'Stephen King's Silver Bullet' movie review

(C) 1985 Warner Bros.

“Silver Bullet” (1985)

AKA: “Stephen King’s Silver Bullet”

Directed by Dan Attias

Written by Stephen King, based on the novella “Cycle of the Werewolf”

Starring: Gary Busey, Everett McGill, Megan Follows, Corey Haim, Terry O’Quinn

Uncle Red: I mean, uh, what the heck you gonna shoot a .44 bullet at anyway... made out of silver?

Mac: How about a werewolf?

Stephen King’s prolific nature  has earned him the dubious honor of having written the most novels or stories adapted for theatrical release. Ranging from the ridiculous (“Maximum Overdrive”) to the sublime (“The Shawshank Redemption,” “Stand By Me”), movies based on King’s fiction have attracted audiences since Brian De Palma made “Carrie” in 1976. Some King fans say, tongue in cheek, that if Hollywood ever got its hands on the best-selling author’s laundry list, it, too, will be adapted into a movie

If you ask me on which end of the quality spectrum I’d place 1985’s “Silver Bullet,” which is based on the illustrated novella “Cycle of the Werewolf,” I’d have to say it tends to lean more toward the Trashy King Adaptation side than it does to the Classic-and-Classy King crowd.

It’s not as bad as “Creepshow” or even “Maximum Overdrive” (King’s only directorial credit). Even so, it's not one of the good King-derived films, either.

Uncle Red: There are no such things as werewolves!

Part of the problem with "Silver Bullet"is that "Cycle of the Werewolf" had a particular conceit – it chronicled, month by month, a werewolf’s year-long reign of terror in the small Maine community of Tarker’s Mills. The chapters were short and concise, and minimal character development other than that of the book’s unlikely hero, a disabled boy named Marty Coslaw, and the werewolf and its human alter ego. It’s not a bad book, mind you, just a minor one that won’t be remembered as well as “The Stand”  or “’Salem’s Lot.”

When he wrote the screenplay, King,abandoned the original format of “Cycle of the Werewolf”. He still used Marty Coslaw as the hero and didn’t change the identity of the beast’s human incarnation.

However, most of the novella’s characters and subplots disappeared so “Silver Bullet” could focus on Marty (Corey Haim), his older sister Jane (Megan Follows), and their uncle Red (Gary Busey) as the werewolf terrorizes Tarker’s Mills.

My Take

To its credit, “Silver Bullet”  never pretends to be anything more than a cheesy B movie in the horror genre. It is a strictly by-the-numbers werewolf flick. From the first shot featuring a full moon, the viewer knows where the film is going to go.

“Silver Bullet”  starts with the death of a drunk rail-riding Arnie Westrum on the railroad tracks outside Tarker’s Mills.  Grisly and comical (surely a werewolf singing the Rheingold beer jingle is bizarrely funny), the opening sequence establishes the monster’s existence.

It’s a good start, but it is also reminiscent of such movies as “The Wolfman’ and “Wolfen.”  So unless you’ve  never seen a single creature-feature film about werewolves, you can expect the following clichés:

1. The first death will be ruled an accident of unknown causes.

2. The sheriff (played by Lost’s Terry O’Quinn) will be baffled as the body count grows.

3. The unlikely hero will find out who the monster really is, and only his uncle and older sister can help him when the monster goes after the boy to protect its secret.

Produced by Dino De Laurentiis and directed by first-time director Dan Attias, "Silver Bullet" takes elements not just from other werewolf films but also from the 1962 classic “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

The story is told as a flashback with narration by an older Jane; in a way this is nice and gives the movie a certain amount of warmth, but it also lets viewers know that nothing bad happens to Jane at movie’s end.

The acting is decent, I suppose. The late Corey Haim, who once seemed destined to have a long acting career ahead of him, turned in a solid performance  as Marty. Busey and O’Quinn perform well if not brilliantly, and Megan Follows is luminous as Marty’s older sister Jane.

However, "Silver Bullet"is fairly unremarkable fare. We never find out how the poor guy who is cursed to be the werewolf got that way, and the script lacks the wit and energy of John Landis’ “An American Werewolf in London.”  This movie is just  a connect-the-dots exercise for King and Attias, and in the end, the viewer will quickly forget "Silver Bullet"or dismiss it as a minor film based on a minor bit of horror literature

DVD Specifications

• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: Warner Bros.
• DVD Release Date: May 28, 2002
• Run Time: 97 minutes

Video

• Codec: MPEG-2
• Encoding format: 16:9
• Resolution: 480i (NTSC)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

Audio

• English: Dolby Digital Mono
• French: Dolby Digital Mono

Subtitles

• English

Discs

• DVD-5
• Single disc (1 DVD)

Playback

Region 1