty standard Ron Pearlman role. There's not
really nothing special here, nothing to see here, folks. This
is just your grumpy, antagonistic Ron Pearlman character.

Speaker 3 (40:27):
Yeah, just a nasty, malicious cop played for slapstick comedy,
especially when Alice Kriege gets to bite his fingers off.
That's right, but also strange choice that, Like you get
Ron Pearlman to be in your movie about cat human
hybrids and he doesn't play one.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
I mean, maybe he was done with that at this point.
Maybe that was it. They were like, he, who would
he play? There's no Grendel's dad in this. But maybe
he was just like, no, I'm done, I'm done with
that cat makeup.

Speaker 3 (40:58):
He already did Beauty in the Beast. He's got like
cat makeup in that, doesn't he Yeah, basically looks like
a Sleepwalker.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Yeah, that of course was a show that was George R. R.
Martin theah lined. Yeah. Oh, and then also we already
mentioned Sons of Anarchy. He of course was one of
the stars of Sons of Anarchy.

Speaker 3 (41:14):
Wait, I just looked him up in Beauty and the Beast.
Yet he looks exactly like some of the cat faces.
I mean, as I mentioned, they have like nine different
kinds of faces, but he looks like one of the
main cat faces of the Sleepwalkers. So that is a
strange overlap. I wonder if there was any makeup artists
overlap here.

Speaker 1 (41:31):
It's possible. It's possible. We'll get to the makeup in
just a minute. But let's see, we need to round
out the cast and rounding out the law enforcement side
of things again, we have Officer Clovis, the cat played
by the feline actor Sparks. Dates are unknown. We don't
know when Sparks was born or when Sparks passed on

(41:52):
into the cat after life. This is this feline actor's
only film credit. But what a performance. I say, from
the bottom my heart, thank you for your service, Sparks.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
Yes, I hope Sparks received so many tins of sardines
for taking part in this film.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
All right, let's see, there is a there's a small
part in this by Glenn Shattocks. It plays mister Fallows.
Shattucks lived nineteen fifty two through twenty ten, American character actor,
best known for his work with Tim Burton, especially the
role of Atho in nineteen eighty eight's Beetlejuice, and he
voiced the mayor in nineteen ninety three's The Nightmare Before Christmas,

(42:29):
and also appears in two thousand and ones Planet of
the Apes. He plays a creep in this a human creep.

Speaker 3 (42:34):
A creepy creative writing teacher. Now, are we going to
mention all of the celebrity and author cameos here or
are we going to save those like as we go
through the plot.

Speaker 1 (42:47):
Yeah, we'll come back to these as we go through
the plot. I'm going to round out things here by
just mentioning in brief. The projects supervisor on the special
effects here was Tony Gardner, aligned with Altirian Studios. Gardner
has headed up Alter Studios for something like thirty years
and has worked special makeup effects and special effects on

(43:09):
such films as eighty seven's The Lost Boys, eighty eight's
The Blob, nineteen nineties Night Breed, and many others. He
was even on Stan Winston's Aliens Crew back in eighty six,
and he was also involved in the special effects for
nineteen eighty three's thriller the music video Oh Wow.

Speaker 3 (43:26):
Every movie you listed I think has great special effects.

Speaker 1 (43:29):
Yeah, and this film's got him too. Like I say,
I loved all the makeup effects in this. Now on
the music front, the composer here was Nicholas Pike born
nineteen fifty five, British composer whose scores include eighty six's
Graveyard Shift, Critters two, eighty nine's Chud to Bud The Chud,
ninety seven's The Shining and five episodes of Masters of Horror.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
I don't have a lot of memories, one way or
another about the original score for the film, because the
most memorable musical moments in the movie are the use
of existing tracks, notably the Santo and Johnny track from
nineteen fifty nine Sleepwalk, which even if you don't know
that song by name, everybody you would recognize it if
you heard it. It's got a very, very familiar steel

(44:13):
guitar melody. For some reason, I associate it with scenes
in a movie in which somebody is dreaming about a
Hawaiian vacation.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
Yeah, it does that. What is that slide guitar?

Speaker 3 (44:23):
Are we hearing?

Speaker 1 (44:24):
Is that?

Speaker 3 (44:24):
I think it's steel guitar, steal guitar?

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Okay, Yeah, it's a famous It's one of those tracks
that you might not know it by name, but if
you hear the tune, yeah, you'll recognize it for sure.

Speaker 3 (44:36):
But also not just that needle drop. There's a moment
early on when we're when like we were seeing the
cops walking around a scene sort of in the prologue,
and there's this very like sad, thoughtful, mournful music playing
with this voice just humming a tune without any words.
I was like, man, that voice that sounds so much
like Ya.

Speaker 4 (44:55):
What is this?

Speaker 3 (44:55):
I looked it up. It is Inya. It's an Indya track.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
That's right. Yeah, it's the track Bodka off of. It
was on her self titled album, her debut album, but
then that album was later renamed The Celts to correspond
with the music's use on a BBC documentary of the
same name. I was a big fan of her work
back in the nineties, and I think this is a
great track. This is one of her best. Not all

(45:21):
of her tracks are the sort of thing I would
have listened to today, like some of them feel a
little dated in their new agingus, but this one's really good.
Just her ethereal vocals, a lot of cool synth, so
I think it's a really solid one, well used here.
And I believe this is also the track that the
Fuji's sampled in one of their hits.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
I think this song was saying. I think I read
this song was sampled in a lot of other songs.
But yeah, it certainly it's very very moody track, big
dark mood that you can see why it was used
at least at like four different points in the movie.
It's at the beginning, it's at a few different scenes,
and it's in the end credits. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
It gives it that kind of timeless weight, ancient weight
to the origins of these monstrous creatures.

Speaker 3 (46:09):
Oh and then there's one more track like that. There's
a scene where they use do You Love Me by
the Contours?

Speaker 1 (46:14):
Oh yeah, yeah, and that's a great track as well.

Speaker 3 (46:25):
Okay, you ready to talk about the plot, Let's do it.
So we open in silence with some text on the screen.
It is an entry from a reference text called the
Chillicothe Encyclopedia of Arcane Knowledge, first edition, eighteen eighty four.
And I looked this up to see if this is
a real book.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
It is not, Oh really, because I mean I have
a copyright here. I have it next to my Necronomicon,
my book of Forbidden Cults. No, but seriously, you're correct
this is a one of the many fictional forbidden occult tomes.
I'm a sucker for any of these.

Speaker 3 (46:59):
When you own a cop be of a book that
doesn't exist. That's always a cause for concern. But yeah,
so it's like an it's framed like an Encyclopedia entry.
It says sleepwalker sleepwalker. That is the entry noun nomadic
shape shifting creatures with human and feline origins, vulnerable to
the deadly scratch of a cat. The sleepwalker feeds upon

(47:22):
the life force of virginal human female's probable source of
the vampire legend. And then it's got the Chilicoat citation
and several things about this I love. First of all,
this is one of my favorite things to do when
you like invent new lore for your movie, is you
suggest that the lore element you just created was the

(47:43):
inspiration for familiar lore. So it's like, oh, they got
the idea for vampires from the thing I just made up.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
Yes, here is the true occurrences that inspired Mary Shelley
to write Frankenstein.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
Yeah. I also love that they say sleepwalker's are of
human and feline origins, And that just confused me because
the movie makes it seem like sleepwalkers are supernatural in origin,
but human and feline. Does that mean it's like the
result of sexual reproduction between a human and a cat.
What does that mean?

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Yeah, I don't think that. I don't think it works.
I'm casting doubt on this detail. We should also probably
acknowledge that these creatures are called sleepwalkers. There's nothing about
them that lines up with the human phenomena of sleepwalking
or any kind of parisomnia. In fact, sleep doesn't really
seem to factor into anything they do at all.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
Yeah, has nothing to do with sleep. I don't know this.
I'm just guessing, but I really strong guess it's just
that Stephen King was like thinking of the song sleepwalk
and was like, Oh, that's a cool word for a monster, sleepwalkers,
and just sort of pegged that onto the cat the
wear cats he was already thinking about, and that there's

(49:00):
no connection. Really, it just sounded.

Speaker 1 (49:02):
Cool, fair enough, really cool.

Speaker 3 (49:04):
Anyway. There's an eerie silence while you get to read
this encyclopedia entry, and I hope you don't read too slow,
because there's a boo scare on the encyclopedia. It's like
a sudden cat scratch. There's a cat scratch that appears
like on the so called page on the screen scratches
through the page and then the whole thing catches fire
and burns away.

Speaker 1 (49:24):
This feels wonderfully extreme when it happens, but it makes
a lot more sense later on.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Yeah. So, the action opens at a seaside house in
Bodega Bay, California. This was the location used for Alfred
Hitchcock's The Birds and also was used in the Fog,
popular place to shoot movies on the West Coast, and
we pan from the beach up to a seaside house
while while a woman's voice hums this plaintive melody. Again.

(49:52):
This is the part where I was like, wait, is
that Enya? Yes, it is Inya. And one of the
first characters we see is no joke Luke Skywalker, dressed
as a cop with aviators and a porno mustache, and
he's got like he's got blonde, his blonde hair slicked
back and with his hair slicked back that way and
the whole way, he's done up. Mark Hamill is looking

(50:15):
like Jack's from Sons of Anarchy, isn't he?

Speaker 2 (50:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (50:18):
Yeah, I mean he looks great here. I did not
remember that he was in this. The character's name is
Sheriff Jenkins. By the way, I don't know if they
ever actually say it.

Speaker 3 (50:27):
He's got the name tag.

Speaker 1 (50:28):
Yeah, but I like the vibe of this character. I
was kind of hoping he'd be our Loomis, you know.
But he doesn't pop up again.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
You know, he's just in the prologue. It's a cameo.
And somehow, when I saw this movie when I was younger,
I never caught that this was Mark Hamill, even though
you get a perfectly good look at him, and I
was obsessed with Star Wars. I don't know how this
went past me.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
There's a lot to distract you elsewhere in the picture,
so it's forgivable if you forget him by the end
of it.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
I guess.

Speaker 4 (50:57):
So.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
The movie's energy is so weird. A lot of things
just don't even register. So Sheriff Mark Hamill and his
deputy walk around the house and it is revealed that
there are dead cats hanging around everywhere, and the deputy
is reading off a sheet. He says, Martha and Carl Brodie,
mother and son. No one's seen them since Tuesday. The

(51:18):
car is a transam blue with yellow pin striping, and
then he gives license details and stuff, and a neighbor
lady walks up and says, god, I hope nothing horrible
has happened to them. They were so close. Oh lady,
you have no idea. So the deputy says, what do
you think happened? And Mark Hamill says, I don't know,

(51:41):
but somebody sure doesn't like cats, as he is walking
through a forest of dead cats hanging in the air.
This is one of a number of things in the
movie where I can't quite tell. I think it is
being done deliberately for comedy purposes, but where character is
just say, thirdly obvious, things like there is one part

(52:02):
where they're walking through this yard that has like a
hundred cats in it, and one of the cops says,
a lot of cats. So the two cops go inside
the house with flashlights. They find more dead cats, a
bunch of blood smeared on the walls and stuff, and
then the sound of a cat moaning inside a closet.
So they slowly approach the closet and tension builds and

(52:25):
Mark Hamill reaches out slowly toward the doorknob and then
throws open the door, and then there is a cat
jump scare. Something's a little wonky about the build up
and pay off here, like the cat jump scare is
one of the most familiar things in horror cinema. You know,
you open it, you're scared of something. You hear a
little rattling, you know, and you open a door and

(52:47):
a cat jumps out right now, and that that's your
your fake out jump scare. But is it still a
cat jump scare in spirit? If you're already thinking about
cats and the scene is full of cats and you
hear a cat meowing on the other side of the.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
Door, that's true. That's true. Also, do cat jump scares
occur in the wild in real life. I've never encountered one. Generally,
I've found that if a cat is spooked, they're often
going to stay back there in that closet or wherever. Yeah,
and they're gonna run about like this, only after they
have gone to the litter box.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
I don't feel like cats end up inside a closed
closet all that often. They close the door behind them.
You would have to close the door on them by accident.

Speaker 1 (53:26):
It happens all the time in my house because you
open a cabinet or something that's not open all the time,
the cat's like, it's my job to go in there
and explore and then they get chassy. Okay, but then
when you're open it, they just walk out. It's not
much of a jump scarer.

Speaker 3 (53:39):
Yeah, but then also okay, the cops find a body,
human body in the house. It is the body of
a teenage girl, except she is shriveled up and desiccated
like a mummy. And then they like look behind her
ear and there is a single there is a rose
tucked behind her ear, and then Mark Hamill looks at
the camera and says it's a rose. Once again, it's

(54:00):
like they didn't like cats. After this, we get a
credit sequence with some mystical strings playing over images of
ancient Egyptian carvings and statuary with vaguely feline themes, and
also rob Actually, I took some screenshots of the artworks
we see in the credits here, and I wondered if

(54:20):
you had comments on anything.

Speaker 1 (54:22):
Oh, I love it all. I had to watch this twice. Yeah,
went back through. I think there's just a nice selection
of images that were well put together here. I don't
know to what extent these are all like one hundred
percent original. There's one piece that may be a detail
from an actual pre existing work where they've been augmented,

(54:42):
but these do look and feel like pages from perhaps
that occult text that we cited at the beginning.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
Yeah, yeah, possibly. So we see a scene that looks
like it's from the Garden of Eden. It's like of
a naked humanoid female but with a cat head and
cat face breastfeeding a child, a human child, but the
cat face is a little too cartoony looking. For the
rest of the image. It's kind of a it's like,

(55:10):
you know, Garfield here in the mythological context, not quite
that bad, but it is sort of like that. And
then there's what looks like a photograph of a human,
just fully human, embracing a leopard body with a human
head on the neck. Creepy. Yeah, they look like they're
in love. And then there is I actually did a
zoom in on there's a part where we see a

(55:32):
book open and it's a book full of text, and
the book contains an illustration of what it will look
like later in the movie when the sleepwalker is sucking
somebody's soul out through their mouth, where there's like, you know,
purple magic coming out of their mouth into the sleepwalker's mouth.
But also I zoomed in on the text here to
see is this Is this a real text, a real

(55:53):
book that they just did a little edit on. No,
I think they composed a fully original book for just
this shot, because I couldn't find a match to the
text anywhere, and it seems to be text about sleepwalkers.
And also, like paragraph to paragraph, the text varies in
whether it's trying to stay on task and look like
a real occult encyclopedia, or whether it just starts saying

(56:15):
weird stuff, like one of the paragraphs when you zoom
in says so I said to juan Ita, I don't
think I've ever seen anything like this before. It's a cat.

Speaker 1 (56:25):
Well still, the presentation is good as long as you
don't pause and zoom in, right. But I've bet I
love all this because it couches this idea of the
sleepwalkers in human myth and history in a sense that
sets the tone nicely. And it is worth pointing out
that even the sleepwalkers as they're presented here are entirely

(56:47):
a Stephen King creation. Cat human hybrids are very ancient
and some of the oldest creations of human culture, and
we can point to various examples from pretty much anywhere
where humans and cats have coexisted, There may ultimately multimately
be more feline cat hybrids in global mythology than there

(57:10):
are canine or wolf human hybrids and human mythology.

Speaker 3 (57:15):
Have we somehow never done an October episode about wear
cats or cat human monsters. I don't recall one.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
We should. There's plenty to talk about, you know, anywhere
tigers have ranged or lions have ranged historically, you have myths.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Anyway, after the credits, we come back in on a
shot of a blue, two story house surrounded by trees,
with an overgrown front yard and a white picket fence,
And I just want to frame. I noticed early on
the white picket fence the pickets. I think that's what
they're called, the boards and the picket fence. The pickets
are very sharp on the top, and I was like,

(57:52):
somebody's gonna get stabbed on that.

Speaker 1 (57:54):
And I was right, yep, somebody's gonna get Mortal Kombat
for sure.

Speaker 3 (57:58):
That's right. And a text legend tells us that this
is Travis, Indiana. So we're about to meet our sleepwalkers.
Outside the house, there is a blue trans am parked
in the driveway, so I think we know our missing
mother and son are here from the prologue, and inside
the house, somebody is listening to a record. It is

(58:19):
again the Santo and Johnny song Sleepwalk. Now is this
a good place to talk about the record player? Because
before we recorded this, we really went down a rabbit
hole being like, what is this thing? It seems like
they have a record player that looks like it only
plays seven inch vinyl singles? And I didn't even know
that was really a thing. You would have a player

(58:41):
that can't fit a thirty three and a third record.

Speaker 1 (58:45):
Yeah, this is not something I'd seen anywhere else before.
Like friends that I have that are vinyl enthusiasts, they
don't have one of these. And I'm not really I
don't really know much about records, but I know that
this is a forty five. I know this is a single,
and this thing seems designed to only play singles, and so, yeah,
we were talking about this like that, Why why was this? Mate?

(59:06):
What is the sense of it?

Speaker 3 (59:09):
To quote Santa Claus, Yeah, well I didn't know either.
I listened to records. I have a record collection, though
I would not call myself a record collector. I just
like I'm a music fan. And have records that I like.
So I pretty much only listened to full size albums
to thirty threes and so, yeah, I did not understand
what this device was for, but I guess at some

(59:29):
point somebody wanted a record player that only played singles.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
Yeah. Yeah, we JJ chimed in and had some good
theories which I think essentially arrived at the truth. But
I also reached out to our friend and former producer
Seth Nicholas Johnson about this, because, of course, Seth, you
might remember from past appearances on the show, Big Record Guy,
knows tons about the ins and outs of records and

(59:55):
how they work and some like very you know, record
curios and so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Or he makes records, he makes the technical side.

Speaker 1 (01:00:02):
Yeah, he is a true record wizard, a vinyl wizard,
if you will. And so we reached out to him
and said, Seth, help us out what's going on here,
and I want to read what he wrote back to us.
Seth writes, quote, I'm going to make a strange equivalency,
but it's true. In today's modern world, there are many
people whose entire music experience is listening to singles on Spotify.

(01:00:25):
This person has never once considered listening to a full album.
This person existed in the nineteen fifties. Two. Their spotify
was a jukebox. The jukebox trained these listeners that the
forty five rpm record was the only kind of record
that mattered. Who has the time for a twelve inch record?
Not these teeny boppers. This kind of record player, in

(01:00:46):
many ways, was the at home version of a jukebox.
It can't play a twelve inch record because why would
you ever buy a twelve inch record?

Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
Oh okay, this kind of makes sense to me, And
this is the opposite of one of the hypotheses had
I was like, is this for like the super purest
record collector who's like, oh, you still listen to albums?
I only collect you know, rare singles from the fifties. No,
it sounds like Seth's idea is that. Maybe it's the opposite.
It's more for the kind of casual listener who's not

(01:01:17):
into full albums. They just like singles that they're familiar
with from you know, the radio or the jukebox.

Speaker 4 (01:01:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:01:23):
Yeah, we were looking around and you can you can
buy these things used. Of course they're asking as astronomical
prices for him, these days, but I'm to assume they
were probably rather inexpensive back in the day compared to
other record player options.

Speaker 3 (01:01:36):
Anyway, in this scene, we first meet our younger Sleepwalker
played by Brian Krause. Charles Brody is his pseudonym in
the current setting in Indiana, though I don't recall if
we ever learn what their real names are, if they
even have real names, because remember that we learned in
the prologue they're using different names in California, so who knows.

(01:01:57):
When we first meet Charles, he is shirtless, listening to Sleepwalk,
sitting there in acid wash jeans with a belt, looking
through a high school yearbook. I guess this is the
high school where he is now undercover as a student,
and he's just playing with a pocket knife. He takes
a moment to carve the letter T into his arm,
and then we cut down to the yearbook to see

(01:02:19):
a picture of our human protagonist, Tanya Robertson. Presumably that's
what the tea is for Tanya, and he even he
drew a heart with an arrow through it around her picture, which, okay,
how did he get the yearbook already? Like he just
moved there and he's already got a yearbook.

Speaker 1 (01:02:37):
Is it maybe from the year before. I don't know.
Maybe this is how they stilect talents. They just get
they finished to get ahold of the yearbooks, and you know,
they treat them like a menu.

Speaker 3 (01:02:45):
Yeah, Tanya's in a lot of clubs, by the way.
She's National Merit Scholar, science Fair, photography club president, a
lot of stuff. But also there's a little easter egg.
If you look at a screenshot of the yearbook, you
can see from the student next to her that the
high school teams in Travis are the hell Cats.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
Oh nice.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
In the scene, we also meet Charles's mother, Mary, played
by Alice Kriega. She is busy looking out the window
with deep concern. She is watching a stray cat prowl
around in the yard, and the cat almost gets caught
in a steel trap that they've set out and baited
with some blob of meat. So their yard is just

(01:03:25):
full of animal traps like the you know, the bear
traps style. But the cat does not get caught. It
gets away this time, and Mary is obviously distressed by
the presence of a cat. This establishes the idea that
everywhere the Sleepwalkers go their house is gradually surrounded by

(01:03:45):
a sort of posse of stray cats that are hunting them.

Speaker 1 (01:03:49):
Now, at this point in the film, we don't know
all of this yet. You could even maybe just suppose
that she has some sort of phobia of cats or something.
But yeah, this seems to be the case. Wherever they go,
cats will accumulate until they build up enough critical mass
to assault the Sleepwalkers and overcome them. You know, cats

(01:04:09):
are wise and ancient sentinels against the darkness and will
dispatch supernatural creatures that are their sworn enemies. This is
something we see in various weird fiction works, and I'm
sure the idea that's its roots ultimately and very ancient traditions,
you know, because cats are weird. They are allies, but

(01:04:30):
they're also up to their own business, and their own
business might include slaying monsters.

Speaker 3 (01:04:35):
Now, there are a lot of themes in this movie
where you could argue about how good it was for
the story, or people can raise their eyebrows at I
think it is a pretty objectively cool premise to have
monsters where one of their core features is that they
are pursued by stray cats. Just cats gather from all
around to hunt them.

Speaker 1 (01:04:55):
Yeah, I like it.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
But also though, speaking of weird themes, in this scene
already the movie starts cranking up the weirdness really fast
into the edible cat sex zone. Charles and Mary start
dancing around to the song. They're doing twirls and dips,
and they start talking about how Charles plans to go
to the movies tonight because he is hoping to meet
a particular girl in town. This is Tanya. Mary keeps

(01:05:19):
asking is she nice? Meaning like, can we steal her soul?
And they banter a bit and he starts asking his mother,
are you jealous? And she says concerned. And by the
end of the scene they are kissing and running up
to the bedroom and then we cut to a shot
from outside the house and there is a neon violet
light pulsing from the bedroom window while a cat looks

(01:05:42):
on from the front yard. Is this weird enough for you, folks?

Speaker 1 (01:05:46):
The cat is like Sleepwalker's confirmed. Please please alert the
others with the assault begins in five days. But yes,
this is so weird and like in you know, intentionally
off putting obviously, you know, engaging in taboos, but also
just very weird for a mainstream even a mainstream horror picture.
It was like the number one picture, like the week

(01:06:08):
it came out, Like.

Speaker 3 (01:06:09):
Oh really, if you already said that, it went by me.
I didn't realize it had been that successful.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it was, you know. I don't
think it was like one of the top blockbusters of
the year or anything, but it was a successful picture.

Speaker 3 (01:06:21):
So next we go to the movie theater to meet Tanya,
and you can see on the marque they're playing two movies.
One is called They Bite and the other is called
Scream Dreams. I feel like you could have worked on
some more creative, funny titles there.

Speaker 1 (01:06:34):
I don't know. I like They Bite, Like I was
trying to figure out what is it about. You think
it's about ticks, about bed bugs. I don't know, the
something bites, or maybe it's something that's not supposed to bite,
like shoes.

Speaker 3 (01:06:46):
Maybe it's about computers with a b iy kind of the.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
And they actually bite, like dis drive floppy drives come
after you, little mounds.

Speaker 3 (01:06:57):
Yeah. So Tanya works at the concess sho stand in
the lobby, and when we first catch up with her,
she's vacuuming the carpet and she's rocking out to do
You Love Me by the contours on her headphones. And
you know, this made me realize I am just a
sucker for a scene where a character who thinks they're
alone dances to music in their headphones. There's a great scene,

(01:07:21):
I guess, especially in a horror movie. There's a great
scene of this in the two thousand and nine ty
West movie House of the Devil, where the main character
dances around a cursed house listening to one thing leads
to another by the fix on her Walkman, I don't
know why, I just I love these scenes. I mean,
I guess particularly in horror, because it like it makes

(01:07:43):
a character endearing to get to witness them having joy,
but the fact that they're listening with the headphones on
makes them vulnerable in a way because they're not aware
of their environment. So at the same time you get
to see them happy and care free, but also in
a kind of danger they're unaware of.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good point. On top of just,
you know, music being a great way to establish something
that your character likes in a way that's wordless, like
here's the music they like. Now you get it, right?
We don't even have to describe it to you.

Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
Yeah, and as we mentioned already, Tanya is I think,
a very easily likable protagonist. Like it's hard to be
on the monster side against Tanya, right, But anyway, while
she's dancing to the contour, she bumps into Charles in
the lobby and she gets a good scare. She like
leaps back into a popcorn stand which has a bunch
of loose boxes of popcorn stored on top, and they

(01:08:38):
still all over the place. She got popcorn hair, Why
would you store the popcorn that way?

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Yeah, they should go in the box, right, there should
be a place to store them in there, so they're warm,
that's what.

Speaker 3 (01:08:46):
You would think. So but of course it's a meat cute.
Charles is again a like one hundred watts super hunk.
So Tanya is immediately smitten and she's very flustered, and
he introduces himself. They talk about how he's new in
town and how they have a creative writing class together
at school. He says, with mister Fallows, the Weird and

(01:09:07):
the Terrible, And this made me think I would like
to draw up a list of Stephen King's stories where
he inserts the character of a bizarre and sometimes evil
creative writing teacher who is obsessed with the macabre, like oh, yes,
you know our fourth period writing workshop with Professor Freevan Fring.

(01:09:28):
And I can't think of other examples right now, but
I have a sense that he does this often, and
it's kind of the opposite of the standard narcissistic author
avatar who can do no wrong. Instead, it's like the
author avatar here is somebody who's really creepy and loathsome hmmm.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
I'd have to go back and think about that. I mean,
obviously there are a lot of author protagonists in his
novels as well, but that's true.

Speaker 3 (01:09:55):
I guess the Shining, yeah, creative writing professor and author
protagonist too, y yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:09:59):
But generally, you know, the Shining being an extreme example
of this. They are off, they're often far from perfect,
yeah there, and they're more they're ultimately kind of like
the Stephen King idea of a working class best selling author,
yeah yes, which is kind of like that's King's image,
Like that's what you kind of think of, is like
like liberal, working man, best selling author, yeah yeah, and

(01:10:22):
professional weirdo.

Speaker 4 (01:10:23):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (01:10:23):
Also, the protagonist in Salem's Lot is an author, that's right,
I don't. I don't think he's a creative writing teacher though.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
Yeah, but then you know, like the Dark Half, that's
another author, one of the kids in it. Sorry I'm
blinking on all their names. One of them is an author. Yeah,
it occurs over and over again.

Speaker 3 (01:10:41):
Anyway, Charles here, he tries to buy a popcorn and
a medium, mister pib but Tanya Tanya like, So he
asked for it to put some money on the counter,
and then Tanya like looks around and she gives it
to him on the house. Oh, she's a lawbreaker and
theater owners watch out, don't Tanya. But Charles claims to

(01:11:02):
have just moved to town from a different place called
Paradise Falls, Ohio. And while I know you cannot actually
tell what state a person is from by looking at them,
Charles is not from Ohio. Do they have surfing in Ohio? Like,
you've never seen somebody who looks as much like a
Beach Boys song as Brian Krause. But anyway, they so

(01:11:26):
they have a conversation, they flirt, and Tanya is is
not being subtle. She's like, Oh, where's your girlfriend? Do
you have a girlfriend? Isn't it weird that we're both
twenty five but still in high school? And he he
offers her a ride home, but she does not accept,
and she says like, oh, I'm getting a ride home
with Lyman ward uh. And also I noticed this weird

(01:11:48):
framing where like, while they're flirting at the concession stand,
there is a huge multicolored sign behind Tanya's head that
says slush. I don't know that's to suggest her her
heart is melting like a lushy. But anyway, after the movie,
Tanya's dad picks her up, and then we see Charles
watching from the shadows outside the theater and he's muttering Tanya,

(01:12:11):
and the Enya starts playing again and the mood gets
very dark, But then it gets weirdly funny again because
Charles walks back home. He's walking up the drive to
the side door, and there's there's a something like a
jump scare, but it's a flashlight scare because a cop
is there collecting stray cats in a big burlap sack.
And Mary comes to the doorway to thank the officer

(01:12:33):
for his help. She says, I would come out and
thank you, but my allergy is so severe and then
the cop says, yeah, I got one too. Mine's the
I R S. What allergic to the I R s? Yuck?

Speaker 4 (01:12:48):
Yuck.

Speaker 3 (01:12:49):
Then then the cop leaves and Charles and Mary have
a debrief like she dwells on the menace of the
gathering cats. Charles reports on his attempt to steal Tanya's
life for he didn't get it yet. So Mary becomes enraged.
She's like, I'm famished, Charles, and she starts swatting at
him like an irritable kitty cat. And then again just

(01:13:10):
more off the charts ediple cat weirdness in this scene.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
So we have teenage characters. We've got to go to
high school. We've got to have some scenes in the school.
And that's where we head to next.

Speaker 3 (01:13:27):
Right, right time to check in on that creative writing
class with mister Fallows, the Weird and Terrible. So today
in class, as luck would have it, Charles is reading
aloud from a short story that he wrote called Sleepwalkers.
I transcribed it because it's good. So this is the story.
He says. They were sleepwalkers hiding in human robes, feeding

(01:13:51):
on virtue, loving to feed, feeding to breed. In the end,
they ran In the end, Robbie and his mother all
always had to run for one night. The men would
come in their old cars, men with lights and guns,
and to the boy and his mother, their curses and
their screams of rage always sound the same, like the

(01:14:12):
laughter of cruel gods. The time of happiness too brief
to be anything, but golden had run out. And I
guess that's the end, and people start clapping. Actually, Tanya
starts clapping alone before everybody else. Despite the fact that
this story seems to be a detailed description of how
Charles plans to eat her soul and then regurgitate it

(01:14:34):
to his mom.

Speaker 1 (01:14:38):
Yeah, yeah, it's like just a straight up confession of
all the crimes that he and his mom have committed.

Speaker 3 (01:14:45):
Ill on their cover A little bit.

Speaker 1 (01:14:48):
Someone with a little better ear for kings pros might
also have some insight here. I wonder if this is
maybe a little insight into what Sleepwalker's the novel by
Stephen King, might have tasted a little bit like.

Speaker 3 (01:15:06):
Maybe, I don't know, it feels a well, I mean,
I guess this is supposed to have been written by
a high schooler, But then again, it was supposed to
have been written by a high schooler who was actually
maybe centuries or millennia old. Yeah, but then again, maybe
it is written. There's like three levels of deception. It
is written by an actual author, but it's supposed to

(01:15:26):
sound like a high schooler, but it's actually an ancient
being who is trying to sound like a high schooler.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
Yeah, wouldn't it be something if this were an actual
snippet from something King wrote as a high schooler. Though,
something that you know, unpublished.

Speaker 3 (01:15:41):
Oh, that would be good, but I remember so mister Follows.
The teacher is played by Glenn Shaddocks from like Beetlejuice
and so Glenn Shaddicks is He's like, very good, mister Brady,
if that is your real name. He's overtly suspicious of
him already. He's like asking him questions about didn't you
say you came from Ohio? And Charles is like what

(01:16:03):
do what? Now?

Speaker 4 (01:16:04):
Where?

Speaker 3 (01:16:06):
But mister Follows, we see he's one of these teachers
who runs his classroom like a petty tyrant. He likes
to swat students with a ruler if he catches them
drawing naughty sketches. And he tells one student, you must
learn to keep your hands to yourself. Remember that. But anyway,
the class goes on to discuss the story. Tanya says

(01:16:28):
that she likes the story. She thinks it's sad because
the sleepwalkers are outsiders. They're always driven away, and this
leads into a moment where mister Follows says, now, we
all understand that a story has to have a beginning,
a middle, and an end, but that's like saying a
box has four sides. And then Charles interrupts him and says, actually,

(01:16:49):
mister fellows, a box has six sides. Ooh, pretty good,
but not only that. Like, the class laughs and one
guy goes busted to the extreme. So mister Follows is
clearly embarrassed and angry now, and so after school we
see him staring out the window at Charles, simmering with rage.

(01:17:11):
He's plotting his revenge. And from here, I guess we
are starting to run a little bit short on time,
so we shoul maybe skip more lightly over the plot
machinations and just focus on some of the highlight scenes.
So there's a scene between Tanya and her friends where
they all talk about how dreamy Charles is, and then
Charles shows up to offer Tanya a ride home in
his trans am. They go to Tanya's house where he

(01:17:34):
walks around her room and he gets to know her
a little bit, like he looks at her photos. She
has a photography hobby. We saw in the yearbook that
she's in the president of the photography club. And there's
one point where they like, look at a black and
white photo of rocks and he says, I like rocks.
There is also a cheesy gag where her room is
essentially made of underwear and she's like running around trying

(01:17:55):
to hide it all before Charles sees it. But Charles
then also meets Tonya's mother, who has a hobby of
her own, gravestone rubbings. I would love to know how
this made it into the story, but gravestone rubbings. And
it comes out to the mother that Charles and Tanya

(01:18:16):
have made plans the following day to go to a
cemetery in town called home Land. This is a big
set piece, so the teenage characters talk about it, and
this is quite at once a red flag to the
mom because it is understood to be the town makeout spot.
But Charles is very smooth. He manages to cover for
them by saying their plan is actually to go there

(01:18:38):
to do grave rubbings, again, the mom's favorite hobby, which
for some reason he knows a lot about. Like she
tries to catch him in a lie, like asking questions
like do you use powder or stick? And I don't
know he knows how to answer that for some reason.

Speaker 1 (01:18:51):
Yeah, yea, there's some rubbing jokes shoehorned in here that
land reasonably well.

Speaker 3 (01:18:57):
Yeah. So after we get the I believe the first
monster murder in the movie, Charles is driving down the
highway just blasting rock music in the trans am when
he is suddenly almost run off the road by someone
in a white Volkswagen, so he pulls over, and why
it is mister Fallows, the creative writing teacher follows comes

(01:19:20):
up and tries to menace Charles by suggesting that he
knows he's using a fake identity and that his transcripts
were forged, and it's implied that he's trying to do
some kind of sexual blackmail against Charles. But Charles turns
the tables and he goes cat mode, so like Glen
Shaddocks is leaning over him, and then Charles rips off

(01:19:42):
his hand gives it back to him and he's like,
you're right, mister Follows. We should learn to keep our
hands to ourselves. Here's yours. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:51):
This is the first of many scenes where we get
to see that the Sleepwalkers can tear human bodies apart
like their well cooked pork at any moment.

Speaker 3 (01:20:00):
Yeah, shredded. Yeah. So I have a question actually about
sleepwalker biology because after this, Glen Shaddocks runs into the
woods and Charles runs after him in cat mode. He's
got a lie in face, and he kills him in
the woods, and it suggests that he eats him, like
where we see from above where Glen Shaddocks is lying

(01:20:20):
on the ground and Charles is above him, like doing
that thing you see in monster movies sometimes where the
monster predator type being is just sort of shaking their
face over the victim's throat. But this implies I think
that Charles eats him, like physically eats his flesh, which
is not what he plans to do to Tanya. Once again,

(01:20:42):
the life force that they are stealing, their planning to
steal from Tanya comes in the form of sucking purple
magic out of her breath, like out through her mouth,
from her lungs. This just seems like he's eating the guy.
And I don't know if they also normally just eat people.

Speaker 1 (01:21:00):
Well, Mom is cooking a chicken dinner later, I believe, Yeah,
they eat regular food.

Speaker 4 (01:21:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:06):
Yeah, So maybe there's like a sustenance for their physical
bodies and then some greater sustenance they require. Another theory
I had is that eventually we see that mom Mary
has additional powers well beyond that of her son, and
it makes one wonder if essentially she is some sort
of an ancient god like being and he is her

(01:21:29):
demi god offspring, or he is her monstrous offspring that
helps her and serves her. But she clearly has some
greater accumulated power, and maybe that's where the need for
souls comes into play.

Speaker 3 (01:21:43):
Oh so what if it's more like the Hunger, Like
she's the Catherine Denov character and Charles is the David
Bowie character.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
Yeah, something like that. I mean, ultimately, it's all monster business,
and we are we're not supposed to understand it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:57):
So the next scene we get. The next big scene
is the police chase, which is great because it's where
we first meet the actor Dan Martin playing Deputy Andy
Simpson and his loyal police cat, Clovis. So when we
first joined them, they are staked out on the highway,
parked beside the edge of the road, playing with one
of those dangle toys, and the coffin is saying, he's like,

(01:22:17):
come on, boy, get the bad guy for daddy, get
that mffort, and Clovis, the cat, is just swatting with
pleasure at the toy and it's adorable.

Speaker 1 (01:22:27):
Yeah, Clovis has a little tag that says what Clovis
the attack cat.

Speaker 3 (01:22:32):
I think that is right. But meanwhile, while they're playing
here in the car, Charles zooms by in his car
at million miles per hour and Deputy Andy joins in
hot pursuit. So this turns into a whole car chase
scene that goes all over the place. So I'm just
gonna mention some elements of it. One is the shredding

(01:22:53):
wee wall guitars to like, never let up. Those are
really good. Another thing is that Charles seems to know
a lot of stunt driving tricks. He's an experienced driver.
And at one point they're like going through a school
bus crossing where children are going across the street, and
you know, they both see that they're approaching this, and

(01:23:15):
Charles like looks at the kids and then just smiles
before revving the engine even harder. Fortunately no children are harmed.
We see like the crossing guard pulls the kid out
of the way before Charles comes through. But it's like
that scene in the Simpsons episode where there's like the
true crime creep movie about Homer starring Dennis Franz, you know,
and the girl goes, no, mister Simpson, a cat is

(01:23:36):
a living creature, Dennis france I don't care.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
I remember that.

Speaker 3 (01:23:40):
Yeah, But anyway, Finally, Deputy Andy pulls up beside Charles
in pursuit, so they're driving beside each other on the road,
and at first Charles just laughs and gives him the finger,
but then Clovis the cat pops up into the window,
and this causes Charles to not only freak out, but
to go into random morphine mode, where he cycles through

(01:24:01):
like a dozen different kinds of heads that he has available,
and the deputy witnesses all of the heads morphine and
he gets weirded out. Rob Just below this in the outline,
I've attached here a selection of some of the heads
he goes through. This is not all of them. He
has like a little boy human head, he has like

(01:24:21):
sort of a kitten head, he has sort of a
lion head, and then he has more kind of weird
gummy rubbery monster creature heads that are a little bit
cat like but also just sort of like gray aliens
with huge black eyes. Then more of a gargoyle head
with big pointy ears like elf ears, then more of
a gargoyle head with a large cranium. It's just all

(01:24:42):
over the place.

Speaker 1 (01:24:43):
It is an amazing sequence, and you can pause it
at any moment and just be enthralled by what you're given. Yeah,
it's like Clovis has jumped to attention. Clovis is like, Dad,
I'm on this. I see what this is. And he's like,
oh crap, I'm busted by the cats. Yes, it freaks out.

Speaker 3 (01:25:00):
It's wonderful. And the deputy witnesses all the heads. He's
weirded out by it. But Charles finally escapes the situation
by pulling off road. And then this is one of
the sleepwalker powers. He can concentrate and do what they
call making himself in the car dim So sleepwalkers have
the power to turn themselves and their vehicles invisible.

Speaker 1 (01:25:24):
This is kind of a callback to King's book Eyes
with the Dragon, in which there is an invisibility spell
that one of the characters utilizes. And it's just I
don't know if he uses dim in that description, but
there's this. He has a nice description of how it
doesn't completely make you invisible, but kind of yeah, makes
you dim and people miss you and all here though

(01:25:47):
it is visually just the car straight up turns invisible.

Speaker 3 (01:25:50):
And then afterwards he's able to transform it into a
different kind of car. It's like a different color and
different model.

Speaker 1 (01:25:57):
I have more questions about that, the car transformation. But
we get that scene where Simpson pulls off the road
he thinks he's lost him, but of course Clovis sees him.
Clovis is staring right at the car. The invisibility trick
does not work on the Feeline Ancient enemies of the Sleepwalkers.

Speaker 3 (01:26:16):
And Charles is yelling at the cat. He's like, get
out of your cat.

Speaker 1 (01:26:20):
But we get a great shot here at Clovis in
the window of the squad car with the with the shotgun.
You know how they store the shotgun in the squad car,
like pointing up right behind it. It really looks like
Officer Clovis is on the on the job here. I
love it.

Speaker 3 (01:26:35):
Yeah, So some big scenes in the movie after this.
Of course, there's the scene where Charles and Tanya have
their date to go to the cemetery. So they're going
off to homeland, and the date starts off very flirty
and fun, but of course at some point it's gonna
have to to turn evil, and so there at one

(01:26:56):
point they start kissing, and then Charles just suddenly begins
sucking her soul out, and he shifts very abruptly from
his charming mode and maybe kind of a subtle menacing
charm just into full late Elm Street sequel Freddy Krueger
mode where he's making jokes like he's like, it doesn't
have to hurt Tanya. Okay, I lied, it does have

(01:27:17):
to hurt.

Speaker 1 (01:27:19):
Yeah, And this whole sequence feels very out of keeping
with where everywhere we'd gone thus far. Yeah, there was this.
There was a great scene but shortly before this where
where we go by we go by the house and
Tanya meets Mary, and I rather liked that sequence where
Mary's being like almost overtly hostile to her and like

(01:27:43):
brandishing these big scissors and all. And at that point
my wife watched part of this with me. She'd seen
it back in the day, and she was like, well,
why don't they just eat her soul? Here? Like, now's
the time? Good question, It is a great question. I
think this is ultimately a plot hole. I guess if
you're being generous, you might say, well, it has to
come from maybe their feeding has to come from a

(01:28:03):
place of seduction. But that only seems initially meat.

Speaker 3 (01:28:08):
To use a term from it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:09):
Maybe if that is true, it seems to be only
initially true because in this whole sequence with the Freddy
Krueger ing and the chasing around, like he's just overtly
attacking her. Yeah, and it seems like any necessity of
seduction is just completely out the window.

Speaker 3 (01:28:24):
And he's making jokes about it. That's the Freddy Krugery thing.
Like she she defends herself, like she repeatedly wounds Charles
as they fight, but he just kind of keeps popping
back up. At one point, she stabs him in the
eye with a cork scull. Oh yes, yes, and then
he falls down and then he and then he goes
just look at my shirt, Tanya, mother is gonna kill me.

Speaker 1 (01:28:45):
Yeah? Where did this all come from?

Speaker 3 (01:28:47):
Yeah? But here in this scene we we get a
payback where Deputy Andy Simpson and Clovis turn up once again.
They show up to the rescue, they notice the blue
trans am parked outside of the terry and they arrive
on the scene Deputy and he tries to help Tanya,
but unfortunately Charles shows up and stabs him in the

(01:29:08):
ear with a pencil I think the pencil they were
going to use to do the grave rubbings, and then
declares him a cop kebob because I guess there's a
stick running through Yeah, okay, it's unfortunate, But remember that
sleepwalkers are vulnerable to the deadly scratch of a cat,
and so also in the scene, Clovis comes to the rescue,

(01:29:29):
he attacks Charles, scratching him and this seems to sort
of drain Charles's power to heal himself and drains his resiliency.
He desperately flees the scene in his car, going back
home to his mother and she takes care of his wounds.

Speaker 1 (01:29:44):
Oh and we get that heartbreaking scene though I Clovis
comes over to his dead Master and sits on Deputy
Simpson's chest. And it's in this moment that Clovis swears
eternal vengeance against Sleepwalkers, like it was his aim duty
as a cat to kill sleep walker's previously, but now
it is personal.

Speaker 3 (01:30:04):
The cat morning scene, I was genuinely moved. And it
comes right after kap Kebab.

Speaker 1 (01:30:09):
Yeah. So at this point our monster has been Beowulf.
He has been brutally injured by Tanya and by Clovis,
and like Grendel in the story of Beowulf, returns home to.

Speaker 3 (01:30:29):
The lair, right, So in the aftermath of the attack,
this is probably the place we should mention that there
are just tons of cameos, like all of the author
and Horror World cameos of people showing up I guess
at the crime scene. So this is where you get
Stephen King wandering around telling everybody like, look, I'm not
responsible for every pervert who comes in this cemetery. I

(01:30:51):
don't need this kind of action.

Speaker 1 (01:30:53):
Yeah, and let's see who else do we get in
this scene. I believe Clive Barker is on the case
as a forensic.

Speaker 3 (01:31:00):
Yes, yeah, well.

Speaker 1 (01:31:03):
You know, Stephen King once said I have seen the
Future of horror, and his name is Clive Barker, so
you know here he is Mary. Yeah, indeed, I believe
Toby Hooper is also on the case. Here is another
forensic tech.

Speaker 3 (01:31:15):
Amazing.

Speaker 1 (01:31:16):
Yeah, and let's see, I'm trying. I think we we're
going to get a couple of more later, but I'll
go ahead and mention them.

Speaker 3 (01:31:23):
Now.

Speaker 1 (01:31:23):
We're gonna get a scene later where we're you know,
doing the autopsis and so you know, lab technician work,
and that's where we're going to get lab technician John Landis.
We're going to get lab assistant Joe Dante, and we're
also going to get Cynthia Garris, who is of course
Mike Garris's wife.

Speaker 3 (01:31:41):
Crammon so much in So Fast And also I think
the you know, ninety nine percent of the people who
see these movies would not have recognized who these people were.

Speaker 1 (01:31:50):
Right, this is this was for the horror fans. I
think this is for the horror geeks. I mean, honestly,
I didn't even recognize Clive Barker at first, and I
was on the lookout for him so young in this
I'm just not used to seeing him this yet.

Speaker 3 (01:32:03):
Yeah. Okay, so here we're accelerating toward the ending. So
the movie concludes basically with Mary turning into Grendel's mom
and going on a revenge to her. She decides to
go to the Robertson home for revenge and to bring
Tanya back so that she and Charles can both feed

(01:32:24):
on Tanya. But the scene where she attacks the Robertson
home this is also one of these crazy tonal whiplash
scenes because you get like, oh, you know, parents grieving
for like their child being in danger, like this consciousness
of the mortality of their child and their child suffering,
and it's I don't know, it's like a horrible thing

(01:32:44):
to imagine, and it's really tender the way the movie
deals with those kind of relationships. But then also Mary
shows up and starts stabbing people to death with a
corn cob and saying like, no vegetables, no dessert. It's
just off the wall.

Speaker 1 (01:32:58):
But again, Alice Kreega is so good that I still
I buy it. I lap it all up.

Speaker 3 (01:33:04):
This is also the part of the movie where we
meet Ron Pearlman, and Ron Pearlman tries to stop Alice
Kriega from fleeing the scene and kidnapping Tanya, but she
thwarts him by biting off his fingers and he screams
in pain. And then there is an amazing moment where
she takes I think is Ron Pearlman's revolver and then

(01:33:27):
shoots the police cars so they explode in a fireball,
each one bullet fireball.

Speaker 1 (01:33:33):
She one shots each of the cop cars, just a
perfect Marksman full terminator mode, like we said.

Speaker 3 (01:33:40):
Yeah, So Mary kidnaps Tanya, takes her back to Casa
Day Sleepwalker, where the cats have amassed in great, great numbers.
Now they're overwhelming presence of cats outside, and Mary comes
up with a clever way to get insight because otherwise
she'd have to go through the yard and there are
too many cats. So she drives the police car that
they stole through the wall into the house and then

(01:34:03):
takes Tanya inside. She's trying to get the weak wounded
Charles to suck out Tanya's soul, but the monsters are
foiled yet again, this time by a combination of cop
and cat. The one cop left, the sheriff that basically
the the one non comedy relief cop shows up and
is like trying to help. He blows off the door

(01:34:23):
and comes in to interfere. Of course Mary ends up
skewering him on the picket fence outside. But also the cats.
It's just too much cats. Now, they can't overcome the
power of cats and the cats. The cats win the day.

Speaker 1 (01:34:37):
The cats have decided that critical mass have been reached.
Clovis is here. Clovis leads the charge in through I
believe one of the upstairs windows. Yeah, and they're surging
in before she can the soul suck, before the you know,
the partial resurrection can be achieved. And yeah, this is
where we learn where we learned this already, but now

(01:34:57):
we get to see it in action, that cats, when
they're clawing, especially in great number at the sleepwalkers, their
cuts like actually cause burns to the sleepwalker's flesh.

Speaker 3 (01:35:09):
Yes, like in the scratch through at the text at
the beginning. Yeah, And so in the end, Tanya escapes
the scene with Clovis in the police car as the
last of the sleepwalkers go up in flames from all
of the cat scratches. They've got cat scratch fever very bad.
And so yeah, they drive away, or they don't drive away.

(01:35:31):
She actually like backs the car up into a tree,
so they drive away by about fifty feet and then
she's just sitting in the car with Clovis. In the
last line of the movie is Tanya saying, it's just
you and me now, Clovis.

Speaker 1 (01:35:45):
Oh man, so good, so good. I loved ever been
of this film, even more bonkers than I remember. It's
got some very fun performances in it. Lots of cat action. Yeah,
don't listen to the critics from the early nineties. They
didn't know what they had.

Speaker 3 (01:36:03):
Any more business to address about sleepwalkers before we wrap
it up today.

Speaker 1 (01:36:07):
Oh man, I don't know. We probably didn't do the
terminator rampage complete justice because it is just it just
comes out of nowhere and then it doesn't stop. Yes,
and yeah, the corn cob stabbing, picket fencing, finger eating.
There's a lot of cool telekinesis and her you think
that her son is dead and she's like, you must
dance with him, and she's going to, like, at first,

(01:36:30):
it seems like she's gonna telekinetically resurrect him and just
kind of puppet him around and make her dance with him.
But then he revives to some extent. So there's a
lot of a lot of Stephen Kingsey horror packed into
those last twenty minutes or so.

Speaker 3 (01:36:44):
Yeah, they kind of When she first shows up and
is like trying to make Charles dance with her, it's
kind of Texas chainsaw like Grandpa was a one hitter
kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, but no, I think Charles
is still alive. They kind of they're kind of faking
her out. Right. He does sort of end up sucking
the purple juice out.

Speaker 1 (01:37:03):
I mean I feel like he's about dead.

Speaker 3 (01:37:05):
Yeah, he is about dead.

Speaker 1 (01:37:06):
Yeah, but a little soul sucking would fix things if
they were able to pull it off. But thankfully they
are not able to do so.

Speaker 3 (01:37:15):
Tanya keeps her soul and gains a new friend in Clovis. Yeah,
unclear if her to be a little morbid, if her
family is still alive. I don't think they resolved. Her
parents are at least what.

Speaker 1 (01:37:28):
They did not. Yeah, we didn't get a clear I
think we see Dad is still breathing. Mom is like
in a heap on in the front yard. Who knows. Yeah,
it's possible that some some cats came in to like
lick them back into back to health, you know, because
the cats are on the case that's possible.

Speaker 3 (01:37:45):
Oh, they can't say. If you've ever seen Catwoman with
Halle Berry, cats can save you from mortal wounds by
sort of climbing up on you and breathing in your face.

Speaker 1 (01:37:54):
It's close enough. I'll accept it. Yeah, I guess my
hope here Clovis survives, Tanya survives. I think what happens
clearly is that Tanya is going to go on to
coach a women's basketball team and Clovis is going to
be the mascot, and somewhere out there in the world
there is one more surviving Sleepwalker, and that sleepwalker wants revenge.

(01:38:18):
I don't know where the rest goes. We'll have to
ask Tabitha King about that, but I want to see it.

Speaker 3 (01:38:23):
That's good though. I thought you were going to say
Tanya becomes like Buffy the vampire Slayer, but the Sleepwalker
slayer she has to hunt them all around. I guess
in Buffy they always come to her. They come to
her town, don't they.

Speaker 1 (01:38:35):
Yeah? Yeah, I mean it works out like they were
over hell Mouth, so it makes sense. All right, Well,
that is Stephen King's Sleepwalkers. Obviously, we'd love to hear
from everyone out there regarding this film, but also Stephen
King movies in general. What are some of your favorites,
do you have some guilty pleasures and so forth. All
of that is fair game. We like to remind everyone

(01:38:57):
out there that stuff to blow your mind is primarily
AIS and Culture podcast with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
On Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on
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(01:39:20):
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Speaker 3 (01:39:31):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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