Silver Bullet (1985)


director: Dan Attias
release-year: 1985
genres: horror, werewolf, shocktober
countries: USA
languages: English
fests: SHOCKtober 2024: WOLFtober

Garey Busey, the other Corey, and Twin Peaks' Big Ed star in a screenplay by Stephen King, a man who ruins every movie he touches. The soundtrack of sensuous panpipes playing over a Phantasm organ is an odd and unwelcome choice. And a voiceover narration! It's bad decisions all around here. Somebody gets his head literally slapped off by a wolf paw in the intro.

Peaks during opening credits.

The paraplegic Corey – who looks exactly like Fred Savage – and his unnecessarily narrating sister don't get along too well. The "silver bullet" is the name of his two-stroke motorized wheelchair, which never becomes relevant. Their alcoholic uncle Garey comes to visit, and acts just like Garey Busey, so nobody likes him except the adolescent boy.

Is this a kissing book?

A humanoid wolf – clearly a man in a suit – hops through the second story window of a house and rips a girl to shreds.

Her mom hears it happening, but takes her sweet time to get upstairs.

The characters often talk to themselves whenever they're alone. You might think it's monologuing to develop the characters or story, but it's not. Just announcing the thing they're currently doing aloud, in case you are not paying attention. Helpful, because I'm trying not to pay attention. The local gardening hillbilly is eaten by a wolf through the floor of his greenhouse.

Possibly just a taxidermied bear.

When the wolf eats a child, the town gets right proper upset. Reverend Big Ed oversees his funeral. Corey asks Garey if it could be a werewolf, but Garey explains that "psychotics" are more active in the moonlight. Garey builds Corey a motorcycle wheelchair.

The wheelchair is hardly relevant, despite plenty of airtime.

The townsfolk reject the law and agree to go vigilante. Only the sheriff and Big Ed disagree, but they can't stop the riled up mob. Although it's definitely not a comedy, they can't resist a low-effort slapstick comedy bit demonstrating the incompetence of a mob. The townsfolk start delivering lines straight into the camera like they're in a sitcom, getting tackled by a wolf puppet, and then reappearing as bloody rubber dolls.

It's usually the wolf that looks dumb, not the human victims.

Despite a bunch of murders, including his own best friend, Corey sets off into the night by himself to set off fireworks. He's beset upon by a wolf, which he shoots right in the eye with a bottle rocket. He flees on his motorcycle and sneaks back home, where he just hides because he's a dumb kid.

You'll shoot an eye out!

His sister goes around town looking for a one-eyed person, while his sister's narration voiceover explains to us what she's doing because the filmmakers are dumb. She checks everyone in town, and finally comes across the newly-one-eyed and more-evil-acting Big Ed. Garey comes back to town to help the kid with their little investigation.

He has no reason to be acting so creepy at this stage.

Big Ed looks to stack on a few fully-human homicide charges in a medium-speed car/motorcycle chase, catches Corey, and explains that he's eating people to save their immortal souls. Corey escapes, the the sheriff doesn't believe him.

The big chase just peters out sadly.

The sheriff goes to check it out anyway, but waits until the middle of the night on a full moon to do it, so he gets to see Big Ed transform into a rubber mask before he's beaten to death by a monkey's paw with a baseball bat.

Better than average wolf outfit.

Garey goes to an "old-world wizard of weapons," the sort of thing that existed in small American towns in the 1980s, and has him smelt a silver bullet. The guy already had a silver bullet crafting machine in his shop.

He was just waiting for this day.

On the night of the full moon, which is also halloween, the wolf suit jumps through the wall like the kool-aid man and whacks Garey across the room. Corey pops him in the other eye with their only silver bullet. As the useless narrator talks us out over the gentle easy listening panpipe piano piece, we get our final confirmation that there was absolutely no reason whatsoever to have a narrator.

Somehow the wolf costume got worse for this scene.