2020’s full moon came on Halloween, and a happy coincidence left me fully convinced in the All Hallows Blue Moonlight on a notion that I had always known deep down. That Stephen King’s Silver Bullet was truly a criminally underrated Halloween film.

Heh. I hope you read that in your best Jane voice.

Now, it’s obvious that the film itself models a timeline of sorts from the 1983 novella; which acts like a calendar of chapters rummaging through each month of this chaotic year where a werewolf is violently tormenting the residents of Tarkers’ Mills. The movie starts off in late Spring and the majority of the film is actually set in the Summer with a few big scenes leading up to and taking place on Independence Day. In which case, makes my argument here a tad trying but I’m here to fight and will die on the hill that’s forever a Halloween movie.

Midway through the movie, Fall sets in with the climatic final confrontation and ending landing on Halloween itself and although as stated, most of the film is staged at different points of time throughout the year, the last half of the movie really sells that Autumn ambiance flowing into the Halloween Full Moon final chapter. The changing of the leaves, that you can hear crunching in between scenes. The sinister aura surrounding the town is much heavier now giving off that Halloween lurking around the corner feeling- you all know exactly what I’m talking about. You can practically SMELL the Autumn atmosphere. Especially when we get to the last ten minutes or so of the movie where Jack-O-Lanterns and die-cut paper skeletons are seen outside the Coslaw residence.

So to me, it feels more like a Halloween flick than anything else. And I’m kind of pissed that AMC Fearfest opts to show Stephen King’s Carrie 20 times a month in October and Silver Bullet a mere ONE TIME. Sure, I get films like Carrie are more universally popular. However, the fact that Silver Bullet consistently gets the shaft both in the cinematic horrorthons and in the horror community, kind of bums me out. It’s underappreciated, underrated, and the best werewolf movie out of the slew of Lycanthrope films that came out in the early 80s’,

YEAH, I SAID IT. Corey Haim in a gas-powered motorcycle of a wheelchair and Gary Busey wrasslin’ reverend werewolves? Sorry but there’s no competition happening here.

Stephen King’s first hand-written screenplay from his own novella adaption deserves a little more respect this Halloween. Give it a viewing closer to the holiday and you’ll get the same Halloween ambient fuzzies as I do every time I watch it.

Pick it up here from Amazon if you don’t own this cinematic masterpiece yet!