There’s something glorious about a horror movie that doesn’t pretend to be art, but still ends up becoming it by sheer accident. Silver Bullet, the 1985 lycanthropic thriller written by Stephen King and directed by first-timer Dan Attias (who never directed another feature length film again—because how do you top a werewolf priest?), is a loud, lopsided, and ludicrous cinematic gem.It has the logic of a fever dream, the emotional depth of a beer commercial, and more charm than a priest at a poker table with a flask in his pocket and lipstick on his collar.
It’s also, dare I say, a deeply fun film—and I crushed hard on Megan Follows as a teen, so sue me.
Gary Busey: Drunk Uncle or Divine Intervention?
Let’s start with the chaos engine that drives this silver-blooded muscle car: Gary Busey, who plays Uncle Red, the alcoholic, flameout relative with a heart of gold and a liver of aluminum foil. Busey gives a performance so unhinged you can practically smell the Wild Turkey wafting off the screen. He doesn’t “act” so much as he erupts, delivering lines with the conviction of a man who thinks the werewolf might actually be inside the camera.
This was before his motorcycle accident rewired his circuits permanently, so what we get is a transitional Busey: halfway between The Buddy Holly Story and “talking about aliens in a Waffle House at 3am.” He ad-libs lines like he’s trying to communicate with a planet we haven’t discovered yet. He also builds his paraplegic nephew a turbo-charged wheelchair motorcycle named Silver Bullet—because nothing screams “responsible guardian” like handing a child a murderbike.
Corey Haim: America’s Littlest Werewolf Hunter
Corey Haim, all wide-eyed sincerity and 80s fluff hair, plays Marty Coslaw, our wheelchair-bound protagonist. He’s the kind of kid who lights fireworks on a bridge alone at midnight and yet somehow has our sympathy because, well, the town is being savaged by a werewolf and everyone else is just talking about it like it’s a mild case of rabies.
Haim doesn’t give a “good” performance, exactly—he gives a perfect one. The way he pleads with his sister to look for a one-eyed man is like watching a Disney Channel version of The Third Man. But damn if he doesn’t make you root for him. When he finally fires that silver bullet into the Reverend’s fuzzy skull, it’s the kind of fist-pumping triumph that makes you believe in cinema again. Or at least, werewolf justice.
Megan Follows: A Teenage Crush in Full Bloom
Now we get to the real reason I wore out my VHS copy of this film back in ’85: Megan Follows as Jane Coslaw, Marty’s older sister. Forget Anne of Green Gables—this was her apex performance, trading petticoats for profanity and a silver cross.
She starts the film hating her brother for being a self-righteous little firecracker (as siblings should), but slowly morphs into his fiercest defender and sidekick. She even goes on a door-to-door eyeball hunt, staring at strangers like she’s working for LensCrafters and Judgment Day is tomorrow.
If a teenage Megan Follows were around today she’d have boys writing fan fiction where they hold hands and hunt werewolves together. She’s got the kind of girl-next-door appeal that makes you want to believe in monster-infested Americana. She didn’t just steal scenes—she hijacked the hearts of 14-year old boys, wrapped them in flannel, and buried them somewhere behind a haunted barn in Tarker’s Mills.
Everett McGill: Werewolf By Day, Priest By Night
Then there’s Everett McGill, playing Reverend Lowe—the town’s spiritual shepherd and also the creature ripping out throats every full moon. If there’s a more metaphorically heavy-handed villain in horror than a werewolf priest, I haven’t met him.
McGill plays it straight, and maybe that’s what makes it great. You half expect him to sprout fangs mid-sermon and bite a choirboy. He dreams of his entire congregation turning into werewolves, which might be the best Catholic nightmare since The Exorcist. And when he finally gets a silver bullet in the eye, he dies as he lived: growling and staring blankly.
The Town That Dreaded Logic
The town of Tarker’s Mills is one of those Stephen King towns where everyone looks like they’ve just finished filming a beer commercial or narrowly survived a tractor accident. There’s a pregnant woman about to kill herself. There’s a lynch mob that dies faster than a sitcom spinoff. There’s even Terry O’Quinn, pre-Lost, playing a sheriff so slow on the uptake you half expect him to deputize the werewolf by accident.
Everything about the town is soaked in syrupy Americana and polyester, and it works. You want to hate how dumb everyone is, but their stupidity is the film’s secret sauce. If they were smart, there’d be no movie. You don’t watch Silver Bullet for realism. You watch it because a crippled kid with fireworks takes on a werewolf and wins.
King’s Kind of Carnage
Stephen King adapted his own novella Cycle of the Werewolf, and it shows. There’s a warm, pulpy weirdness here that most adaptations miss. His fingerprints are all over the screen: broken families, small-town decay, secret sins, and just enough 4th of July Americana to make it sting. When it’s not gnawing your face off, Silver Bullet is actually weirdly touching. There’s a scene where Jane finally admits she loves her brother and it feels earned, dammit.
Even the gore is gleeful. Decapitations, throat rips, eyeball trauma—it’s all here, presented with just enough restraint to avoid turning into Faces of Death.
Final Howl
Silver Bullet is not a masterpiece. It’s barely even coherent in spots. The werewolf looks like a Muppet going through chemotherapy. The logic evaporates the moment you ask why the priest didn’t just move to a cabin in the woods with some duct tape and a calendar. But despite all of this—or because of it—it’s immensely watchable.
It’s a beer-stained, moonlit fever dream about love, monsters, and Gary Busey yelling at kids. It has heart. It has guts.
So if you’ve ever wanted to watch a movie where Stephen King meets Scooby-Doo with a budget, or if you ever had a strange tingling watching a girl tie a silver bullet to a string, Silver Bullet is for you.
As Uncle Red would say: “Don’t let the bastards grind you down—especially if they’ve got fur.”
