Silver Bullet (1985) Review

CLAYTON'S CREEPY CINEMA!

WEEK 3: HAIR-RAISING HORRORS

Silver Bullet (1985)

Here is another film based on a Stephen King story (this time with a screenplay by him as well) and one last werewolf film for the week. Silver Bullet tells the story of a small town terrorized by a werewolf, and though the central concept is run-of-the-mill, the filmmakers did try to make it different, to mixed results.

The movie opens with a guy working on a railway and getting beheaded by the werewolf—now that’s how you start a werewolf movie. There’s some annoying narration that’s sporadically placed throughout the movie, and it would have been better if they just left it out entirely. The main character is a kid named Marty who’s confined to a wheelchair and likes to annoy his sister. Silver Bullet is the name of his motorized wheel chair (such a coincidence, I know). Gary Busey plays their uncle Red who’s a drunk, but he’s still a pretty cool uncle. The werewolf, whose identity is unknown, continues killing locals, but the attacks aren’t random. The werewolf seems to only kill people who are troublemakers or do bad things, like get drunk or plan on committing suicide. After Marty’s friend gets killed, the townspeople get a bunch of guns and go after the beast. The town’s residents are total dicks to the local law enforcement, completely ignoring their warnings and even uttering insults to their faces. The monster hunt is a failure and more people die. Meanwhile, Marty’s uncle wants to make sure he still has a good time despite the carnival being shut down because of all the murders, so makes him a new kickass Silver Bullet that’s twice as fast and gives him fireworks. The werewolf attacks Marty and he fires one of the rockets at its eye before narrowly escaping. After that, they discover who the werewolf really is, and set out to kill it with...a silver bullet, of course.

Silver Bullet is a decent werewolf film, but has its fair share of discrepancies. The aforementioned narration is bad, and the dialogue is pretty cringe worthy (“You gonna make lemonade in your pants?”). I can’t tell if it was intended to be light-hearted with some scary elements, or just ended up that way. Most of the special effects look good, but some look really bad. The only werewolf transformation shown is brief and mediocre, especially compared to American Werewolf and even The Howling, both of which had come out four years earlier. On the up side, the werewolf is decent and actually looks pretty scary, and there’s a good amount of gore. There’s a dream sequence where everyone at a funeral turns into a werewolf, the organ keys bleed, the fur flies, and the reverend gets attacked. The ending is pretty exciting, and a reverse transformation occurs, which looks cool and is something I’ve only ever seen here.

Though it contains some original elements but is generic overall, Silver Bullet is neither terrific nor is it terrible. It has some funny moments, pretty good werewolf scenes, and the characters are likeable. I would say it’s worth checking out if you really like werewolf movies.

Tune in tomorrow for a new week of reviews as I shift from the eighties into the nineties to look at some of the more original horror flicks from the decade that saw the rise and fall of the slasher genre.