Silver BulletFew authors have had quite as many works adapted for the screen as Stephen King. From novels to short stories, dozens of works have been shot one way or another ever since Brian DePalma helmed Carrie in 1976. It is surprising then that, anthology films aside, King himself wrote only one screenplay before 1992. That screenplay was for 1985's Silver Bullet. Based on his 1983 novella Cycle of the Werewolf, King structured the story of Silver Bullet around many of his familiar tropes. We get the small Maine town plagued by evil, the ensemble of idiosyncratic locals and the young boy who discovers the nature of the threat and must find the courage to face it. The film showcases traditional King strengths - such as convincing characterisation - and weaknesses, such as an anti-climactic finish. The town of Tarker's Mill has become the stomping ground of what appears to be a serial killer. As bodies begin to mount up and the local sheriff is overwhelmed, locals take up mob justice as others fear for their future. Amidst it all, wheelchair-bound 11-year-old Marty (Corey Haim) discovers the truth about the killer - that it is a werewolf - and convinces his older sister (Megan Follows) and erratic Uncle (Gary Busey) to help him unmask and defeat the monster. There is a lot to like about Silver Bullet. The dialogue is natural, the relationships interesting, the acting rock-solid (the cast is rounded out by a couple of actors best known for subsequent work in television, namely Everett McGill (Twin Peaks) and Terry O'Quinn (Lost)) and the camerwork is efficient. However, that's where it seems to end. The plot of Silver Bullet is banal at best. There are no real surprises, with even the big reveal of who the werewolf is being little more than a Scooby Doo moment. Despite being touted on the boxcover as a "laugh-out-loud comedy-horror", there are neither jokes nor any real scares. Compounding things is the fact that even though the likes of An American Werewolf in London and The Howling were a few years previous, the werewolf makeup and transformation is bargain-basement stuff. Silver Bullet ends up being a serviceable genre pic, but little more. It ticks by in a breezy manner without scaling any great heights, but also without embarrassment. The result is a movie that it is hard to feel particularly passionate about. This seems to be reflected in this DVD release, which is bare-bones, without even the director's commentary that the older UK edition boasted (director Daniel Attias replaced Don Coscarelli after the latter had a reported falling out with Dino De Laurentiis). A decent, if unspectacular, thriller, Silver Bullet remains only an essential for Stephen King completists - a group that surely can do much, much worse than this given the calibre of much of the filmed King adaptations.
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