Growing up, I distinctly remember distinctly having a werewolf movie on VHS that someone had recorded on TV. It was missing roughly the first five to ten minutes, but I loved it. It terrified six-year-old me and helped introduce me to horror films. As I grew up, I had no idea what the film was actually called and basically forgot about it.
It wasn’t until I read “Cycle of the Werewolf” that I realized the movie was based on a Stephen King novel, which led me to find the movie, and now I know it’s called Silver Bullet. I tracked it down to rewatch it for the first time in over two decades.
Silver Bullet and “Cycle of the Werewolf”
The movie and book share a similar story but each does things a little differently. The book takes place over the course of a year and tracks the werewolf during every full moon. Silver Bullet takes place over several months and seemingly gives us a werewolf who can change when he wants but is forced to on the full moon. The book and movie both use a paraplegic 11-year-old boy as the hero who is accompanied by his sister and uncle.
The film takes place in Tarker’s Mills in 1976. It’s a small Maine town that is ravaged by fear when people are unexpectedly murdered. Our hero, Marty, is equipped with a motorized wheelchair known as the Silver Bullet, built by his Uncle Red. He even later gets a three-wheeled upgrade. It’s a bit odd, but hey, it sets up a chase scene later and does allow the kid to get around easily enough. Over the months, several murders occur.
The Murders
A railroad worker is murdered, but it’s thought to be an accident. A woman looking to commit suicide is also killed. Marty’s best friend is killed when he stays late at the park. An abusive father, and then later, several men from a vigilante group formed to look for the killer are taken out. When the wolf attacks Marty, he shoots its eye out with a firework.
Later it’s realized who the werewolf is by his eye injury. The kids bond over this and begin sending the man they believe to be the werewolf letters telling him to kill himself. Then they convince their Uncle to help them to melt down some silver to form one bullet. This means a scene in a gun store with what the narrator describes as a master of weapons.
In the ultimate faceoff, the werewolf attacks the two kids and their uncle at home. A little boy and a .44 Magnum do a great job of repelling werewolves.
Did the movie hold up?
Oh boy, it did not hold up. It’s almost humorously bad. I hate movies that rely on stupid characters making stupid decisions, and that is the entirety of this movie. Nothing anyone does ever makes sense. Even the werewolf is stupid. He waits for Marty to load the empty gun and shoot him. He has literally six seconds where he just stands there, and the film shows awkward close-ups.
Hell, the gun is only unloaded because their uncle unloads it to make some big point about how werewolves aren’t real. Right about that time, the werewolf bursts through the window, and Uncle Red has a few seconds to load the gun…but he just doesn’t.
Why do they even need a silver bullet? The firework took the thing’s eye out, and it didn’t grow back. Seems like any gun would work. Even if you have only one silver bullet, why not fully load your revolver? These are issues with the main characters, but every character seemingly makes terrible decisions and waits for seconds to even react.
The werewolf costume is terrible, but the visual effects of the werewolf transformation are impressive for 1985. The costume looks derpy, and when we see it for more than a glimpse, it’s absolutely terrible.
Is it all bad?
It’s all bad. It’s a very 1980s movie with the same dark visuals. Lots of fog and it’s clearly filmed on sets and not in the actual woods. Some stalky werewolf POV shots break up the film and those parts are better than actually seeing the werewolf.
You also don’t get much of an explanation of how the werewolf became the werewolf or even how long he has been a werewolf. He’s lived in the town long enough to be a pillar of the community, but the murders have only recently started. In the book, he doesn’t know how he transformed either. In the novel, he thinks it was due to picking flowers at the cemetery that disappeared before he could put them into a vase. In the movie, that same cemetery is mentioned, but we never see that in the film. I like the mystery behind it and appreciate the not knowing.
Gary Busey is great as a fun-loving, hard-drinking Uncle Red. He shines in every scene he’s in. The bad guy, played by Everett McGill, is creepy and does stand out as well. It has charm to it, but it’s like a movie made by someone who has read a book about movies but has never seen one.
The Weaponry
One of the things I like about the movie is the reaction to the monster is always to grab a gun. However, no one seems smart enough to ever use one. As community fear grows, the gun store puts up a sign advertising Remington shotguns for sale…offering both double and single-action variants—whatever that meant for shotguns in 1976.
The vigilante groups are armed but do nothing in the face of a werewolf, killing several of them. The Sheriff draws on the werewolf pre-transformation, and it takes several seconds for the transformation to start and end and doesn’t bust a cap in the creature.
Funny enough, the werewolf uses more weapons, more effectively than the people of this town. He uses a baseball bat and beats the hell out of some people. Why he does that is unknown to me.
Finally, Gary Busey is armed with an S&W Model 629 loaded with a single silver bullet. However, he is about as effective as everyone else with guns. It takes an 11-year-old to blast the werewolf’s other eye out of its head to end the movie.
Ultimately Silver Bullet doesn’t hold up too well. It certainly didn’t terrify me as an adult like it did when I was a kid. However, I got to walk down memory lane, and that was fun. Now I need to find that Ewoks movie that was recorded on the same VHS.
Do we have any other Silver Bullet fans in the audience? Let us know below!
