Holy jumped-up baldheaded Jesus palomino!

I had rented Silver Bullet (1985) with plans to watch it this week sometime, but after The Monster Squad (1987), it seemed like a nice followup. I can’t say that this film appeals to me through its dialogue which I find quite rough (this isn’t a film rich in its words coming from the mouths of the characters) or really the plot which kind of ends with a lack of real pop (the werewolf kind of is easily defeated, except for tossing Busey around a bit). It is the cast and few ideas that I like quite well.

There’s Corey Haim as the crippled kid in the wheel chair (he was always at his best, to me, when playing sympathetic underdogs instead of quipping “too cool for school” types that would show up with Feldman in the 90s), and Busey as his malfunctioning alcoholic Uncle Red who can’t hold a marriage or his liquor. Busey has the kind of character that shines through his many sins with someone quite endearing in that he loves that boy and wants to make him smile, having a knack for building mechanical and motorized thingamajigs. The silver bullet wheel chair that rockets on the road for Haim is badass…it provides the kid with a nice ride even though the werewolf killings continue to put a damper on town festivities.

 I think Stephen King means well with his screenplay in regards to the narration from an older and wiser sister of Haim’s brother (played as a teenager by Megan Follows), but it is used so sparingly that its effect is minimal. 

Everett McGill has always been one of those actors with a face born to play brooding psychopathy. Here his priest with a dark secret (the irony that he is the beast is rather fascinating) gradually becomes more morally worse for wear until the saintly man seen at the beginning of the film in the park celebrating with the town is so freely killing or threatening to kill while in human form. 

You have Terry O’Quinn, quite an icon today for all the work he’s put into a variety of genres on film and television, as the town sheriff (just two years later, he’d seal a cult following with The Stepfather in one of his most memorable roles to date) who just can’t find the killer “tearing victims apart”. 

Bill Smitrovich as the dour rabble-rousing gunshop owner calling the sheriff’s department to task for not finding the killer, including his antagonism of the deputy (David Hart), stirring up enough local interest in getting together a posse to go out and hunt the werewolf in a foggy woods (smart, right?). 

Lots of fun faces like Hart’s portly deputy ( with too innocuous a disposition to be taken seriously as a man of the law, although he’d later play on the television show In the Heat of the Night forever), James Gammon as a service station owner (memorable in Major League) who gets his head severed thanks to the werewolf claw, Lawrence Tierney (as a bartender/bar owner with a baseball bat that is used as a reveal device and a weapon against him by the werewolf!), Kent Broadhurst as a grieving father whose son is torn apart while flying a kite (a key dramatic piece that has a defeated O’Quinn reciting O Mary Full of Grace while carrying the kite in horror), and William Newman (as a service station attendant Haim wants to get gas from for his motorized wheel chair; he’s also a barfly that is often among those discussing the attacks in town) all make up a great cast.

Certainly, to me, three significant highlights include McGill pursuing Haim in his car, nearly running the kid of a bridge (the confrontation inside a sealed off bridge with a roof is unsettling to say the least as the crippled kid has nowhere to turn until a farmer on a tractor appears luckily with McGill telling him how he will be found deceased), Haim shooting a bottle rocket firecracker into the eye of the werewolf, and McGill’s nightmare of the whole town turning into werewolves during a funeral much to his horror. These scenes are enough, but Busey and Haim’s chemistry and affection for each other is so well done Silver Bullet is enhanced by them. I think the foggy woods is creepy when the posse unwisely "goes a huntin'" but their cartoonish dismissal by the werewolf never quite worked to me...it felt too clownish instead of scary. The way bodies are carried into the fog as if it were an ocean of water just didn't do anything for me. That Smitrovich's cocky smart-ass leaves them and never stirs up anything else intrigued me...it was as if he goes from this vocal citizen ready to take down the beast to a silent coward with no intention of getting involved again. Fascinatingly, the town becomes so inactive, the "bottles and cans" scene with Follows allows her to move about a quiet and voice-less community seemingly in hiding (or having left altogether). That posse's defeat was the defeat of the entire town's resolve.

The attack at the end perhaps doesn’t quite satisfy. It is really rather over before you know it despite a big build up towards it. You’d think the villain wouldn’t be so careless, but again it is a beast unleashed…not a methodical, planned attack, but a wolf ready to brutalize. 

The emphasis on the limitations of a crippled kid wanting to play like other kids is important to King…at one point early, the narrator says he was her cross to bear. How the sister is frustrated by having to dote on her brother and how he wishes she wasn’t angry towards him, until the werewolf brings them together for good, is also important in the King screenplay. I think this film is an enigma. It seems fashioned for kids/teens yet the adult themes (harsh language, some nasty violence like a bat attack on a head and a gruesome werewolf attack on a pregnant woman on her bed) interfere with a message that seems ideally meant for a younger crowd. 

There's one scene I think is perhaps not mentioned enough when talking shop about Silver Bullet. Haim's kid staring alertly at his friend flying the kite he just pulled from a tree as if he knows something bad will be happening to him. He can't seem to break his eyes from his friend, and it has this ominous clairvoyance. He's the next victim. The bloody kite carried by O'Quinn carries more power than a hideous crime scene ever could, really.