[[quoteright:299:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/a08255w06ym.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''[[TagLine They feast on your fear - and it's dinnertime.]]'']]
An odd little 1992 film based on an unpublished book by Creator/StephenKing, ''Sleepwalkers'' follows the story of Charles Brady (Creator/BrianKrause), and his mother Mary (Creator/AliceKrige), a pair of soul sucking cat demons called [[AntagonistTitle Sleepwalkers.]] The Sleepwalkers have apparently incredible [[MasterOfIllusion powers of illusion,]] but are critically weak to [[WeaksauceWeakness ordinary housecats.]]

The titular Sleepwalkers move into the town of Travis, Indiana, and try to find a virgin to suck the life out of. Charles starts trying to seduce Tanya (Creator/MadchenAmick), who is [[InformedAbility apparently a virgin.]] Their relationship goes a little south, when he tries to suck her soul on the first date, and a police officer shows up with a cat named Clovis that instantly detects Charles as something inhuman. Charles murders the officer after being wounded by Clovis before fleeing, and his mother begins a RoaringRampageOfRevenge. There are a few random car chases and murders to round out the movie.

It's also notable for being Stephen King's first collaboration with director Mick Garris.
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!! This film contains examples of:

* AbortedArc: Charles' struggle with his feelings for Tanya and potentially wishing to be more 'human' at heart is cut rather short with him becoming a generic, over the top slasher villain complete with sadism and bad puns.
* AbusiveParents: Mary becomes more verbally and physically abusive to her son Charles as she is starving and he has to get her the virginal life force she needs. After Charles fails to get his mother the virginal life force a second time, Mary snaps, chastises him and slaps him and hits him continually until she sees his hand wound.
* AlasPoorVillain: [[spoiler:Mary gets a rather depressing sendoff, despite all the terrible things she's done.]]
--->'''Mary:''' (while [[spoiler:burning alive]]) You killed [[spoiler:my son! My only son!]]
* AnArmAndALeg: When Mr Fallows tries to blackmail Charles, Charles' immediate response is to literally tear the teacher's hand off.
* AssholeVictim: Mr. Fallows, who tries to extort sexual favors from Charles, outright groping him, in exchange for not revealing that his school records are false.
* AuthorAppeal: Can you tell that Creator/StephenKing is a cat lover?
* BaitAndSwitch:
** When Mary is introduced to Tanya, she is holding a pair of scissors dangerously close to Tanya...which she uses to cut a rose stem to place in Tanya's hair.
** When Charles and Tanya playfully fall into the graveyard together, it seems as though they're going to consummate their growing attraction together for the first time. They kiss again...only for Charles to reveal his true self to Tanya as he attempts to start sucking her soul out.
* BaitTheDog: It looks like Charles is legitimacy falling in love with Tanya and thus will spare her the fate of becoming soul-food for himself and her mother. [[spoiler: It was all an act, and the only girl for him is dear old mom.]]
* BecomingTheMask: Subverted. At first it seems that Charles had genuinely developed feelings for his latest victim Tanya. Only it turns out [[spoiler: that was all a ploy to get closer to her and devour her soul]].
* BettyAndVeronica: Tanya is the Betty and Mary is the Veronica to Charles's Archie. Ultimately the Veronica wins.
* BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler:Clovis the cat assembles a massive cat army and arrives to destroy the Sleepwalkers.]]
* BittersweetEnding: The Sleepwalkers are dead, and Tanya and Clovis have survived the day. However, [[spoiler:Tanya's parents are presumed dead and multiple cops have been killed during Mary's rampage]].
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: How Charles and Mary see their murderous rampage. They're just feeding on the souls of virgin girls (usually tweens or children) to stay alive.
* BoobyTrap: The Brady house is surrounded by bear traps to keep the cats at bay.
* TheCameo: Creator/MarkHamill shows up as a cop on the opening, Creator/CliveBarker and Creator/TobeHooper as a pair of forensic techs, and Creator/JohnLandis and Creator/JoeDante as some technicians, and Creator/StephenKing himself as a cranky cemetery keeper.
* CatsAreMean: Well, cat demons are; regular cats are the heroes.
* CatScare: Every possible sense of the phrase gets used at some point or another.
* TheCavalry: Just when things look their worst, [[spoiler:we get a shot of ''Clovis'' leading an army of cats to the Brady house in slow motion!]]
* ClingyJealousGirl: Mary Brady becomes this, due to her son's crush on Tanya.
* CompetenceZone: You know you're in trouble when a movie's competence zone is restricted to cats... To be fair to the human cast, the Sleepwalkers seem to shrug off any injury not inflicted by a cat. Even a lost eye seems like an inconvenience.
* CoversAlwaysLie: Those sinister-looking cats swarming that house on the cover are actually the ''heroes'' of the story.
* CreatorCameo: Creator/StephenKing has a brief role as a cemetery groundskeeper who complains about the potential bad press he'll get.
* DecoyProtagonist: The film follows Charles at first, [[spoiler:until his role of antagonist is revealed.]] Tanya is the true protagonist.
* EveryCarIsAPinto: Police cruisers explode spectacularly with one shot from a handgun. Who knew? Maybe it's somehow performed with [[AWizardDidIt Sleepwalkers' magic]], of course.
* EvilDetectingDog: All cats hate the Sleepwalkers and can see them for what they are even when they're in human form. Clovis leads a small army of cats to swarm to their house and kill them.
* EvilTeacher: Mr. Fallows, who tries to extort Charles. It doesn't end well for him.
* EyeScream: Tanya manages to gouge Charles' eyes on two different occasions.
* {{Fingore}}: While pointing his finger at Mary in questioning for the recent catastrophes, the officer gets his fingers bitten off in a mouthful by Mary who then kills him by breaking his arm into a fatal compound fracture.
* ForeShadowing:
** The abandoned house at the beginning of the film.
** The "close" relationship between mother and son.
--->'''Woman''': God, I just hope nothing bad happened to them! They were so close!
** The many rotting corpses of dead cats hanging from a tree.
** The mummified corpse of a young girl lying in the closet.
** The red rose in the first (of many) victim's hair.
** The purple lighting coming from the bedroom window.
* GenderRestrictedAbility: Only male Sleepwalkers can absorb the souls of virgins, the female Sleepwalkers need to be "fed" by the males through sexual intercourse.
** Depending on how you view an ability, only the souls of female virgins are suitable for the Sleepwalkers.
* GlamourFailure: You can see the Sleepwalkers' true forms in mirrors. This, and their method of feeding, can make them a bit OurVampiresAreDifferent. Also, cats can see right through their illusions.
* [[AdultsAreUseless Humans Are Useless]]: While Tanya manages a lot of [[EyeScream eye-gouging]] on the monsters, the only named character who actually does anything useful is ''Clovis the cat''. Sometimes it's just because the Sleepwalkers are supernatural monsters that can't be hurt by conventional means, but other times the humans are just making very dumb mistakes.
* IdiotBall: Sleepwalkers apparently need to keep themselves on the serious down-low...this doesn't stop Charles from going on insane joyrides and provoking the local cops completely needlessly.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice:
** The sheriff gets body slammed on a picket fence.
** One of the officers warning the police station over the phone gets impaled with an ear of corn into his back by Mary.
--->'''Mary''': (smiles evilly) No vegetables, no desserts. That's the rules.
* ImprovisedWeapon: Mary kills a man ''by stabbing him with an ear of corn''.
* IncrediblyLamePun: One of the Sleepwalkers' notable abilities is to talk entirely in these during action sequences.
* {{Invisibility}}: One of the Sleepwalkers' powers.
* JurisdictionFriction: Between the sheriff’s department and the state troopers. It is AllThereInTheScript how Sherrif Ira and Captain Soames don't like each other for personal reasons.
* LargeHam: The Bradys. Though his mom [[ChewingTheScenery chews the scenery]], her hamminess rubbed off on Charles.
-->'''Charles''': Stop looking at me. Stop looking at me!!! Stop looking at me, you FUCKING CAT!!!!
* LastOfHisKind: Charles and Mary were apparently the last Sleepwalkers.
* KryptoniteFactor: The Sleepwalkers. Get stabbed in the eye with a corkscrew? Barely worth noting. Get scratched enough times by ordinary housecats? [[spoiler: ''Fucking explode!'']]
* MadeOfExplodium: Perhaps the best reason to see this film is for the scene where [[spoiler:Mary]] bursts into flame from [[spoiler:a cat attack.]]
* MadeOfIron: The Sleepwalkers can shrug off shotgun blasts and [[EyeScream eye removal]] without any apparent ill effects. A house cat's claws and fangs, on the other hand, [[WeaksauceWeakness are basically kryptonite to them.]]
* MamaBear: The death toll goes way, ''way'' up after Charles is incapacitated and Mary gets angry.
* TheMirrorShowsYourTrueSelf: We see the Sleepwalkers in three different forms: human, human with cat-like face, and something looking as an anthropomorphic, reptilian-skinned cat. The reflection in the mirror always shows them in the third form--presumably the true form with all illusions stripped.
* MuggingTheMonster: Mr. Fallows finds out that Charles' school records are faked, and he tries to extort him [[DepravedHomosexual for sex]], only to end up getting his hand ripped off and eventually killed by Charles.
* MurphysBullet: The film has a hilarious editing failure where a policeman is trying to shoot a woman but shoots the vase next to her and breaks it --and then he shoots and breaks the same vase again.
* NatureAbhorsAVirgin: Well, female virgins anyway...being a virginal girl makes you a target for the Sleepwalkers as their souls are their only form of sustenance.
* NeckSnap: More like neck twist but yeah, one unfortunate cat attacking Mary gets grabbed and has its neck twisted like a towel before being thrown aside.
* OneWingedAngel: While mirrors show their true forms, the two title characters shift to them late in the movie. Before then, they can partly shift their face to look more cat-like.
* OurVampiresAreDifferent: Sleepwalkers are catlike shapeshifters who prey exclusively on the spiritual energy of female virgins, and have no incest taboo. The OpeningScroll attributes vampire myths to their activities.
* PajamaCladHero: Tanya spends the last act of the movie in her pink nightie.
* ParentalIncest: [[spoiler:Between the two Sleepwalkers, Mary and Charles. They are the last two of their kind though, apparently.]] Justified in-universe: [[spoiler: early in the movie, Charles says 'But you need me to feed you, Mom.' Only male Sleepwalkers can absorb the souls that sustain them, which they then feed to the Female Sleepwalkers via sex. Since Charles and Mary are the only Sleepwalkers remaining...]]
* PoliceAreUseless: It's either this or being a SmallTownTyrant. The Sheriff and Clovis' owner being the exception.
* PutTheirHeadsTogether: Mary kills two cops by doing this repeatedly.
* RoaringRampageOfRevenge: When Charles gets hurt, Mary [[spoiler:kills Tanya's parents and the town's entire police force]].
* ShoutOut: The hundreds of cats besieging the Brady house resemble ''Film/TheBirds'' more than a little.
* TakingYouWithMe: The underlying purpose behind Mary's RoaringRampageOfRevenge. [[spoiler: Mary cannot absorb a virgin's soul energy herself, she needs a Male Sleepwalker to feed it to her. With Charles dead, she's facing a slow death from starvation. Or a quick one in a blaze of 'glory' while taking out everyone who played a part in killing Charles and herself.]]
* TooDumbToLive: Mr. Fallows, who quickly deduces from Charles' false school records that he's hiding something. . . and tries to sexually blackmail him. Even if he couldn't have anticipated Charles killing him ''instantly'', did he really not think he wouldn't in order to conceal his secret?
* TragicMonster: The movie ''tries'' to make the Bradys this. They're soul-devouring monsters, but they believe themsleves to be the LastOfTheirKind and only have each other, and are unable to live normal lives. But between the fact that they aren't above murdering children coupled with how much they delight in killing people violently, it's difficult to sympathize with their plight.
* TheTragicRose: The Bradys always leave a rose placed in the hair of their virginal victims.
* VanHelsingHateCrimes: Charles' story indicates people persecuted and murdered the Sleepwalkers, hunting him and Mary for being 'different.' Probably has to do more with them murdering people and eating their souls, but...
* VillainousMotherSonDuo: Mary Brady and her son Charles Brady are VoluntaryShapeshifter monsters who perform VampiricDraining of LifeEnergy from female human virgins. They work together to obtain victims so they can feed.
* VirginSacrifice: Sleepwalkers [[SoulEating eat the souls]] of virgins to survive.
* {{Tagline}}: See the caption under the poster above. Notable for being ''completely false;'' Sleepwalkers eat the souls of virgins, not fear.
* WeaksauceWeakness: Housecats for the Sleepwalkers.
* WouldHurtAChild: At one point, we see the corpse of Charles and Mary's previous victim, who's in elementary school. Given that they need female virgins, it makes sense that the majority of their victims would be under high school age.
* YouKilledMyFather: Charles killed Andy, Clovis's cat-dad. Clovis assembles a cat army to destroy the Sleepwalkers in retribution.
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