#149: Silver Bullet

Release Date: October 11th, 1985

Format: Streaming (Tubi)

Written by: Stephen King

Directed by: David Attias

2 Stars

Silver Bullet is a fun, schlocky, unusual werewolf movie working from a script by Stephen King. 

How odd that his genius works so well in narrative prose, but that he’s so hamfisted when trying to translate it to screenwriting. With zero sense of irony or ego, I think King would tell you that Silver Bullet is a better movie than The Shining (to be fair, King was battling alcohol and cocaine addiction through the ‘80s, so it’s possible he knocked out the first draft of Silver Bullet over a weekend to collect a paycheck). Does that excuse his bad taste, though?

Cory Haim plays the protagonist, Marty, a boy who is paralyzed from the waist down and suspects that a series of brutal killings in his small town are the work of a werewolf. That’s about it, plotwise. 

But the fun is in the schlock. For example, Marty joy rides a juiced up, gas-powered wheelchair built by his uncle, played by an ad-libbing Gary Busey. There’s also melodramatic, retrospective voiceover from his sister, Jane, throughout the movie. 

I haven’t even gotten to the werewolf costuming. It looks more like a human in a bear suit than a wolf, walking perfectly upright with a big, squarish head. Apparently Stephen King fought with the producers for this simplistic costume, for some reason. 

By the time I got to the final showdown in Marty’s family’s living room, and the werewolf is throwing Gary Busey into wall mirrors while Marty tries to shoot it with a silver bullet, I was laughing uncontrollably. 

I’ll give Stephen King the benefit of the doubt and say the cocaine made him do it.