As a die-hard Stephen King fan who’s grown up watching his works come to life on the silver screen, I must admit that “Silver Bullet” is a film that leaves me scratching my head more often than not. The werewolf design, reminiscent of Smokey Bear in a bad dream, is laughable at best and disappointing at worst. It’s a shame because the story itself is quite intriguing.
If the 1985 horror movie “Silver Bullet,” inspired by Stephen King’s 1983 novella “Cycle of the Werewolf,” was primarily designed to frighten viewers, it falls short. But if we consider it as a comedy disguised as a horror film, “Silver Bullet” offers more chuckles than many successful standalone comedies from its time. Perhaps “Silver Bullet” was meant to be a playful take on the traditional Stephen King plot structure, where a community is tormented by an unimaginable terror. The movie is set in 1976 in the fictitious town of Tarker’s Mills, Maine, where, in the film’s initial scenes, several residents are gruesomely murdered by a creature with razor-sharp claws and teeth, under the influence of a full moon.
In the movie “Silver Bullet,” the main suspense isn’t really about who the killer or werewolf is among the townspeople, as anyone familiar with horror films could guess the identity of the killer from the moment this character debuts in the film. Despite being a thriller, “Silver Bullet” is so bad that it’s comically poor. However, its poor quality comes from so many different directions that you have to appreciate its tenacity and enthusiasm. King once referred to his 1986 horror film “Maximum Overdrive,” which was his only directorial venture, as a movie for the intellectually challenged. In that sense, “Silver Bullet” can be considered King’s ultimate so-bad-it’s-good masterpiece.
A Stephen King Small Town Is Terrorized by a Werewolf
The movie “Silver Bullet,” scripted by Stephen King, begins with the tranquil town of Tarker’s Mills, Maine, being jolted by the terrifying howl of a werewolf, as it beheads a tipsy railroad worker in the opening sequence. Subsequent victims are claimed, among them a boy; his kite, stained with blood, is found by the concerned town Sheriff, who offers a quiet prayer upon discovering the boy’s mutilated remains.
A significant part of Silver Bullet’s comedy is derived from actors delivering lines that are hilariously incongruous yet said with utmost seriousness and sincerity amidst absurd circumstances. The scene in the town’s local tavern, where a group of vigilantes band together to hunt a woods-dwelling killer, offers one of the most striking instances of this comedic approach.
In a small town, as the sheriff warns against taking matters into our own hands, I – a heartbroken father – walk into the local bar, my arm wrapped in black, a symbol of my son’s recent funeral. My voice trembling with rage, I challenge the sheriff to visit my son’s grave, dig up his remains, and explain to him the concept of “private justice.” The sheriff stands speechless, unable to respond.
Later on, as the mourning father and his fellow hunters venture into the forest, shrouded by a dense fog that hides their movements, one of the women among them, visibly nervous, turns to her husbands and inquires, “Are you going to squeeze lemons without the lemons?” Shortly after this odd question, the group is ambushed by a werewolf, who brutally kills a townsperson with a baseball bat.
The Werewolf in Silver Bullet Resembles Smokey Bear
Unlike the groundbreaking werewolf effects that wowed audiences in the 1980s classics, “An American Werewolf in London” and “The Howling”, the effects in “Silver Bullet” come across as remarkably unconvincing. Despite being crafted by legendary special effects expert Carlo Rambaldi, who won an Academy Award for “Alien” and another for “E.T.”, where he designed the iconic character, this werewolf is so comical it’s hard to take seriously.
In the movie Silver Bullet, the werewolf appears less like a typical werewolf and more like Smokey Bear. This becomes clear during a scene where the main character, Marty, portrayed by Corey Haim, discovers the werewolf’s human form after shooting a bottle rocket into its left eye. This encounter takes place on a bridge, and it’s one of the rare instances in Silver Bullet where the werewolf is fully visible. Interestingly, throughout most of the film, the werewolf is either shrouded in darkness or shown only through brief glimpses of its claws and teeth due to being cloaked or fragmented shots.
In the movie “Silver Bullet,” the werewolf appears as a decaying black bear with no distinctive features, except for a wound on its left eye. This injury matches one that Marty and his sister’s human suspect possesses, helping them identify the werewolf’s human form. Unfortunately, due to the production of Silver Bullet starting before the werewolf design was fully developed, the special effects fall short in creativity, impact, and fear factor, often becoming a subject of ridicule rather than being a film highlight.
Silver Bullet Embodies King’s Wildly Uneven 1980s Filmography
Besides facing harsh criticisms, the movie “Silver Bullet,” earning around $12.3 million at the box office, ranks as the second-lowest grossing film adaptation of Stephen King’s works in the 1980s. This is surpassed only by the $7.4 million earned by “Maximum Overdrive,” another King-directed movie from that decade. Notably, “Silver Bullet” was produced by Dino De Laurentiis, a renowned film producer who was responsible for many King adaptations in the 1980s, starting with the critically acclaimed and underrated “The Dead Zone,” released in 1983.
It’s clear that the flops of movies like “Maximum Overdrive” and “Silver Bullet”, as well as other adaptations during this time, highlighted the importance for Stephen King to have stricter quality control over how his books and short stories were brought to life on the silver screen. However, he found success with the 1986 coming-of-age film “Stand by Me”, which is considered one of the best adaptations from that decade, along with “The Dead Zone” and “The Shining”. Interestingly, director Rob Reiner, who made “Stand by Me”, later achieved both commercial and critical success with the 1990 horror film “Misery”, which earned Kathy Bates a Best Actress Oscar – the first and only Oscar for a King adaptation. If you’re interested, you can watch “Silver Bullet” on Paramount+.
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2024-10-27 04:05