Silver Bullet (1985)
Last Watch Date - March 20, 2025
Total Times Watched - Many
Comments
Most Stephen King movies are pretty lousy, usually borderline goofy. This one has a ton of goofy lines, but is it lousy!? LET'S FIND OUT!
This movie might be Corey Haim's best movie. Gary Busey's awesome in this as well, but he was kind of great throughout the 80s. His character is a bit more serious than what he normally plays, but you do get a lot of his zaniness in this. He has some great lines that I read were improvised during filming, so kudos to him. Haim is a bad actor overall but I think he does a pretty good job in this one. I mean, I can see him move his legs MULTIPLE TIMES but... The rest of the characters are fine enough, but the best part is all of their stupid lines. Like "You may lemonade in your pants?" or "Oh that hurts my parts!" or "Check the driver's bullshit level?" or "I feel like a virgin on prom night." I want to go on record that I agree 100% with Busey when he says PISS ON THE YANKEES, PISS ON THE INDIANS, PISS ON THE PHILLIES, PISS ON THE BRAVES!
I never read the novella this was based on, but King wrote the screenplay too so I suppose it must be pretty close to his "vision." There is some debate about how good (or bad) the werewolf is. I've seen multiple people describe it as a werebear and that it looks like a black bear. You know what? Black bears are probably a bit scarier in real life than this thing, but it does look more of what I'd expect a "real" werewolf to look like. How would you magically grow like the Hulk to 2x your size like some other movies do!? It makes no sense. Turning into a werewolf makes sense though obviously. You can't walk around in the full moon light and expect to be safe!
The vigilantes and town response seems pretty accurate to what I would expect of that era and that type of town. I grew up in a similar town not long off of that time period and people would definitely try to take things into their own hands, only to ruin their own lives by getting in over their heads.
This movie is way better than it has any business being. It's pretty action-packed from the start, has some interesting scenes and the silver bullet wheelchair is pretty rad. There's a creepy atmosphere to many of the stalking and kills, and once the werewolf finds out who knows about him, it gets even creepier. The climax of this movie is still really good. It used to scare me as a kid. It doesn't scare me NOW, but I get why it did when I was little!
If I have any complaints, it's that the soundtrack is abysmal. It's filled with some cheesy 80s synth nonsense, but worse than that, it has this ethereal dreamy .. almost love style music? at times and it does NOT fit at all.
Recommended?
Yeah, absolutely. It's entertaining as hell.
