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Silver Bullet
Paramount // R // May 28, 2002
List Price: $24.99 [Buy now and save at Amazon]
"Let it end, dear Lord. Let it end. Please let it end."
-- Everett McGill as Reverend Loew in Silver Bullet, echoing my thoughts exactly
There was a time when I would've used words like 'scary' and 'awesome' to describe Silver Bullet. Of course, this would have been in the mid-to-late '80s, so toss a 'radical' in there for good measure. When I look back on essentially any movie or television show I enjoyed back then, I wince. The 1985 werewolf flick Silver Bullet is another in a long series of examples I can whip out to demonstrate just how poor my taste was back then.
Silver Bullet is an adaptation of Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf, the shortest standalone novel King has released to date. The original concept was for an illustrated calendar, but King was unable to resist the urge to expand the story to novelette length. Berni Wrightson, the artist behind Creepshow and is to horror comics what King is to genre novels, contributed a series of memorable, effective illustrations. The 1983 story was rapidly developed into a feature film for Paramount, with the final product hitting theaters less than two years after the novel's publication.
Based on a screenplay by none other than King himself, Silver Bullet condenses the year that passes in the novel down to the summer months. The film takes place in the sleepy Maine hamlet of Tarker's Mills in 1976, where fourteen year old Jane Coslaw (Megan Follows, best known for her work as Anne of Green Gables) finds herself increasingly frustrated with her paraplegic younger brother Marty (Corey Haim). An unseen feral force is leaving certain unfortunate locals in bloody tatters, and some of the more superstitious townsfolk theorize that a werewolf is to blame. These suspicions are confirmed when Marty encounters the beast and manages to severely wound it. He and his sister team up to determine who it is underneath all that fur. A series of threatening letters don't endear the Coslaws to the lethal lycanthrope, and Marty and Jane turn to their hard-drinkin' Uncle Red (played by hard drinkin' Gary Busey) for some well-needed assistance. Red has long been sympathetic to his niece and nephew, having gone so far as to build Marty a couple of gas-powered wheelchairs, each nicknamed the Silver Bullet. Uncle Red doesn't find their werewolf story as easy to swallow as, say, a bottle o' Wild Turkey, but he's utterly convinced when the 'wolf pulls a Cujo ad traps the three of them in the Coslaw family home.
Silver Bullet is not a very scary movie. I almost feel guilty pairing 'scary' and 'Silver Bullet' in the same sentence, lest it give someone the wrong impression. Part of me feels as if Silver Bullet is some sort of dark stab at camp. One of the most memorable kill scenes takes place in thick fog, and all that's distinguishable in the frame is a man's arm, beating the off-screen werewolf with a baseball bat. Seconds later, the wolf is the one wielding the bat, again with only his exceptionally hairy arm seen. I cannot imagine that was meant to be taken seriously. Admittedly, my imagination has been deadened by years of exposure to movies like this, but it's far too goofy a sight to inspire terror.
The dialogue is, pardon the pun, howlingly bad. The word "booger" is used in varying forms in the screenplay an astonishing eight times. I didn't keep a running tally during the movie to see if any instances failed to make it on-screen, but still...yikes. There's also the forceful exchange between a would-be vigilante and the town's sheriff: "We'll catch him." "You couldn't catch a cold." To rattle off a few other quick examples: "Supper was an hour ago, Dumbo." "Jane said the it looked like the Green Giant used it for a toothpick!" "Don't you touch me, snotbrains!" Uncle Red's Hardy Boys reference marks the one remotely witty line in the movie. As King himself penned the screenplay, any blame should be centered squarely on his shoulders.
The acting isn't any better. Gary Busey was in a pleasant position, as the foulmouthed drunkard role was one he'd taken on for quite a while in the public eye. Corey Haim's crippled kid inspires some guilty laughter, particularly his antics on 'the Silver Bullet'. Haim seems to intermittently forget that his character doesn't have the use of his legs. They may just be little motions here and there, but 'twas enough to inspire several "What the hell...?"s from my tiny Silver Bullet audience. Most of the supporting roles have the worst overacting this side of Troll II.
Worse still are the special effects. In the first few minutes, His Wolfiness lops off a wino's head. The cartoonish imagery of a head spinning in slow motion across the frame had me laughing harder than any legitimate comedy I've seen in the past few months. Caro Rambaldi may have won Oscars for his visual effects work in E.T. and Alien, but the werewolf costume in Silver Bullet is simply embarrassing. Director Daniel Attias, in his first and only theatrical release, seemed to be aware of the suit's limitations. The costume is generally shown only in very quick cuts, keeping it on-screen as briefly as possible. These half-hearted attempts at masking the poor quality of the costume only serve to make the movie seem cheesier still.
There's precious little terror or tension developed throughout the course of Silver Bullet. The kills are set up in a very unsurprising manner. When the movie cuts to a character that's obviously of no significance or one that hadn't even been introduced beforehand, followed by the cueing of the ominous Casio soundtrack, what else could possibly happen? There are a couple of bits I like, such as the tearing of Stella's back and the werewolf's assault on the Coslaw's house. Too bad there aren't more of these. Several of the kills don't occur on-screen, and there's not even any gory aftermath footage. If you can't be good, at least be exploitive.
As a quasi-random aside, Silver Bullet wouldn't mark the last battle Haim and Follows would have with a werewolf. Both of the Toronto-born actors went on to appear in episodes of the hit tween series Big Wolf On Campus. Megan Follows played the younger version of the youth-stealing Violet Thorne in "Interview With A Werewolf", and Haim was the vampiric centerpiece of "Blame It On The Haim".
I've already written far, far too much about the movie, so I'll make a belated move into comments on the DVD release of Silver Bullet. I'm disappointed in myself, though, as in all that text, this Suthern Boy neglected to make a single "coleslaw" joke.
Video: Silver Bullet is presented in its aspect ratio of 2.35:1 (16x9 enhanced), a claim that not even the Laserdisc release from years back can make. Paramount rarely slouches when it comes to the presentation of their films, and Silver Bullet looks phenomenal. I could probably could every speckle on one hand, and whatever digital cleanup may have taken place didn't result in a softened appearance or any noticeable edge haloing. Blacks are respectably rich, and I didn't spot any film grain even in the most dimly lit of scenes. Colors in the very crisp image also appear bright and flawlessly reproduced. Say what you will about the movie, but its presentation on DVD is first rate.
Audio: Silver Bullet offers up a pair of mono tracks, one English and the other dubbed into French for our Québécois neighbors to the north. Dialogue sounds a bit muffled, and every fourth or fifth line seemed to be followed by "what?" by me or one of the other unfortunate folks I subjected to Silver Bullet. The keyboard-driven score is bassier than I expected, though most sound effects lack anything resembling life. Silver Bullet doesn't sound bad, but it does have an aged 'TV speakers' quality to it. If the English mono track represents the most pristine elements available, perhaps that would explain why it didn't receive the same six-channel treatment as Graveyard Shift.
As is generally the case with Paramount releases, there are also English subtitles and closed captioning.
Packaging: I rarely discuss a DVD release's packaging, but it's unavoidable here. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the cover art is perhaps the worst of any of the hundreds of DVDs I own. This ineptly Photoshopped mess looks more like leftovers from York Entertainment, not the respected film arm of a $79 billion corporation. For a closer peek, Amazon has a decent sized scan on their site, though my particular copy is tinted gray.
For those interested in such things, Silver Bullet is packaged in an Amaray keepcase and includes a chapter list insert.
Supplements: Silver Bullet is as barebones as they come, even lacking such ubiquitous extras as a trailer or cast/crew filmographies. A menu and 18 chapter stops are just about it. The region 2 release by Momentum includes a trailer and an audio commentary.
Conclusion: Silver Bullet is firmly entrenched in rental territory. The movie's near-total lack of replay value isn't bolstered in the slightest by the DVD's dearth of added-value material. The quality of the video may be exceedingly high, but that alone doesn't warrant dropping twenty bucks or so for this disc. If Silver Bullet were being released at the price of MGM's Midnite Movies line, I might be a bit more enthusiastic about recommending it as a purchase. Perhaps its list price will drop in the coming months, but until then, Rent It.
-- Everett McGill as Reverend Loew in Silver Bullet, echoing my thoughts exactly
There was a time when I would've used words like 'scary' and 'awesome' to describe Silver Bullet. Of course, this would have been in the mid-to-late '80s, so toss a 'radical' in there for good measure. When I look back on essentially any movie or television show I enjoyed back then, I wince. The 1985 werewolf flick Silver Bullet is another in a long series of examples I can whip out to demonstrate just how poor my taste was back then.
Silver Bullet is an adaptation of Stephen King's Cycle of the Werewolf, the shortest standalone novel King has released to date. The original concept was for an illustrated calendar, but King was unable to resist the urge to expand the story to novelette length. Berni Wrightson, the artist behind Creepshow and is to horror comics what King is to genre novels, contributed a series of memorable, effective illustrations. The 1983 story was rapidly developed into a feature film for Paramount, with the final product hitting theaters less than two years after the novel's publication.
Based on a screenplay by none other than King himself, Silver Bullet condenses the year that passes in the novel down to the summer months. The film takes place in the sleepy Maine hamlet of Tarker's Mills in 1976, where fourteen year old Jane Coslaw (Megan Follows, best known for her work as Anne of Green Gables) finds herself increasingly frustrated with her paraplegic younger brother Marty (Corey Haim). An unseen feral force is leaving certain unfortunate locals in bloody tatters, and some of the more superstitious townsfolk theorize that a werewolf is to blame. These suspicions are confirmed when Marty encounters the beast and manages to severely wound it. He and his sister team up to determine who it is underneath all that fur. A series of threatening letters don't endear the Coslaws to the lethal lycanthrope, and Marty and Jane turn to their hard-drinkin' Uncle Red (played by hard drinkin' Gary Busey) for some well-needed assistance. Red has long been sympathetic to his niece and nephew, having gone so far as to build Marty a couple of gas-powered wheelchairs, each nicknamed the Silver Bullet. Uncle Red doesn't find their werewolf story as easy to swallow as, say, a bottle o' Wild Turkey, but he's utterly convinced when the 'wolf pulls a Cujo ad traps the three of them in the Coslaw family home.
Silver Bullet is not a very scary movie. I almost feel guilty pairing 'scary' and 'Silver Bullet' in the same sentence, lest it give someone the wrong impression. Part of me feels as if Silver Bullet is some sort of dark stab at camp. One of the most memorable kill scenes takes place in thick fog, and all that's distinguishable in the frame is a man's arm, beating the off-screen werewolf with a baseball bat. Seconds later, the wolf is the one wielding the bat, again with only his exceptionally hairy arm seen. I cannot imagine that was meant to be taken seriously. Admittedly, my imagination has been deadened by years of exposure to movies like this, but it's far too goofy a sight to inspire terror.
The dialogue is, pardon the pun, howlingly bad. The word "booger" is used in varying forms in the screenplay an astonishing eight times. I didn't keep a running tally during the movie to see if any instances failed to make it on-screen, but still...yikes. There's also the forceful exchange between a would-be vigilante and the town's sheriff: "We'll catch him." "You couldn't catch a cold." To rattle off a few other quick examples: "Supper was an hour ago, Dumbo." "Jane said the it looked like the Green Giant used it for a toothpick!" "Don't you touch me, snotbrains!" Uncle Red's Hardy Boys reference marks the one remotely witty line in the movie. As King himself penned the screenplay, any blame should be centered squarely on his shoulders.
The acting isn't any better. Gary Busey was in a pleasant position, as the foulmouthed drunkard role was one he'd taken on for quite a while in the public eye. Corey Haim's crippled kid inspires some guilty laughter, particularly his antics on 'the Silver Bullet'. Haim seems to intermittently forget that his character doesn't have the use of his legs. They may just be little motions here and there, but 'twas enough to inspire several "What the hell...?"s from my tiny Silver Bullet audience. Most of the supporting roles have the worst overacting this side of Troll II.
Worse still are the special effects. In the first few minutes, His Wolfiness lops off a wino's head. The cartoonish imagery of a head spinning in slow motion across the frame had me laughing harder than any legitimate comedy I've seen in the past few months. Caro Rambaldi may have won Oscars for his visual effects work in E.T. and Alien, but the werewolf costume in Silver Bullet is simply embarrassing. Director Daniel Attias, in his first and only theatrical release, seemed to be aware of the suit's limitations. The costume is generally shown only in very quick cuts, keeping it on-screen as briefly as possible. These half-hearted attempts at masking the poor quality of the costume only serve to make the movie seem cheesier still.
There's precious little terror or tension developed throughout the course of Silver Bullet. The kills are set up in a very unsurprising manner. When the movie cuts to a character that's obviously of no significance or one that hadn't even been introduced beforehand, followed by the cueing of the ominous Casio soundtrack, what else could possibly happen? There are a couple of bits I like, such as the tearing of Stella's back and the werewolf's assault on the Coslaw's house. Too bad there aren't more of these. Several of the kills don't occur on-screen, and there's not even any gory aftermath footage. If you can't be good, at least be exploitive.
As a quasi-random aside, Silver Bullet wouldn't mark the last battle Haim and Follows would have with a werewolf. Both of the Toronto-born actors went on to appear in episodes of the hit tween series Big Wolf On Campus. Megan Follows played the younger version of the youth-stealing Violet Thorne in "Interview With A Werewolf", and Haim was the vampiric centerpiece of "Blame It On The Haim".
I've already written far, far too much about the movie, so I'll make a belated move into comments on the DVD release of Silver Bullet. I'm disappointed in myself, though, as in all that text, this Suthern Boy neglected to make a single "coleslaw" joke.
Video: Silver Bullet is presented in its aspect ratio of 2.35:1 (16x9 enhanced), a claim that not even the Laserdisc release from years back can make. Paramount rarely slouches when it comes to the presentation of their films, and Silver Bullet looks phenomenal. I could probably could every speckle on one hand, and whatever digital cleanup may have taken place didn't result in a softened appearance or any noticeable edge haloing. Blacks are respectably rich, and I didn't spot any film grain even in the most dimly lit of scenes. Colors in the very crisp image also appear bright and flawlessly reproduced. Say what you will about the movie, but its presentation on DVD is first rate.
Audio: Silver Bullet offers up a pair of mono tracks, one English and the other dubbed into French for our Québécois neighbors to the north. Dialogue sounds a bit muffled, and every fourth or fifth line seemed to be followed by "what?" by me or one of the other unfortunate folks I subjected to Silver Bullet. The keyboard-driven score is bassier than I expected, though most sound effects lack anything resembling life. Silver Bullet doesn't sound bad, but it does have an aged 'TV speakers' quality to it. If the English mono track represents the most pristine elements available, perhaps that would explain why it didn't receive the same six-channel treatment as Graveyard Shift.
As is generally the case with Paramount releases, there are also English subtitles and closed captioning.
Packaging: I rarely discuss a DVD release's packaging, but it's unavoidable here. I'm not exaggerating when I say that the cover art is perhaps the worst of any of the hundreds of DVDs I own. This ineptly Photoshopped mess looks more like leftovers from York Entertainment, not the respected film arm of a $79 billion corporation. For a closer peek, Amazon has a decent sized scan on their site, though my particular copy is tinted gray.
For those interested in such things, Silver Bullet is packaged in an Amaray keepcase and includes a chapter list insert.
Supplements: Silver Bullet is as barebones as they come, even lacking such ubiquitous extras as a trailer or cast/crew filmographies. A menu and 18 chapter stops are just about it. The region 2 release by Momentum includes a trailer and an audio commentary.
Conclusion: Silver Bullet is firmly entrenched in rental territory. The movie's near-total lack of replay value isn't bolstered in the slightest by the DVD's dearth of added-value material. The quality of the video may be exceedingly high, but that alone doesn't warrant dropping twenty bucks or so for this disc. If Silver Bullet were being released at the price of MGM's Midnite Movies line, I might be a bit more enthusiastic about recommending it as a purchase. Perhaps its list price will drop in the coming months, but until then, Rent It.
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