STEPHEN KING'S SILVER BULLET (1985)
Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: Region-Free (UHD), A (Blu-ray)
Rating: R
Duration: 94 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: HDR10 2160p HD Widescreen (2.35:1), 1080p HD Widescreen (2.35:1)
Director: David Attias
Cast: Corey Haim, Gary Busey, Megan Follows, Terry O'Quinn, Lawrence Tierney
Some movies you just watch and let the wonderment of youthful nostalgia freely wash over you, even when the film perhaps has not aged all that well, and for me Silver Bullet (1985) is one of warm and fuzzy nostalgic films I love despite its myriad faults. This werewolf flick was a staple of cable TV during my formative teen years, and I have always loved it, despite the shite-looking werewolf that looks like a malnourished bear than a ferocious, mythical beast. The film is told in flashback by an woman named Jane who is telling the story of her and her paraplegic younger brother Marty's (Corey Haim, License to Drive) youth, and of a series of grisly murders that occurred in their small town in 1976. The film is based on Stephen King’s novella 'Cycle of the Werewolf', with the iconic author also writing the screenplay for the film. It opens with the murder of a drunken train yard worker, his head is ripped clean from his body by some largely unseen beast. The town's Sheriff (Terry O'Quinn, The Stepfather) at first attributes the headless corpse to a drunken mishap, but when the bodies continue to pile up, including a woman found torn to pieces in her bedroom, the consensus is that there's a maniac on the loose.. while the best is only fleeting glimpsed early on once you get a glimpse of this thing you will understand why they chose to keep it hidden, it looks awful.
The locals gather at the local watering-hole and begin murmuring about there being a maniac on the loose, and when the sheriff loses the confidence of the people a lynch-mob is formed. The armed mob storm into the fog shrouded swamps looking for the killer, but they are shredded by the beast in short order, these scenes offer some atmospheric fog-shrouded intruige, but also a fair amount of camp as well. The largely unseen werewolf lurks just beneath the waist-high fog, at one point taking a baseball bat away from the cranky bar owner (Laurence Tierney, Midnight), and beating him to death with it. The creature's hairy clawed-hand reaching above the fog line with the bat in hand and bringing it down on poor Tierney, who at this point must have been thinking to himself 'how did I end up in this turd!?!'. You'd think a werewolf armed with teeth and claws would go that route, but nope, this one grabs a baseball bat and goes to town! Even as a kid I thought "WTF is happening here?".
Back to the kids, we have the young version of narrator Jane (Megan Follows, TV's Reign) and her wheelchair bound younger brother Marty (Corey Haim, The Lost Boys). The pair have the usual adversarial sibling relationship, but it's made clear in several scenes that despite annoying one another they both care for each other quite a bit. Enter into the equation their drunken Uncle Red (played by the drunken actor Gary Busey, The Buddy Holly Story) who arrives to watch the kids while mom and dad go on a bit of a vacation getaway, because of course you're going on vacation when a killer loose in your town, and of course you leave the kids with your drunken brother, right?
Quicker than you can say 'bad influence' Uncle Red builds a speedy motorized three-wheeled wheelchair for Marty to zip around town in, calling it the Silver Bullet. He then gives the kid an fistful of heavy-duty fireworks and lets him loose into the night - with a killer on the loose mind you - to shoot fireworks off a bridge. It's here that Marty has a close encounter with the werewolf, just barely managing to get away after firing a bottle rocket straight into the beast's eyeball! Returning home Marty tells Uncle Red and Jane about the frightful encounter, but of course they do not believe the hairy-tale, though eventually they do come around to the idea after a series on incidents, and resort to melting down the family's silver valuables, of which there must have been precious few, because they are only able to create a single werewolf-killing silver bullet.
As they have no idea who the werewolf is Jane goes about town collecting aluminum cans while keeping an eye out for any newly single-eyed citizenry. It turns out that the local reverend, played by Everett McGill (The People Under the Stairs), is the werewolf. At first the reverend seems anguished and torn by his moon-lit monster affliction, but as the killings continue he seems to become more and more consumed by the beast within. At one point to illustrate this inner-conflict the reverend suffers a nightmare featuring his parishioners transforming into werewolves in the pulpits, and while it's not quite the Nazi-demon nightmare from American Werewolf in London it's still good pulpy stuff. As a man of God he attempts to keeps his murderous tendencies aimed at the sinful folk in town, in his own twisted mind he believes that he is actually saving their souls from eternal damnation by tearing them apart. When he realizes that the kids have identified him he sets his sights on the siblings, which leads to an fairly anticlimactic ending, but like a lot of other suspect films I tend to enjoy, I still love thanks to the the warm waves of nostalgia.
I fully admit this werewolf film has more than it's share of lame shenanigans, but it's also a hoot, Gary Busey is a firecracker, every scene he's in is laced with quotable gems. At the same time the look of the werewolf is an absolute stinker, but Everet McGill is pretty great as the man of the cloth with a deadly secret, and I love the sibling pairing of Haim and Follows. Not sure how this would play coming into cold without that sense of nostalgia, but I'm willing to bet it still plays pretty well, it's the Maximum Overdrive of werewolf flicks.
Audio/Video: Stephen King's Silver Bullet (1985) gets the 4K UHD upgrade from Scream Factory with a new 2023 transfer from the OCN framed in the original 2.35:1 widescreen aspect ratio with Dolby Vision HDR 10 color-grading. The source is in fantastic shape and film grain is right wound and well-managed. There's also the expected uptick in depth, clarity and detail, and that HDR10 pass warms up the colors and deepen the black levels with superior contrast. There is a teal push throughout though, it's quite noticeable on both the UHD and Blu-ray, which I am not a fan of, but otherwise I thought the warmer colors were quite nice and is a solid upgrade over the previous Blu-ray and the uptick in depth, detail and clarity is quite significant. It should also be noted that the accompanying Blu-ray is not a recycle of the 2013 disc, and benefits from the new scan but without the HDR10. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA mono audio sounds good, dialogue is clear and special effects and the score from Jay Chattaway (Maniac Cop) sounds great, a creepy and dramatic, mixing of orchestral and electronic elements, optional English subtitles are provided.
Scream Factory carry-over all the extras from their 2013 Collector's Edition Blu-ray, plus add in a brand new Audio Commentary With Eric Vespe And Scott Wampler Of The Kingcast. If you're a Stephen King fan you should subscribe to The Kingcast Podcast, it's always a fun time listening to them discuss the King film adaptations.
Archival extras carried-over kick off with an Audio commentary from Director Daniel Attias moderated by Michael Felsher of Red Shirt Pictures. Felsher does a great job mining the conversation for nuggets and tidbits. Attias never directed another feature film after this film, turning to TV where he has enjoyed a prolific career, directing all sorts of great TV stuff, from Six Feet Under to the Hulu series Castle Rock. There's also another archival Audio commentary with Producer Martha De Laurentis Moderated By Michael Felsher. We also get an Isolated Music Score with an audio interview with Composer Jay Chattaway, also moderated by Michael Felsher of Red Shirt Pictures, the interview lasts for about 38-minutes, then the isolated score kicks in.
The 16-min The Wolf Within – An Interview With Actor Everett McGill features the Twin Peaks star speaking about his relationship with Dino De Laurentis, the motivations for the characters, his guilt and anguish, donning the hairy costume after initially not wanting to, and his appreciation for how sensitive to the material the director was, working with Corey Haim and the make-up process. The 21-min Full Moon Fever – Interviews with Special Effects Artists Michael McCracken, Jr. and Matthew Mungle (21 min), is the juiciest of bonus materials. They discuss the day that Carlo Rambaldi's (E.T.) ill-fated were-bear suit arrived on set and how it didn't quite meet Dino De Laurentis's expectation, falling a bit below the mark and over-loaded with cable to operate it. These guys did not create the werewolf itself but worked on the various transformation scenes, speaking of how they were achieved using old school latex effects. They also spin a fun tale about one of the actors wanting to keep their werewolf make-up on after they wrapped for the day, saying that they were on their way to a sex-party!
The 12-min A Little Private Justice – An Interview With Actor Kent Broadhurst who played the grieving father in the film discusses having to improvise his overwrought mourning scene, having to compensate for the shortcomings of the kid's corpse, which apparently looked so bad it wasn't usable in the film. Not gruesome awful mind you, just not well-done by the FX team. He also discusses the nightmare scene involving parishioners turning into werewolves in the pulpits and how much work that entailed, including a warning from the assistant director that the actors should remove their contact lenses lest they end up laminated to their eyeballs!
In the 17-min Cutting To The Bone – An Interview With Editor Daniel Loewenthal he discusses his early career editing porno before getting into horror movies on Troma's Mother's Day. He also gets into creating suspense through editing and the failure of the film at the box office.
The 16-min The Wolf Within – An Interview With Actor Everett McGill features the Twin Peaks star speaking about his relationship with Dino De Laurentis, the motivations for the characters, his guilt and anguish, donning the hairy costume after initially not wanting to, and his appreciation for how sensitive to the material the director was, working with Corey Haim and the make-up process. The 21-min Full Moon Fever – Interviews with Special Effects Artists Michael McCracken, Jr. and Matthew Mungle (21 min), is the juiciest of bonus materials. They discuss the day that Carlo Rambaldi's (E.T.) ill-fated were-bear suit arrived on set and how it didn't quite meet Dino De Laurentis's expectation, falling a bit below the mark and over-loaded with cable to operate it. These guys did not create the werewolf itself but worked on the various transformation scenes, speaking of how they were achieved using old school latex effects. They also spin a fun tale about one of the actors wanting to keep their werewolf make-up on after they wrapped for the day, saying that they were on their way to a sex-party!
The 12-min A Little Private Justice – An Interview With Actor Kent Broadhurst who played the grieving father in the film discusses having to improvise his overwrought mourning scene, having to compensate for the shortcomings of the kid's corpse, which apparently looked so bad it wasn't usable in the film. Not gruesome awful mind you, just not well-done by the FX team. He also discusses the nightmare scene involving parishioners turning into werewolves in the pulpits and how much work that entailed, including a warning from the assistant director that the actors should remove their contact lenses lest they end up laminated to their eyeballs!
In the 17-min Cutting To The Bone – An Interview With Editor Daniel Loewenthal he discusses his early career editing porno before getting into horror movies on Troma's Mother's Day. He also gets into creating suspense through editing and the failure of the film at the box office.
The Blu-ray disc extras are buttoned-up with a 1-min Theatrical Trailer, 1-min worth of TV Spots, Radio Spots and an Image Gallery chock full of promotional and behind-the-scenes stills, cool make-up effects shots and sculptures, lobby cards and various home video releases. The only extras on the 4K UHD are the commentaries and isolated score, the remainder of the extras are found on the Blu-ray disc. The two-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray release comes housed in a standard Blu-ray keepcase with a single-sided sleeve of artwork featuring the original movie poster.
Special Features:
Silver Bullet (1985) gets a terrific 4K upgrade from Scream Factory, I can pretty much guarantee I will be watching this film quite a bit, it still has plenty of that youthful nostalgia and I will be smiling the whole way through, shitty looking werewolf and all, I love it.
Special Features:
Disc 1 (4K UHD):
- NEW 2023 Transfer From The Original Camera Negative
In Dolby Vision (HDR-10 Compatible)
- Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono
- NEW Audio Commentary With Eric Vespe And Scott Wampler Of The Kingcast
- Audio Commentary With Producer Martha De Laurentiis
- Audio Commentary With Director Daniel Attias
- Isolated Score Selections And Audio Interview With Composer Jay Chattaway
Disc 2 (Blu-ray):
- NEW 2023 Transfer From The Original Camera Negative
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono
- NEW Audio Commentary With Eric Vespe And Scott Wampler Of The Kingcast
- Audio Commentary With Producer Martha De Laurentiis
- Audio Commentary With Director Daniel Attias
- Isolated Score Selections And Audio Interview With Composer Jay Chattaway
- A Little Private Justice – An Interview With Actor Kent Broadhurst (12 min)
- Cutting To The Bone – An Interview With Editor Daniel Loewenthal (17 min)
- The Wolf Within – An Interview With Actor Everett McGill (16 min)
- Full Moon Fever – Interviews with Special Effects Artists Michael McCracken, Jr. and Matthew Mungle (21 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (1 min)
- TV Spot (1 min)
- Radio Spot (1 min)
- Still Gallery (73 Images)
Silver Bullet (1985) gets a terrific 4K upgrade from Scream Factory, I can pretty much guarantee I will be watching this film quite a bit, it still has plenty of that youthful nostalgia and I will be smiling the whole way through, shitty looking werewolf and all, I love it.
Screenshots from the Scream Factory Blu-ray (2023):
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Extras:
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