There’s this place in horror that exists somewhere in between the innocent and wholesome and the brutal and disturbing. A place that feels so familiar, so welcoming and yet… quietly dangerous. It’s the sort of place where people go to church every Sunday, where kids ride their bikes in the streets and where some have learned the hard way to beware the night under which a full moon shines.
It’s the place in which the works of Stephen King tend to lie, a uniquely carved slice of Americana that separates the author’s voice from any other working in the genre. A mix of naturalistic, real-world gruffness coupled with the darkest things our imaginations might assume go bump in the night and all of this is encapsulated in Silver Bullet (1985).
From a story and screenplay written by Stephen King, the film incorporates all of the hallmarks of a great King yarn: a small, tight-knit community stuck in their ways; a reverend acting as the moralistic center of the town; an unlikely kid protagonist, confined to a wheelchair but not defined by it; and, of course, an unruly, unknown terror ripping to shreds any semblance of safety or order the town once held.
The film offers good humor, likable characters and the appropriate amount of carnage to offset the pleasantries. It’s appropriately over-the-top at times (see Gary Busey as the motorcycle-wheelchair building Uncle/father-figure) and somber at others, but, again, it’s in the balance between the two that the film finds its footing. As it is with most of the greatest Stephen King adaptations, the reason the film sticks the landing is because it stands as the ideal amalgam of sweet, silly and serious.
The film is overflowing with exciting practical effects that more than sell the concept. This is not the sort of movie to keep the beast in the shadows, rather it revels in the brutal physicality of the monster to lend to the fun – and the fear – of watching it wreak havoc. Still, the sequence that has always stood out in my mind is not of the town’s sole wolf, but of the town itself, transforming as a whole into the thing they so fear, whether they realize it or not.
For me, watching Reverend Lowe once again warily address his flock only to find them turn— on him, on God and, it would seem, on humanity itself— is one of the most powerful sequences in the film. Not only does it stand as a showcase for the practical effects the film employs, but it serves as a turning point in the story, representing the change that is occurring in the previously calm and loving community while foreshadowing the true identity of the beast who’s been amongst them all along.
Stephen King’s words on the page are matter-of-fact, direct and powerful in their simplicity, all of which carried through to the screen. The process of transformation is a theme which resonates throughout the entirety of the film and here it is at its most potent. As the scene on the page devolves into chaos, so too does the screen with Dan Attias adopting an almost Creepshow-esque style unique to the sequence.
Still, there are some dramatic differences between what King penned and what ended up in the film. Wild bouts of darkness with an even wilder sense of off-kilter humor, the screenplay calls for a degree of insanity that spanned far beyond the budgetary constraints of the film that ended up being made. However, the filmmakers did an admirable job of adapting what was there and carrying its spirit to fruition. When paired together, the sequence, in both of its forms, stands out against the whole visually and tonally, offering the perfect ramp-up as the story barrels toward its conclusion.
THE SCENE
The Reverend stands behind three coffins, facing his congregation. The people before him stand and sway, singing Amazing Grace. They finish and sit, staring at Reverend Lowe. The Reverend speaks nervously but is cut off by Herb Kincaid. He exclaims, “there is no comfort” and laughs hysterically. The Reverend attempts to continue speaking but the townspeople stare him down looking progressively more bloodthirsty. Herb shouts out again to interrupt, his face now distorted and his teeth sharp. He growls and the Reverend gapes in open mouthed horror. The people before him begin to transform, their clothes bursting as hairy appendages emerge. The lights go out and the room is filled with howling and snarling creatures. One werewolf continues to bang on the organ while the coffins burst open. Hairy claws grasp at the Reverend’s face as he screams. It’s with this scream that he awakens, alone in his bedroom and covered in sweat.
THE SCRIPT
THE SCREEN
Most of the mourners are crying; MRS. BOWIE playing the organ; MARTY’S chair parked at the back. We can see UNCLE AL, MARTY, TAMMY, and MRS. STURMFULLER, exactly as they were at BRADY KINCAID’S funeral; in fact, this seems to be an instant replay of that event.
The screenplay opens similarly to the film, but with one distinct difference. The film echoes the events of the earlier funeral, but makes it quite clear this gathering is for the men who died in the previous scene. On the page, it is immediately more dream-like, recalling the aforementioned funeral as it was and alerting the viewer to the reality of the situation much earlier in the sequence. The initial block of text confirms this, concluding with, One difference: we can’t see BRADY’S coffin. It’s below us.
The film opens in a wide shot featuring Reverend Lowe standing behind three large coffins. Beside him is Mrs. Bowie playing the organ. The image cuts to a wide, sweeping shot of the congregation, swaying as they sing the words to “Amazing Grace”. The camera finds its way to the Kincaid’s, swaying and singing just like everyone else. The image cuts back and forth between the crowd and Reverend Lowe.
As the close ups of the familiar faces which have peppered the movie thus far continue, their contempt for the Reverend becomes more apparent. When the hymn finally ends, the image holds on Herb Kincaid, starring dead-eyed at the Reverend. The script describes none of this, rather moving immediately into Reverend Lowe’s awkward address:
“Mr. and Mrs. Kincaid have asked that there be no mass said here this afternoon. They did ask me to say a word of comfort to you if I could.”
The script makes it clear that the viewer is seeing the funeral for young Brady Kincaid yet again. The idea that this is all a bad dream is inescapable from the start. In the film, he says, “It’s hard at a time like this to offer you any comfort,” revealing his insecurities and maintaining the notion that this is indeed a separate event from what came before.
What follows is as scripted, the camera cutting back and forth between Herb Kincaid and Reverend Lowe. However, Herb’s demeanor is distinctly different on screen. Herb’s description on the page reads, In his grief he looks dead. As a result, his lines read wry. Onscreen, in the middle of his dialogue, Herb bursts into hysterical laughter, making for an eerie, unhinged moment that amplifies the danger of the “private justice” that the character is calling for.
Described on the page as being like an actor trying to remember his lines, the Reverend continues rambling. The words are different onscreen, but the meaning is the same— he is losing his footing, his power over his flock, and he is uncertain how to continue. In the film he stammers about the Bible while the image continues to cut to close ups of the townsfolk. Their faces appear as though they are uncovering a dark truth as opposed to being in audience with their trusted spiritual leader.
Here, the script leans full tilt into the bizarre nightmare-scape that it established early on. After looking down in fear, Reverend Lowe sees:
INT. THE COFFINS, LOWE’S POV
Yes, that’s coffins— plural. Where Brady’s coffin was formerly, there are now six coffins, smothered with flowers.
Reverend Lowe’s reality is coming apart at the seams, his fear manifesting in the growing number of deaths happening under his watch. The film again opts to take a different path, waiting until a bit later to fully reveal its hand. Still, at this point, the script and the film line up almost identically.
In a bestial voice Herb interrupts the Reverend again, saying, “He was torn apart!” In the script, Herb says “It tore out his heart” which is followed by Herb brandishing BRADY’S dripping heart in hands that are rapidly becoming paws. The film forgoes this bit, perhaps due to budget restraints or simply to keep the scene flowing quickly. Still, it adheres to the description and notion of the moment: Now [Herb] looks up and we see his face has become bestial.
The entire congregation begins to transform. Onscreen, this happens quickly. No one shot is held for long, providing the viewer with brief snippets of pulsating foreheads, hairy chests tearing through clothing and furry claws emerging from torn shirt sleeves. The room fills with the sounds of low growls and throaty howling, while Reverend Lowe watches, his mouth agape in unspeakable terror.
In the script, however, the scene takes a slightly different turn. Rather than unhinged chaos, Mrs. Bowie begins to play a new song and everyone starts to sing. At first the song is a hymnal (“Sowing in the morning/sowing seeds of kindness/sowing in the moontide/and the dewey eve…”) but as more of the congregation transitions the song becomes “the Rheingold jingle”— a commercial song for a local beer.
There’s a comedic sensibility to this sequence on the page that is somewhat absent onscreen. Not only that, there is a level of detail to the transformations and effects work that goes far beyond the brief flashes of practical effects magic that appears in the film. The script understands the nature of this sequence visually too, reading:
Among the things we see are:
PETE SYLVESTER, who is a church deacon, rushing down the aisle, changing, snarling. He grabs ANDY FAIRTON and the two of them grapple in the aisle.
A YOUNG WOMAN with a baby in her arms turns back the blanket covering the baby’s face and we see it’s a wolfling; already the YOUNG WOMAN’S own hands are turning into claws.
TAMMY STURMFULLER changing; PELTZER the druggist changing; the ZINNEMAN BROTHERS changing.
Despite missing out on the pitch-black zaniness of seeing a wolfling, what was kept was Mrs. Bowie’s intense werewolf organ-playing. After changing, the script writes, she is beating the shit out of the organ keys with her clawed hands. Stephen King also notes, She sounds like Jerry Lee Lewis after swallowing about a dozen bennies as a funny, personal aside, and a strategy that he employs throughout the script to gives it a unique flavor and a distinctive voice.
While she is not playing the song from a beer commercial in the film, she does bang on the keyboard in a distinctly Vaudevillian manner, her broad movements reminiscent of the Deadites from the Evil Dead (1981-)franchise. The moment infuses a dark, wacked-out sense of humor that feels in line with the insanity of the situation without undercutting what makes it disturbing. Still, the ideas presented on the page, such as the werewolves tearing their hymnals apart or how they indistinctly fight or make love in the aisles, would have been impactful to see realized onscreen.
Forgoing the swaying congregation of werewolves singing the Rheingold jingle in contrast to the hymn at the beginning of the scene ultimately speeds the sequence up. Although the scripted sequence would more than likely have made a bigger mark overall, the essence of what it’s suggesting is very much alive in what appears in the film. Stephen King describes it perfectly in the script:
The church is a wild shambles of lurching, fighting, singing werewolves. It’s like a New Year’s Eve party in hell.
At this point the lights flicker and turn off and the whole church becomes bathed in twilight blue. The shadows are contrasted hard in the darkness and the visuals take on an extremely stylized look. The Reverend lifts up his hands and rears back, his mouth and eyes open wide. He appears against a flat black backdrop and it appears as though it were a comic-book style frame that might have fallen out of Creepshow (1982).
The screenplay adds in one final note of nightmare-fuel before the Reverend awakes. Seeing all that he can handle, he turns to flee from the chapel only to find himself face to face with:
a BRADY KINCAID werewolf, half torn apart but still somehow alive (a zombie werewolf, if you can dig it- George Romero would like it, I think) leaps out and seizes LOWE.
BRADY buries his muzzle in LOWE’S NECK.
Setting aside the level of casualness inherent in Stephen King’s scripts that he can so effortlessly reference his famous friend’s tastes in the Action Description and get away with it, the reveal of a zombie-werewolf serves to transform this sequence almost completely into a sort of lost segment from Creepshow. And although it does not appear in the film, it does seem rather apparent that the spiritual connection to King’s horror comic proclivities did live on in the finished work, at least in ideology.
In the end, both the script and the film end the sequence in the same way. The Reverend wakes up and SCREAMS. In the film, it’s not the partial form of a child werewolf, but a multitude of claws encroaching and enclosing upon his face that frightens him out of his dreamscape, but the effect is the same. He issues several words to himself as he lies in the dark, words that hold deeper meaning when considered in context with the remainder of the film:
“Let it end, dear Lord. Let it end. Please let it end.”
THE BLOODY CONCLUSION
“It was meant right from the start to be a paranoid fantasy,” director Daniel Attias said on his commentary track for Silver Bullet found on the Scream Factory blu-ray disc in regards to the town’s transformation in the church. “To me,” he continued, “it’s a sympathetic portrayal.”
The world of Stephen King is one most horror fans hold near and dear to their hearts. It’s a world occupied by normal people, doing normal things— a place that’s familiar, almost safe… until it isn’t. For King is an artist that understands that the safe familiarity of a thing loses its luster without the stakes brought about by the disturbing grind of danger’s slow-turning gears.
Silver Bullet embodies the essence of that idea. A film as full of whimsy and love as it is dark consequence and fear. Peppered with amazing practical effects, the film is a fun ride, running through the tropes of a Stephen King horror movie as though it were a theme park. The screenplay is evident of this, from the conversationalist style to the outlandish horror set pieces, and the filmmakers did a remarkable job bringing it to life.
Amongst all of its accomplishments, for me it’s the scene where Reverend Lowe’s congregation turns into werewolves before his eyes that best represents those elements which make the film successful. At times unsettling, at others disturbing and not without a dose of silly, outlandish charm, the sequence encapsulates both King’s unique voice and the way that voice can be brought to life onscreen.
“The whole church scene lasted about a week,” effects artist Michael McCracken said on the feature Full Moon Fever found on the previously mentioned blu-ray disc. In the interview, he recalls having a lab set up in the basement where they would prep the actors before sending them to the chapel. Between himself, artist Matthew Mungle and their team they were responsible for elaborate bladder effects, remote control animation for the wolves, punching hair work and hand-laid make-up and prosthetics that had to be completed on the day. The artists were so busy during this portion of the shoot that Matthew Mungle observed, “I don’t think I went on set once.”
Even with all that was excised from the script, the amount of time and energy put into the brief snippets of what appeared in the handful of minutes on screen was incredible. Still, as preposterous as a church full of werewolves is, the reason it all works so well is its function in the narrative. After all, as Everett McGill said in his interview found on the blu-ray, “[Reverend Lowe was in] a lot of pain, discomfort and anguish… he was suffering under this inability to accept the evil within.”
The world of Silver Bullet is an inviting one, a familiar one, a place that should be safe. And, as its dangers are revealed, so too is the hollowness that sits below that veil of safety. Stephen King has written more words than most of us could ever fathom, many of which have been adapted for the screen. Some of his ideas stick and others don’t. Some are lost in translation and others evolve into something altogether different as they leap off the page and into the “real” world. Silver Bullet represents that evolution well, an example of how tone and voice can be just as important as action or plot.
Stephen King’s place in horror is a special one. It’s a gray area wedged between the wholesome and the disturbing, a place that will always welcome you with open arms and an ominous smile. A place that is exactly what it claims to be… at least, most of the time.
Just like the Reverend is afraid for his flock as his congregation gathers for mass under the light of a full moon, nothing that welcomes— not even a reverend at church on Sunday— is without its perils. At least, not when Mr. King is at the helm.
Silver Bullet (1985):Written by Stephen King & Directed by Dan Attias
, a Stephen King classic with a goofy looking werewolf and lots of great practical effects!){kind=link}