Stephen King's Little-Known Werewolf Movie Was Originally A Gorgeously Illustrated Book

There are so many Stephen King adaptations that it can be difficult to keep up with them all. However, this isn't exactly a recent development. King has been around for decades, after all, and his work has been making the rounds in Hollywood since the 1970s. Every film buff knows about the seminal early King adaptations, such as Brian De Palma's iconic 1976 movie "Carrie" and Stanley Kubrick's 1980 take on "The Shining," which King personally disdains. However, one early King film has escaped widespread attention, possibly because it's based on a lesser known work. This 1985 movie is called "Silver Bullet," and it's a fairly run-of-the-mill Eighties horror tale of a werewolf terrorizing a small town. 

On the other hand, the novella the film is based on is far from King's ordinary fare. "Cycle of the Werewolf," which came out in 1983, is an atmospheric story that's broken into 12 chapters, each based on one month of the year. The narrative details brutal werewolf attacks the town of Tarker's Hill, Maine experiences each full moon, with a wheelchair-using boy called Marty Coslaw serving as the main character. Marty's life and the werewolf's reign of terror slowly intertwine as he comes face to face with the monster and discovers its human identity. Notably, King's writing is only part of the allure here. Illustrator Bernie Wrightson's morbidly beautiful images of each month's key events — more often than not, the werewolf attacks — bring the story to life, allowing the reader to experience the events in a particularly vivid fashion.  

"Silver Bullet," which was directed by Dan Attias and written by King himself, follows the same rough story as "Cycle of the Werewolf." However, the film adaptation abandons many of the things that make the novella so memorable. Instead of relying on Marty (played by Corey Haim) as the main protagonist, the movie introduces his sister Jane (Megan Follows) as another underage hero. It also reimagines Marty's uncle Al — who acts as his confidante and firework/silver bullet supplier in the novella — as Red, played by Gary Busey. 

Overall, the resulting movie honestly isn't very good, at least if you judge it with a movie critic's eye. As 1980s horror movies go, though, it's a perfectly serviceable guilty pleasure watch that might be predictable, but at least has the good sense to be predictable with entertainingly cheesy special effects and a surprisingly great cast. As such, if you're in the market for an old-school werewolf movie featuring the likes of Busey, Haim, Terry O'Quinn, Lawrence Tierney, and Everett McGill, you should definitely add this movie on the old Stephen King bucket list — along with "Cycle of the Werewolf," of course. Though the two cover the same terrain, they're very different works of art that are both worth experiencing in their own ways.