From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Apr 21 10:43:08 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:601 rec.arts.sf.reviews:70 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!palantir.p.tvt.se!malmo.trab.se!kth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!wupost!think.com!mips!pacbell.com!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: SLEEPWALKERS Summary: r.a.m.r. #01323 Keywords: author=Rauser Message-ID: <1992Apr15.144244.13106@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Date: 15 Apr 92 14:42:44 GMT Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Reply-To: rauser@fraser.sfu.ca (Richard John Rauser) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada Lines: 121 Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com [Followups directed to rec.arts.movies. -Moderator] SLEEPWALKERS A film review by Rick J. Rauser Copyright 1992 Rick J. Rauser I know, I know. Stephen King on the screen = two hour groans. But there *were* exceptions: THE SHINING. MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE (no flames! I know everyone hated it but me!). MISERY. PET SEMATARY. And considering the fact that SLEEPWALKERS was written "expressly for the screen" I had hopes. High hopes. They came a-tumblin' down. What makes this film such an abysmal failure are two main weaknesses: (1) It is a *stupid* film. (2) Nothing in the film is ever explained to the audience (gee, this is sounding like BASIC INSTINCT all over again). Before I begin to sound like an unintelligent reviewer, let me explain. Point 1: This film is stupid. It's that simple. SLEEPWALKERS is a silly story. Without giving away anything that happens (though I really should to prevent anyone from seeing this piece of garbage) let me give you a few tidbits: savage cat-people called "sleepwalkers" (we don't know why) come into town. They are terrified of cats (we have no clue why) and to survive they suck "energy" (my best guess) from "pure, untainted" virgins (again, we have no clue why). There are two sleepwalkers in the film, a mother and son. They have an incestuous relationship. (We don't know why and don't *want* to know. This is typical King-esque grotesqueness ... usually effective. But this time it doesn't wash). The son is infatuated with a cute high school girl (staring at this girl is the only thing I salvaged out of the two hours...that and seeing Mark Hamill in a short scene in the beginning of the movie) and tries to kill her. Does he succeed? Gee, take your best guess. SLEEPWALKERS is agonizingly cliched. We have scary Sixties "horror" music every time one of the sleepwalkers appears on screen (I keep cursing CAPE FEAR for reviving that style of score) and the film bombards us with ridiculous dialogue such as: Mother Sleepwalker: Do you love me? Son Sleepwalker: Of course. Mother Sleepwalker: Are you going to get her? (the virgin girl) Son Sleepwalker: Tomorrow. Mother Sleepwalker: (licking her lips). Good. I'm SOOO hungry. The problem is that Stephen King expects us to take this tripe *seriously*. As a spoof on horror films this would work fine. But the audience laughs nervously and/or with embarrassment as they realize that this is intended as a bona fide horror movie. Scenes such as the one above are actually suppose to *scare& us. Trust me, they don't. This film slips into absurdity with the sleepwalkers' fear of cats. Cats are drawn to the sleepwalkers until by the end of the film there are about one hundred cats lounging around their home and yard (again we have no explanation for this and by this time we don't want one). This is supposed to be eerie, to be scary. The cats are supposed to be a premonition of doom, a symbol of bizarre cosmic justice (remember the cats in PET SEMATARY and CAT'S EYE?). The problem is that real cats are much less scary than the hissing demonic felines portrayed in the movie poster. MUCH less. Each time the audience saw this swarm of cats at the sleepwalkers' home, we laughed. It just looked funny and cute. When the cats attacked the sleepwalkers, jumping at them screaming MEEEEOWWW! (this happens throughout the film) we laughed even harder. It looked like something from an Archie comic or a bad sitcom. There was nothing scary about it. How's this for intelligent dialogue? Son sleepwalker in his trans am offers a ride home to beautiful high school girl. He jumps in the car without opening the door. Girl: You know, some people use doors (smiling). Boy: Do they? I've heard that. Girl: Have you? (smiling). Mere words cannot describe how bad the acting in this film is and how unbelievable the characters are. SLEEPWALKERS is a study in bad acting, bad characterization, and *bad* dialogue, things that King is a master at in his novels. Why does it translate so badly to the screen? I wish I knew. I almost forgot to mention: the sleepwalkers can alter their appearance as well as their surroundings (they can turn invisible and change a car from a Mustang to a Trans Am). Again, *this is never explained*. Aside from the horrible acting, I think that this is SLEEPWALKERS' main flaw. It makes no sense. Point 2: We are given so many little clues and hints and suggestions about these strange creatures with their strange powers and incestuous relationship (yes, we actually see mother and son in bed) yet we are never told about their origins, their background, their history ... it's like the last half of the film was chopped out. Stephen King has a very short cameo which is quite humorous (this time the humor is intentional) and as I said earlier, Mark Hamill is in the first five minutes of this film as a Sheriff in the town the sleepwalkers were last in. It's neat seeing Luke Skywalker. It's also nice looking at the high school girl almost killed by the sleepwalkers. Horrible acting aside, she has a beautiful smile. In the above paragraph I outlined the good things about this film. Everything else is bad. Score another turkey for Stephen King. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would have no choice but to give SLEEPWALKERS a 0. It is boring, confusing, laughable, *un*-scary, and decidedly *un*-interesting. I can say with all honesty that this film has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Not only was I kicking and screaming when the credits rolled for the loss of my eight dollars, but I also felt cheated of two hours of my life, two hours I will never get back. In short, SLEEPWALKERS is a horrible disappointment. It's one of those films that is so bad the viewer is amazed. Did the producers actually think this film would be scary? Did they think people would like it? I can say with all honesty that having suffered through this film, I cannot imagine the answer to that question being yes. -- Richard J. Rauser rauser@sfu.ca From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Apr 21 10:43:10 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:602 rec.arts.sf.reviews:71 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!palantir.p.tvt.se!malmo.trab.se!kth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!wupost!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: v062nm65@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Chris J. Randall) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: SLEEPWALKERS Summary: r.a.m.r. #01324 Keywords: author=Randall Message-ID: <1992Apr15.144310.13178@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Date: 15 Apr 92 14:43:10 GMT Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Reply-To: v062nm65@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Chris J. Randall) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 86 Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com [Followups directed to rec.arts.movies. -Moderator] SLEEPWALKERS [**Spoilers**] A film review by Chris J. Randall Copyright 1992 Chris J. Randall For those of you who don't wish to be spoiled (although not that bad), leave now... Stephen King's track record is once again affirmed with his latest film, SLEEPWALKERS. *sigh* I don't think that I've ever left a movie feeling so disappointed. This movie had such potential, but every chance they had was wasted on something trivial.... The acting, in general, was decent. Unfortunately, they spent no time on any real character development, which I think caused the film to lose a lot. The main characters were competent, and in some cases good. There just simply was no reason to care about what they were doing most of the time. What the hell are these "Sleepwalker" things? They give us a definition in the beginning, but we get no other explanation other than what we figure out on our own. We don't know where they came from, why they were the way they were, or how they became these things. If they had given fifteen minutes of the film to explain their origin, it would have added much needed depth to the film. Instead, we're left to make up our own theories about the Sleepwalkers. The effects were good, and in some cases, outstanding. Granted, they weren't up to T-2 standards (what is?), but some things were very eye-catching. The car transformation scenes stand out, as well as the morphing of the faces. Would someone mind explaining what they were siphoning out of the victims? Not a very efficient means of draining someone's "life force" if all they had to do to stop it was close their mouth. The only bad effect were those using the cats. It was so painfully obvious that some parts weren't real, and it looked as if they just didn't care. They were capable of good cat effects, as witnessed by when the mother caught the cat in mid-air and snapped it in half. At times, the whole thing reminded me of an extended "Toonces the driving cat" skit on SNL, except SNL's cat is a little more realistic. Holy inconsistencies, Batman! The biggest one in the whole film was the story -- actually, there wasn't much that could be called a story. Like I said before -- there was no background for any of the characters, and points were brought up that could have provided interest, but were quickly dropped. The make a reference to other "Sleepwalkers" around, but they never go any further. Also, the origins would have been interesting, but once again, nothing was said. When the kid gets shot in the back by the cop, notice the placement of the bullet wound. Later, when the kid crawls into his house, look at his back -- no wound of any kind. Just plain sloppy. I'm not sure what Stephen King wanted this to be billed as. From what I've seen and heard, this is just supposed to be horror. The crowd didn't take it as such. There was more laughter in that theatre than I've heard in movies labeled as "comedies." There are so many moments when we weren't supposed to laugh, but the whole thing was so ridiculous, we couldn't help it. I mean, when the majority of the theatre starts chanting the cat's name when it appears, you know something's wrong. (I've never seen a cat so strong that it could get into a house by breaking a window... :) All I can say is that I'm glad I saw it for free. Even so, I still feel a bit cheated. King is capable of good stuff, and with a few simple changes in character development and story development, this could have been a really good movie. The potential was *there*, but they failed to capitalize on it. King has no excuses like "Well, it didn't carry over well from the novel." He's responsible for it and has no one to blame but himself. At most, I'd say that this movie is worth matinee prices. If you really want to see it, wait till it hits the $1.50 theatres. At least we got to see previews of LETHAL WEAPON 3 (Looks Great), ALIEN 3 (Looks Great), and BATMAN RETURNS (Looks Great, but I don't know...). Hmmm. I do believe that I'm going to be going to the movies quite a bit this summer.... :) Chris From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Apr 21 10:43:17 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:604 rec.arts.sf.reviews:73 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!palantir.p.tvt.se!malmo.trab.se!kth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!wupost!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu (Brian L. Johnson) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: SLEEPWALKERS Summary: r.a.m.r. #01326 Keywords: author=K.Johnson Message-ID: <1992Apr15.144421.13400@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Date: 15 Apr 92 14:44:21 GMT Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Reply-To: blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu (Brian L. Johnson) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies Organization: ? Lines: 57 Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com [Followups directed to rec.arts.movies. -Moderator] SLEEPWALKERS A film review by Ken Johnson Copyright 1992 Ken Johnson 100 min., R, Horror, 1992 Director: Mick Garris Cast: Brian Krause, Alice Krige, Madchen Amick, Stephen King Note: Sleepwalkers are "people" who are only half-human. They need to feed on human female virgins. Brian Krause is the new kid in town. He goes to the local high school and he gets to know beautiful, but unpopular, Madchen Amick. Unfortunately for Madchen Amick, Brian Krause is a Sleepwalker who needs to feed and help feed his mother Alice Krige or she will die. SLEEPWALKERS is a relatively good horror film. It gets a bit strange in some places, and the film gets very unrealistic at times, but is still fun to watch. The film is sometimes gory which will deter some people from the film. You could definitely do worse than this film, although I don't know whether to recommend that you see this film in the theater. You may be better off waiting to see SLEEPWALKERS when it comes to video. On a scale of zero to five, I give SLEEPWALKERS a four. SLEEPWALKERS is rated R for explicit language, adult situations, and graphic violence. I saw SLEEPWALKERS on opening night (Friday) and it is not at all what I was expecting. The advertisements that I saw for the film painted a different picture in my head of what the film was going to be like. Sure, I liked SLEEPWALKERS, but it was nowhere near as good as I was hoping it was going to be. By now, I have come to expect a certain amount from the films whose screenplay is written by Stephen King (films based on Stephen King films written by someone else are totally unpredictable as to how good they will be, so I don't expect too much out of them). This is definitely a low for him. From what I have heard, MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE is *really* bad, so evidently this is not Stephen King's worst screenplay (then again he didn't direct this film). SLEEPWALKERS is the first full feature film that Stephen King has written exclusively for the screen. I feel the main problem with the film is that it does get very unbelievable at some points. Personally, that detracted from my enjoyment of the film. And, for those interested, Stephen King has a cameo part as the caretaker of a graveyard. BASIC INSTINCT has stirred up some controversy on it's portrayal of lesbians and bisexuals. Well, SLEEPWALKERS may unearth some trouble with the portrayal of incest between Brian Krause and his mother Alice Krige. This seemed to really disturb some of the people in the theater, so will be likely to offend others. If you feel that this may offend you, don't go to see the film. There are plenty of other good films playing that you can see instead. Ken J. blj@mithrandir.cs.unh.edu From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Apr 21 10:43:19 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:605 rec.arts.sf.reviews:74 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!palantir.p.tvt.se!malmo.trab.se!kth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!wupost!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: greg@dworkin.wustl.edu (Gregory D. Peterson) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: SLEEPWALKERS Summary: r.a.m.r. #01327 Keywords: author=Peterson Message-ID: <1992Apr15.150728.14171@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Date: 15 Apr 92 15:07:28 GMT Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Reply-To: greg@dworkin.wustl.edu (Gregory D. Peterson) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies Organization: Washington University, St Louis MO Lines: 56 Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com [Followups directed to rec.arts.movies. -Moderator] SLEEPWALKERS [**Spoilers**] A film review by Gregory D. Peterson Copyright 1992 Gregory D. Peterson Well, a group of us just returned from a sneak preview of Stephen King's newest, and I have to say that it was quite memorable. For those that keep track, the movie has Brian Krause, Madchen Amick, and Alice Krige "starring" in it. After seeing the movie, I am impressed by how brave they were to let their names be associated with this movie. A quick summary of the movie: a shape-changing mother and son team have moved to a little town in Indiana for some lunch. Of course, the sweet, innocent virgin (tm) is to be the main course. The plot is peppered with lots of chases, deaths, and helpless screaming by our heroine, the virgin. Pretty much your average horror fare, except for the ridiculous plot. We laughed at the first scene, and quite a bit more as it progressed. Indeed, the whole audience was roaring as we approached the climax. I have to point out that I got to see it for free, and it was worth every penny. Given Stephen King's recent track record, I was not expecting much, but I am glad I saw it. Everyone had a great time, but we might have cried if we had paid full price. We all decided that it deserved two thumbs up, so I heartily recommend it - but only at matinee prices. If you can wait for cable or rentals (shouldn't take long), then all the better. This movie is a great parody - I'm just not sure that it was intended to be. Spoilers follow: SLEEPWALKERS had a multitude of silly scenes. We knew we were in for a great time when the opening credits featured dozens of mangled feline carcasses decorating a house. As they entered the house, one of the cops noticed that someone sure didn't like cats. Funny enough, but that seemed to be the central plot of the movie. I can't really say which scenes were the best. There were some classics, like the incest/animal sex scene. And I have to credit King with the most creative death in a long time: death by corn-holing. If you don't like cats, you'll enjoy watching a number of them meet their maker. King had a cameo as the keeper of a graveyard whose aimless wandering evoked images of the director (Mick Garris) wandering about, attempting to salvage some semblance of a horror movie from this faulted work. People say that Stephen King writes a new book every week. Based on SLEEPWALKERS, I think he's decided to cut back his efforts. SLEEPWALKERS is so bad that it is worth seeing. Just don't pay much. -- --greg greg@wucs1.wustl.edu Greg Peterson From rec.arts.sf.reviews Tue Apr 21 10:43:13 1992 Xref: herkules.sssab.se rec.arts.movies.reviews:603 rec.arts.sf.reviews:72 Path: herkules.sssab.se!isy!liuida!sunic!palantir.p.tvt.se!malmo.trab.se!kth.se!eru.mt.luth.se!bloom-beacon!micro-heart-of-gold.mit.edu!wupost!uwm.edu!linac!att!cbnewsj!ecl From: sbb@panix.com (The Phantom) Newsgroups: rec.arts.movies.reviews,rec.arts.sf.reviews Subject: REVIEW: SLEEPWALKERS Summary: r.a.m.r. #01325 Keywords: author=Phantom Message-ID: <1992Apr15.144350.13284@cbnewsj.cb.att.com> Date: 15 Apr 92 14:43:50 GMT Sender: ecl@cbnewsj.cb.att.com (Evelyn C. Leeper) Reply-To: sbb@panix.com (The Phantom) Followup-To: rec.arts.movies Organization: ? Lines: 214 Approved: ecl@cbnewsj.att.com [Followups directed to rec.arts.movies. -Moderator] SLEEPWALKERS A review in the public domain by The Phantom (sbb@panix.com) The Phantom hardly knows where to start. He supposes that he should begin by pointing out that SLEEPWALKERS is not still another in a long line of perfectly awful Stephen King adaptations, in part because Stephen King apparently wrote the original screenplay himself. And in part because it is not, in fact, perfectly awful. It's only imperfectly awful, which is certainly a step in the right direction, coming as SLEEPWALKERS does fast on the heels of THE LAWNMOWER MAN, yet another spiritless, insipid, King-inspired horror film in the grand tradition of CHILDREN OF THE CORN and MAXIMUM OVERDRIVE. In fact, in many ways, SLEEPWALKERS is really quite good, although it hardly qualifies as a horror classic. Or a good Stephen King tale. Or even a film that's worth going too far out of your way to see. By now, many phans will have read the early reviews in the Usenet movies newsgroups and concluded from the sheer uniformity of their recommendations that SLEEPWALKERS isn't worth their time, and that they would be better off spending their $7.50 on that new and rather frighteningly politically correct animated film about rain forests. After all, although SLEEPWALKERS features gore galore -- a surprising amount of it, considering that it's a major studio release -- it does not as well feature the twin bonuses of seeing Sharon Stone naked every 5 minutes and Michael Douglas walk around without any pants on. Fiscally prudent filmgoers are always looking to get the most for their money, and in this respect SLEEPWALKERS doesn't even come close to more socially acceptable films like BASIC INSTINCT. However, this is not to say that SLEEPWALKERS is entirely without merit (observant phans will note that saying that a film is not entirely without merit is among the highest praise the Phantom has ever lavished on a King adaptation, MISERY excepted). It may in fact be most enjoyable to those phans who can spot all the other films that get ripped off (or are paid homage to, if you -- like Brian DePalma -- prefer to think of it in slightly more civil terms); certainly that was one of the reasons the Phantom had a fairly good time throughout most of the film. And the ripoffs come fast and furious, starting with BLUE VELVET and continuing with, among others, NEAR DARK, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, THE SHINING, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and LIFEFORCE. And those are just the ones that come to mind as the Phantom writes this paragraph; chances are that another half dozen will occur to him before he finishes this review. The story, such as it is, revolves a mother and son family of "sleepwalkers," a race of beings the film helpfully defines for us as perhaps the forerunners of those creatures we call vampires. They, like vampires, need human blood to remain forever young; however, unlike vampires they don't mind daylight, don't have to sleep in coffins, and tend to hang around cemeteries only if they're on a date or having a picnic. And they're deathly afraid of cats. (That's with a lowercase "c," rather than "Cats" the Broadway show; the Phantom can sympathize with both fears, though only because he suffers from occasional cat hair-induced allergies and is not otherwise predisposed to like animals who deposit dead rodents on one's bed. And Andrew Lloyd Weber's perpetual-money-machine still gives him the chills whenever he passes it on his way to some form of entertainment that doesn't require grown adults to look like living outtakes from THE WIZARD OF OZ.) Why they should be so afraid of cats is -- like so many other things -- never adequately explained by King's near-illiterate script. Yet because Mick Garris (the director) keeps the film rolling along, we don't generally have time to think about its seemingly endless supply of absurdities. In fact, Garris does about as well as can be expected from any director given the material with which he had to work; the Phantom was pleasantly surprised at the number of Raimi-esque touches throughout the film, and he is heartened to think that directors other than Sam Raimi, Brian DePalma, the Coen brothers and Stanley Kubrick may occasionally try camera angles other than those approved by the television networks for their ever-so-inventive movie-of-the-week presentations. (With luck, we'll see something else from Mr. Garris sometime soon; with hope, it will be something with a significantly better screenplay.) We are also treated to "discount morphing" every 10 minutes or so, presumably because the film's budget could not justify even more morphing than that. "Morphing," as those who follow the special effects industry, watch Michael Jackson's videos, or have seen TERMINATOR 2 -- that is, presumably everyone in the world -- know, is the less-impressive-with-every-viewing effect that shows one object smoothly transforming into another. For example, imagine the auditorium in a theater showing SLEEPWALKERS on successive Friday nights: if seen in fast motion, the appearance would be of a room growing steadily more and more empty, as a packed house on opening night smoothly transforms into a near-empty auditorium just two weeks later. (In fact, the Phantom suspects that the theater manager at the Loews Astor Plaza in New York City -- one of the largest theaters on the east coast -- will have a pretty good feel for the delightful "morphing" effect by the end of April, as he counts the days until the May 15th release of LETHAL 3 will again allow him to fill the 1000 seats in his theater.) As if that weren't enough, we also get a healthy dose of splatter as people's hands are ripped off, fingers are chewed off, arms and necks are lacerated by knives and glass, eardrums are pierced and bodies are set on fire; apparently the MPAA has fled the country after having given BASIC INSTINCT their seal of approval for our nation's ever-impressionable youth and no one is minding the censorship store. (Hint to George Romero: re-edit and -release your DEAD films ASAP and see if the MPAA will give them a pass this time around if you throw in a naked bisexual bleached blonde or two. After all, cannibalism, ice-pick murders -- what's the difference, really, as long as it's between consenting adults?) The Phantom is, of course, the last to mourn our nation's moral disintegration, and far be it for him to complain that a film has perhaps one too many scenes of someone losing a body part; still, for a film that is advertised in such a wholesome way and has so many attempts at levity scattered throughout it to descend to point where it feels it must swing half-cats at the screen -- the Phantom supposes he should consider himself fortunate that SLEEPWALKERS wasn't filmed in headache-inducing "Freddy-Vision" -- well something seems just a little amiss. What's amiss, as it turns out, is apparently a coherent story, or at least one that's not filled with so many plot holes that the filmmakers feel they must resort to every horror cliche in the book to compensate. The biggest problem, as the Phantom has already mentioned, is the film's atrocious script, a problem that must be laid directly at the feet of the master of horror himself, a man who with SLEEPWALKERS can't seem to keep himself focused on a single, tellable tale. Although 100-page-long digressions are always welcome in the context of King's cinder-block-shaped novels, they simply do not belong in a film that is only 90 minutes long. And the answer is not to make the film even longer; instead, the answer is to confine oneself as a writer or director to a single story idea that can be told well on film. This is something that Kathryn Bigelow did to perfection with her excellent first feature, NEAR DARK, a film which will likely remain the final word on modern retellings of the vampire legend for quite some time; it's also a film that is "paid homage to" throughout SLEEPWALKERS. Unfortunately, the effect of this is to make us wish we'd taken our $7.50 to Blockbusters and rented NEAR DARK instead of using it to encourage Stephen King to write still more bad screenplays and collaborate in yet another disappointing horror film. King's script veers all over the place, from allusions to BLUE VELVET and NEAR DARK to wholesale ripoffs of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (the Phantom counted 2 complete scenes that were lifted directly from John Landis' far superior film, and he was hardly paying attention most of the time), and along the way King has his characters behaving in the most ridiculous and unlikely ways imaginable. Going on a first date with the mysterious but charming new boy in town? Why not have a picnic at Homestead Cemetery, apparently your staid Midwestern town's version of lovers' lane? Trapped in your home by hundreds of extremely domesticated and unthreatening-looking house cats? Why not avoid at all costs the acquisition of 6 large Dobermans, each of whom could eat a dozen of those cats for lunch without working up a sweat, in favor of a single ineffectual bear trap? And on and on; it's almost as if King were saying to us, "I have no respect at all for your intelligence, so I'll just have my characters do the most expedient thing possible to move my screenplay forward." The shame of it is that in his novels, King takes the trouble to give his characters something at least resembling motivation, and in general he doesn't have them behave like complete idiots most of the time. His screenplays, however, have been uniformly contemptuous of the audience; either that, or he doesn't take writing for the screen as seriously as he does writing for the New York Times best seller list. SLEEPWALKERS also suffers from a bad case of Freddy-itis (the tendency to crack wise when the film would do better maintaining a serious tone) at times, and the film overall amounts to much less than the sum of its parts, perhaps due to King's inability to focus, or perhaps due to the extremely artificial look of the film itself, which appears to have been shot entirely indoors on a back lot somewhere far away from the Midwest. That said, the Phantom should note that SLEEPWALKERS is enjoyable enough as these exercises in parting gullible filmgoers from their entertainment dollars go (phans may remember that the Phantom enjoyed William Friedkin's even more loopy 1990 film THE GUARDIAN; if the Phantom can find evil trees and Druid nannies entertaining, he can certainly be diverted by wholesale gore and discount morphing). Garris keeps the film moving, and many individual scenes are quite effective. And if one can overlook the inevitable scenes of people in giant, unlikely-looking bug suits (or perhaps they were giant cat suits -- the light was bad and it was difficult to tell, though mercifully no one started singing "Memories"), and the few brief scenes in which fat and lazy-looking housecats bestir themselves and leap unlikely distances to attack the sleepwalkers -- scenes that brought back fond memories of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL's killer rabbit -- then it is quite possible to enjoy SLEEPWALKERS for what it is: a few good ideas, well-handled by a talented director and special-effects crew but ultimately sabotaged by a writer who should stick to paperbacks. (Goodness, even the Phantom's obligatory "that said" paragraph ended on a critical note. Perhaps SLEEPWALKERS doesn't even deserve a "that said," though the Phantom did in fact enjoy parts of the film. It's certainly a better film than THE LAWNMOWER MAN, and the Phantom can without difficulty think of many worse horror films that have been released in the past year or so -- CHILD'S PLAY 3 comes quickly to mind, as does the final nail in the ELM STREET coffin, FREDDY'S DEAD. It's worth a rental, so be sure to visit your local Blockbusters in about 4 months. In the meantime, phans would do well to rent any of the films to which SLEEPWALKERS "pays homage," but especially Kathryn Bigelow's horror classic, NEAR DARK, a film that proves -- once again, and most theatrical horror releases to the contrary -- that low-budget horror can be both literate and very entertaining.) (Second of three parenthetical paragraphs: phans should note that the BASIC INSTINCT of horror is already available as Tobe Hooper's extremely silly and quite frankly terrible LIFEFORCE. Naked bleached blonde space vampires abound, though sadly there are no messy ice-pick murders. At Blockbusters everywhere, under "B" for bad.) (Finally, a point in SLEEPWALKERS' favor: it has a surprisingly low Spring-Loaded Cat quotient, given the considerable temptations the filmmakers must have felt. Kudos to Garris for keeping the cats-in- the-closet, 120dB ringing telephones, and hands-on-the-shoulder to a minimum.) : The Phantom : sbb@panix.com : cmcl2!panix!sbb