Streamin’ King: ‘Silver Bullet’ Is An Unfortunate Misfire

Welcome to Streamin’ King, a series grave-digging through the myriad Stephen King adaptations available on your favorite streaming services. This time we’re watching Silver Bullet, 1985’s adaptation of the novella Cycle of the Werewolf, which saw mass publication the same year (and is currently available to stream on Hulu).

STREAMIN’ KING: STEPHEN KING’S SILVER BULLET

THE GIST: A werewolf terrorizes a Maine town over a span of months. Roughly two people try to figure out what’s going on: a sheriff (mild interest) and a disabled child (literally the town’s only hope). Oh, did we mention that the boy’s wildman uncle turned his wheelchair into a rocket-powered motorcycle hybrid … NAMED SILVER BULLET?!?

PEDIGREE: King’s first time adapting one of his own books. Stars a 13-year-old Corey Haim, marking his third film, and features Gary Busey a half-decade after his only Oscar nomination, plus Megan Follows (Reign). The debut (and only) movie by director Dan Attias, who has accumulated more than 80 TV credits, including an episode of 2018’s debut season of Castle Rock, which instrumentally featured Silver Bullet sheriff Terry O’Quinn as a Shawshank Prison warden.

WORTH WATCHING FOR CONSTANT READERS? No. Cycle of the Werewolf is an unfortunately under-read work in the first place, one that fans will enjoy more on a first, second, or third read than watching Bullet. (And it won’t take much more time, at 127 pages; for comparison, King’s ’83 Playboy interview is the same word length.)

Cycle was conceived as a calendar based on stunning illustrations from Swamp Thing co-creator Berni Wrightson paired with vignettes King wasn’t able to slim down enough. The novella’s existence still completely pivots around Wrightson’s art, each section opening with a black-and-white landscape matching the month, then containing one glorious color illustration and a little black and white sketch as a parting shot for each passage. One year, 12 smoothly flowing mini-chapters, gorgeous bits of prose like “the river of wind blows over Tarker’s Mills, washing out October and bringing in cold, star-shot November, autumn’s iron month.” There’s more craft in the description of the beast’s “shaggy pelt painted orange with moonfire, its eyes glaring green lamps” than there is in all of Silver Bullet‘s dialogue, and there’s no need for this story without Wrightson’s art.

WORTH WATCHING FOR KING NEWBIES/AGNOSTICS? Watch, rewatch, re-re-rewatch An American Werewolf in London—made four years prior, with embarrassingly superior effects on a similar budget—and never again consider this question. Barely any of it looks or sounds even palatable; the werewolf is so goddamned goofy; it opens (and sticks) with a bad narrator using the technique as blandly and inadvisably as possible. A plethora of pieces make no sense: the hell is a werewolf doing under the floor of a greenhouse? The woods are uniformly drenched in impermeable, chest-high fog? It’s just lifeless and bad. Think of a technical category; it’s terribleness here is exemplary. (Just for fairness’ sake, here are a couple dissenting opinions from folks who’d surely deem Bullet a cult classic, right up there with the 9,000 other movies diluting the designation to near-meaninglessness.)

It’s fantastic and important to have a protagonist with a disability; it’s awful it had to be Silver Bullet.

BRIEF SPOILERS

The idea of the preacher being the werewolf maintains some of the fun twistiness of the book, and the brief scene with his congregation all going into wolf mode is strong. The thing is, it’s available right here, and you can enjoy the splendor of a werewolf mashing a bloody church organ and then move on with your life:

8 STEPHEN KING TIES, REFERENCES, AND MISCELLANY:

1. In It, Pennywise’s preferred form for terrorizing Richie is a werewolf. Also, Stan’s wife tried reading a werewolf book by her husband’s “old friend William Denbrough, who had gotten rich writing a bunch of horrorbooks which appealed to people’s baser natures.” She quit after three chapters. “Werewolves, shit,” King wrote in the passage. “What did a man like that know about werewolves?”
2. SK’s fictional town of Tarker’s Mills borders Chester’s Mill (Under the Dome) and isn’t far from Castle Rock, Motton (Carrie), or Harlow (Revival).
3. Silver Bullet was King’s first self-adaptation of a novel, but ’85’s Cat’s Eye—released eight months prior, helmed by Cujo‘s Lewis Teague—featured renditions of short stories from Night Shift. Prior to those movies, SK’s sole script was for George A. Romero flick Creepshow. His only other feature film adaptations of his own work are Pet Sematary (1989), A Good Marriage (2014), and Cell (2016, as co-writer).
4. Corey Haim went on to act in The Lost Boys alongside Kiefer Sutherland and Corey Feldman, both actors in the King adaptation Stand by Me.
5. Following The Dead Zone and Firestarter, mega-prolific Italian producer Dino De Laurentiis made both Silver Bullet and Cat’s Eye in 1985, along with cinematographer Armando Nannuzzi. The two went on to do King’s ’86 directorial debut Maximum Overdrive, after which Nannuzzi sued SK, De Laurentiis, and others for $18 million due to an on-set accident driving shards of wood into his eye and face.

6. Silver Bullet was the seventh King-based movie in just over two years; Maximum Overdrive came nine months later.
7. The locals get their pitchfork mob going in a spot called Owen’s Bar, the name of King’s then-8-year-old son. The two co-authored the impressive Sleeping Beauties in 2017.
8. A brutalized victim in a public gazebo is a plot device straight out of The Dead Zone.

CRITICAL CONSENSUS: Very unimpressed. Roger Ebert couldn’t decide whether it was the worst or funniest King work yet, saying he hadn’t laughed so long or loudly at the movies in almost two years. The Washington Post‘s critic found it “as suspenseful as looking at your watch to see which minute will pop up next—actually, I thought the watch won.” Author Harlan Ellison, in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, assessed it as “one more in the litany of misses made from King product” with a soundtrack likened to “‘rats digging their way to China’ music.” The Chicago Tribune was upset King’s “success has obviously led him, and several movie producers, to the dangerous conclusion that whatever pops from his typewriter is worthy of public consumption.” The New York Times skewered the creature for appearing “less like a wolf than Smokey Bear with a terrible hangover.”

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT FOR CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF (1983): Published in tandem with Pet Sematary, only six months after Christine. The script was also packaged alongside Cycle in a book titled Silver Bullet, the cover boasting “8 pages of dramatic movie photos.” The next year brought The Talisman and the pseudonymous Richard Bachman book Thinner.

NEXT TIME ON STREAMIN’ KING: 1990’s Graveyard Shift, based on the 1970 short story that appeared in King’s debut collection Night Shift.

Zach Dionne is a North Carolina writer still appreciating the way The Leftovers worked in Gary Busey.

Where to stream Stephen King's Silver Bullet