Silver Bullet (1985)

          “Our towns long nightmare began that night…”  Stephen King’s Silver Bullet, directed by Daniel Attias in 1985, is one of my favorite werewolf films I watched this week (and I’d never encountered it before!). First of all, I was really excited when I learned it was Stephen King because there really isn’t a King story out there I’m not a fan of.  Second of all, the story surrounds a paralytic young boy Marty (Corey Haim) who winds up going toe to toe with the local werewolf.  His uncle Red (Gary Busey) has made for him a special wheelchair that can accelerate past cars on the road (really cool!) called the Silver Bullet, so there is some wordplay with the name of the movie because it also takes a silver bullet to kill the werewolf in the end.  On a side note, Gary Busey looks exactly the same as he did, what does he never fucking age?  I definitely think that was particularly awesome, and it is hard not to fall in love with Marty’s character as he is very innocent and fun-loving.
            The movie begins with a kill, which always rubs me the right way concerning the horror genre.  Might as well hit hard and fast with the gore, in my humble opinion.  And keep the blood coming!  Anyway, audiences know that this is a wild animal/werewolf when the first kill happens, even though the town isn’t aware – effective use of dramatic irony for sure.  Tension builds between Marty and his sister Janie (Megan Follows), but they subside quickly and audiences begin to gain a sense of understanding of the children’s natures and situation.  Suddenly, out of nowhere, the werewolf strikes again!  I love that the kills in this aren’t predictable, they seem completely random and not part of the plot line at all in the beginning.  Some of the kills (the second one, for example) have a decent amount of gore in them also, which to be honest I wasn’t expecting from an early 80s King film.  I was more than happy with this surprise, of corpse. 

            It is a truly awesome storyline, one that is easy to get invested in.  But I have to admit that the score is not my favorite, and the actual werewolf transformation was not as exciting as I expected with some of the truly inspired death scenes in the film.  I will, however, note that the transformation back into a person was pretty wicked.  When we finally do find out who the werewolf is, there’s some irony behind that as well.  I won’t spoil it for you, but I definitely got a chuckle out of the situational humor.  When Marty and Jane began sending the werewolf letters telling the lycanthrope to kill itself and do the world a favor.  Body Count: greater than or equal to 7.  Killers?  Two.  Boob Count: Zero.  Cheap Thrills: Zero.  Actual Spooks Endured: Zero.  Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.  It was one of my favorites, as I mentioned, though I have to admit that it was not scary, at least not by my standards.