The Silver Bullet

Plot synopsis:
Jane Coslaw (Follows), the narrator of the film, is the oldest sister in a dysfunctional family of four. Her narration starts in the Spring of 1976 and centers on her strained relationship with her younger, paraplegic brother Marty (Haim) and their parents Nan and Bob. Their rocky relationship changes after a series of murders in their small rural town of Tarker's Mills, Maine.
First, a railroad worker, Arnie Westrum (Gammon), is decapitated by a werewolf after noticing its tracks. The county coroner believes that Arnie passed out on the railroad tracks and was run over by a train. Soon after, a local woman, Stella Randolph (Wendy Walker), prepares to commit suicide because she is unmarried and pregnant. Before she can act, she is murdered. This murder goes unsolved and the townsfolk become worried. The next victim, a redneck named Milt Sturmfuller (James A. Baffico), whose daughter is Marty's girlfriend, hears a racket in his shed. Believing teenagers are making mischief, Sturmfuller plans to scare them off with a shotgun. Instead, he encounters the werewolf and is killed. His family leaves town. Next to die is teenager Brady Kincaid (Joe Wright), Marty's troublemaking best friend, who stayed out too late one night while flying a kite.
After Brady's death, citizens led by local gun shop owner Andy Fairton (Smitrovich) form a vigilante justice group. Although local Sheriff Joe Haller (O'Quinn) and his lone deputy (Hart) attempt to stop the citizens, the officers relent after being berated by Brady's father (Broadhurst). In the middle of the melee, Baptist Reverend Lester Lowe (McGill) attempts to prevent the townsfolk from causing further bloodshed. After the vigilantes go out hunting for the killer, several are attacked and killed, including bartender Owen Knopfler (Tierney). The survivors later deny seeing anything unusual. After the vigilantes are attacked, Reverend Lowe dreams that he is presiding over a mass funeral when his congregation—including the bodies in the caskets—begins to transform into werewolves before his eyes and attack him. He awakens screaming and asks God to "let it end."
As a result of the mounting unsolved murders, curfews are put in place and the annual fair and fireworks show is canceled. The Coslaws decide to have their own backyard party and invite Nan's alcoholic black sheep brother, Uncle Red (Busey). Red gives the gift of a custom-built wheelchair/motorcycle to Marty, which he nicknames the "Silver Bullet". He also gives Marty a pile of fireworks so that he can have his own celebration. Marty uses the Silver Bullet to go out in the middle of the night to a small bridge deep in the woods where he lights the fireworks. Marty is confronted by the werewolf and barely escapes with his life by launching a rocket into the left eye of the creature.
Marty enlists Jane's help to look for someone with a newly injured or missing left eye. The search is conducted under the cover of the church's bottle drive, so as not to arouse suspicion. When Jane turns her bottles in, she discovers that Reverend Lowe is missing his left eye- as well as noticing Knopfler's broken baseball bat, called "The Peacemaker", hidden among the bottles. Realizing that no adult would believe his fantastic story, Marty begins sending anonymous notes to Reverend Lowe telling him that he knows who he is, what he is, and that he should commit suicide in order to stop the killings. A cat-and-mouse chase ensues between the Reverend and the siblings. At one point Lowe tries to run Marty, who is driving the Silver Bullet, off the road with his car. When Marty is trapped under a closed covered bridge, Lowe, whose sanity has been fractured by his condition, tries to rationalize the murders he has committed: he cites Randolph's murder during her suicide attempt as his effort to save her soul (and as rationalization for not killing himself); Westrum was a severe alcoholic; he implies that Sturmfuller was abusing his wife and possibly his daughter (this is made explicit in the novel); and the vigilantes intended to murder someone in cold blood (Lowe's logic cannot explain Brady's murder, however). Lowe then apologizes and tells Marty that he is going to drown him in the river when Marty is unwittingly saved by local farmer Elmer Zinneman.
The siblings tell Red about their letter-writing campaign to Reverend Lowe. After calming down the furious Red, they manage to convince him that Lowe is connected to the murders and attempted to kill Marty: The Silver Bullet has dents and a scrape of blue paint that matches Lowe's car. Unable to deny the evidence in front of him, Red heads straight to Sheriff Haller. Although Red admits that he has his doubts, and Haller does not believe Lowe to be a killer, Red nonetheless persuades the sheriff to investigate. That night, Haller, still skeptical but desperate to find the killer, is shocked to discover evidence that at least some of Marty's story may be true. Haller suddenly finds Lowe, who has locked himself in his garage to restrain himself from further killings, but before Haller can arrest him, Lowe transforms and kills Haller by striking him numerous times on the head with the Peacemaker.
Marty and Jane both know that with Haller out of the way, the werewolf now has an easy path to come after them. Marty theorizes that Lowe transforms more often than just the full moon, but that when the moon is at its peak he loses all his humanity and becomes more driven to kill; thus, he will attack Marty on the next full moon, when he is most unrestrained. Desperate and running out of options, they convince Red to take Jane's silver cross and Marty's silver medallion to someone who can melt it down into a silver bullet. Under the guise of Marty having just "discovered the Lone Ranger", Red has a local gunsmith make the bullet; the gunsmith proves to be a master at his craft, making the bullet so it will be accurate. When Red asks an offhand question, "… what the heck are you gonna shoot a forty-four bullet at anyway, made outta silver?" the gunsmith replies, "How 'bout a werewolf?"
On Halloween, Red shows up at the Coslaws with some fortuitous news: He has won a romantic getaway to New York, but since he separated from his wife, he gives the tickets to Nan and Bob. Questioned by Marty and Jane, Red reveals that he bought the tickets as a ruse to get their parents to safety. With the now full moon in the sky, they head inside to wait for the werewolf. Despite their best efforts, the three fall asleep and are startled awake when Red (who has fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in his fingers), burns himself, jumps up and drops the gun, nearly setting it off. Red begins to doubt that the werewolf is real, much less going to show up, and orders Marty and Jane to bed. Jane suddenly screams in horror as she sees the werewolf looking at her from the living room window, although when Red looks he finds nothing. Red starts to think that he is being fooled by the children and unloads the pistol. At that moment the werewolf tears the power cables out of the box and cuts the power to the house, leaving the trio with only the light from the fireplace. The werewolf then smashes through the wall of the house, attacking them. Despite Red's best efforts he is tossed around like a rag doll and Jane is suspended in midair. Marty manages to retrieve the cartridge (which was tossed around in the melee and had fallen through a heating vent in the floor) and shoots the werewolf in the right eye with the silver bullet. The corpse turns back into Reverend Lowe and has one last spasm before dying. Afterwards Marty and Jane both say, "I love you" and the narrator then says that she too can now say it.

Tags: revenge, murder

Review:
Lewis Lifts a Programmer. Better than average little oater, thanks mainly to several offbeat touches by cult director Joseph H. Lewis. Known later for such noir classics as Gun Crazy (1949), he livens up the screen here with some good action. Note the several punches thrown at the camera that had me ducking, or the imaginative overhead angles on the barroom brawl, or the surprising stage holdup to start the movie. Such small clever touches show an engaged approach even for a matinée programmer.The supporting cast is better than average as Silver (Brown) searches in the middle of a town election for the man who backshot his father. All he knows is the shooter has a scar on his arm. I especially like Grace Lenard's dance hall girl Queenie. She's got real personality. Also, Brown makes for a likable cowboy hero, while Knight's comedy relief doesn't annoy. All in all, it's a pleasant glimpse of the Old West as we might like it to be.(In passing—catch songstress Nora Lou Martin. She manages some falsetto trilling the likes of which I've never heard.)