Silver Bullet (1985)

I’m finally reviewing a second movie that’s associated with Stephen King. Don’t worry, there’ll many more to go over as the weeks go on. The film “Silver Bullet” is adapted from King’s novella called “The Cycle of the Werewolf”. It’s a good movie but not nearly as dark as some other werewolf movies from the 1980’s such as “An American Werewolf in London” or “The Howling”. “Silver Bullet” wasn’t as great as I remember when I first watched it in the late 1980’s and then rented it in the 90’s. It also has the distinct dialogue that most of King’s secondary characters tend to have; I’ve noticed that they all sound the same and if you are watching a film that he wrote the screenplay for, you can often tell it’s one of his stories by this trait. It stars Gary Busey and Corey Haim; two years later Haim would star in his best known film “The Lost Boys”.

The movie “Silver Bullet” is about Marty, a young boy who is paralyzed from the waist down, his favorite Uncle Red who makes motorized wheel chairs for him but isn’t the best role model due to his drinking, and his older sister Jane who he fights with but ends up becoming close to during the year when several people die in their small town. When four murders occur one after another, each in a very violent manner, a mob of locals form a vigilante group to go find the murder but some are killed during one night. The town’s Reverend Lowe had begged for them not to go and begins to have horrible dreams and it is revealed that he is the werewolf and responsible for the deaths in town. Marty discovers this as well when one night he shoots a bottle rocket into the beast’s eye and when Jane later sees Reverend Lowe with the same wound. They beg for help from their uncle who agrees to do what he can, first by sending their parents away on a romantic weekend and then staying with the kids until the Reverend Lowe comes to kill them all. There is a brutal showdown between the four but Marty is able to save his sister and uncle when he fires a single silver bullet to the werewolf’s good eye kills it.

Favorite moment – The nightmare sequence is probably the strongest horror moment in the film beside the ending itself.