Samhain Project 3: Silver Bullet

I lived in Texas for a few years in the mid 80s and needless to say when I moved down there I didn’t have friends at all. It was a hard place to make them and when I didn’t have any to begin with, it was a lonely life. I did manage to raise a few bucks here and there sometimes through babysitting, sometimes odd jobs. and Friday evenings I headed to Richland Mall which was not located far from my house. 

The usual places that I visited included Camelot records, Waldenbooks, and B. Dalton booksellers. During one of my trips to Walden, I came across a Stephen King book that really can be quite fascinating. He had written a novella, Cycle of the Werewolf, which was a werewolf story told by the month, which means every month a short chapter would be written about a werewolf murdering a member of a small town called Tarker’s Mills, accompanied by terrific Bernie Wrightson artwork. The copy I picked up also had one of those sharp King introductions and the complete screenplay for the movie version, Silver Bullet, included with it.  I still have this book to this day 

Sunday night Frani and I watched Silver Bullet, a film I haven’t seen since I was in high school and didn’t realize had even been released until it made HBO while I was a senior. It holds up fairly well in terms of good acting, particularly via pre-lost boys Corey Haim, a wonderful Gary Busey before all of his unfortunate incidents, and even Terry O Quinn and Bill Smitrovich (with some wicked ass mutton chops) as adversaries. They eventually would go on to play a partnership in the wonderful Lance Henriksen-led TV series Millennium, which I really recommend if you haven’t seen any of it. 

But Silver Bullet is a lot of fun; it starts out as a bit of a lycanthropy who done it, and there’s some pretty cool Carl Rambaldi effects. while the  performances are fun and the slaughter plentiful, it’s a bit heartwarming in its own way as Haim and his sister, played wonderfully by a young Megan Follows, really seems realistic and hit close to home. 

I think that it takes a negative rap because it came out in the same decade as American werewolf in London and The Howling, both excellent films of course, but it ends up being the third place finisher of those films. That’s still not really a fair judgment. 

You have to dig the really good script here, by Stephen King himself.  Highly recommended.