R, 1 hr. 35 min. Directed By:
Daniel Attias. In Theaters: Oct 11, 1985.
On DVD: May 28, 2002.
I’ve
written this a few times in the course of my blogging: werewolf movies
are hard to do right. There are some icons within the genre, like An
American Werewolf in London, that are great movies, but I think the
transformation (and final) effects are not as visually appealing as they might
be. The Howling frequently gets raves, but it’s never been one of
my favorites. In the last few years, I think the werewolf movie has
undergone a bit of a regensis: the effects are starting to catch up to
the imagination, whether the final product is the “wolfman” hybrid or the less,
but increasingly common “loup garou,” wherein the final transformative form is
an actual wolf of any size. In The Twilight Saga, the werewolf
transition is the ONLY thing I find redeeming about the entire series with the
exception of the hotness that is Ashley Greene. In Blood and Chocolate,
the simple transformation and natural wolves are the prime selling feature of
what would otherwise have been a very, very stupid and relatively weak film.
Silver
Bullet
is somewhat of a classic. I was introduced to it somewhere in my early
teens. Because my parents were a mite overprotective and needed parental
confirmation that things reported to be going on were actually going on, I
saved myself a lot of embarrassment and hit Blockbuster a lot. It’s where
I learned to enjoy horror movies. One of those trips netted me this
movie.
It
has an upside. The mythology behind the werewolf is TIGHT, unusually so
for Stephen King, who tends to like to fudge things a little while going
through his process. Once we can suspend disbelief about the existence of
a werewolf, the story works logically. If you’re like me and like to give
yourself the creeps at night by reading entries on serial killers on Wikipedia,
you’ll notice that the murders that take place in this small Midwestern town
could conceivably be the work of a human, although you know almost from the
onset that a werewolf is involved. The filmmakers could have gone a
bloodier, more animalistic route that would have trashed that. I guess
I’m giving them props for practicing restraint.
But
there are a few things that annoy me. The first is the sister as
narrator. Totally stupid. I get that she was only vaguely involved
and had that “high level” overview capability, which makes her acceptable
(traditionally) as a narrator, but I thought this would have been a better
movie without one. In my mind, narrators are there when a story is
sufficiently complicated that the audience might miss something without someone
pointing things out to them. Silver Bullet isn’t that kind of
story. It’s easy to keep up and the narrator feels more like a
distraction than an asset.
My
other gripe revolves around the lead character. Not so much that he’s
handicapped, but that his parents allow their 12-year-old to tool around on
what’s basically a motorcycle turned into a wheelchair. Seriously.
This kid is road-warrioring his way down back country highways at speeds that
match the traffic (based on my own life in a rural Midwestern town), so we’ll
say between 45 and 60 MPH. Does that seem realistic? Realistic or
not, the story couldn’t have the lead character be handicapped without that
special chair. It’s too important a plot device.
This
is probably why I used to have a “meh” rating. It has moments, but it has
facets that are cringe-worthy at best, and downright stupid at worst.
It’s not a terrible use of a few hours, though.
