When I say I’m a fan of STEPHEN KING’S SILVER BULLET, there’s my commitment status. I don’t fuck around like a virgin on prom night.
Anyway, let’s start with the obvious. I understand a lot of people disregard the Reverend Werewolf’s final reveal look; comparing it to something of a dog-bear (and honestly, you aren’t wrong about that). However, it is meant as an insult rather than a critique, and I think a lot of these people have An American Werewolf on London on the brain. I will argue till the day I die that THIS look (not transformation but LOOK) in particular, is far scarier and that is my personal, and firm opinion on the matter.
And I will fucking die on that hill.
Everyone has that horror comfort film, and for myself, SILVER BULLET is one of them. For what I can recall in a string of several months when I was about eight or nine years old, I went to sleep to this movie every. Single. Night, I’m not entirely sure to this day exactly why I find so much ease and relaxation with a film that gave me my first vivid nightmare that I can actually remember. I can’t say I have ever met someone who actually remembered dreams they had as a toddler; but when I was 3 years old, I had a nightmare about this movie that had me waking up screaming and crying for my father, as in my dream, Reverend Werewolf busted through our kitchen pantry from outside and mauled my dad, spilling his insides on the floor. Sort of like the ending of the film, but my father didn’t get to survive like the Busey.
Then approaching me, but not before waking up into hysterics. Now I never actually watched the film that young, however, I remember my parents and grandparents renting the film, and watching it in the living room, with me sneaking around the corner catching sneak peeks while I’m being screamed at to go play in my room. But I’m a rebel. I kept slithering around the corner and checking out what was keeping their interest piqued at the boob tube. I recall catching the bridge scene, and of course, the ending. Which would explain my nightmare fully.
You would think a memory and a dream that has stuck with me for 40 years would do the exact opposite. But what can I say, I’m a special kind of breed. Regardless of the hate people give the werewolf suit, it worked well enough to scare the shit out of me as a kid. As an adult, I don’t see too many issues with it either, because having read the novella, ”Cycle of the Werewolf”, I get what they were going for: A man that is truly a monster, hiding among everyone. Something we all know is a very real thing. And the practical effects of this movie need to be celebrated because if I have to read another AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON piece praising its special effects (which, by the wa,y I am not undermining- credit where it is due), I’m going to lose my shit. And maybe we should be giving a little more credit to Stephen King’s first attempt to screenplay his own vision from pages to the screen.
Special effects master Carlo Rambaldi, whose notable works include creating the works behind King Kong (1976), Alien, and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, was tasked as the special and make-up effects head to complete the werewolf looks in Stephen King’s novella turned featured film. The realistic style suit was one piece that was topped with a mask that was operated by a variety of mechanics operated by the crew. Twelve levers to be exact, like that of a bicycle, that could manipulate the wolf’s facial expressions. For long-distance shots, there was a simpler mask that didn’t require all the fancy tech wires.
However, Rambaldi was only given five executive weeks to pull of this sorcery. Hey, if the master of Queen Alien could do it, anyone can! Still, shooting had commenced even before the final suit and mask were ready. So those little snips of the werewolf, leading up to the big reveal, were done with another purpose behind them.
“Ultimately, it looked like a bear,” confesses Attias. “The werewolf was very late in being designed, and Carlo (Rambaldi) was given very little time or money to work on it. In fact, it was so late that we had already started filming before we had the suit, so we started shooting scenes without it. I tried to make sure the audience would see it as little as possible. – Excerpt from interview with the Master Cylinder.
Everett McGill wore the suit for most of the shooting and spent a considerable amount of time figuring out the perfect walk for something that was neither man nor beast. But a man that has been trapped inside an animal, who eventually accepted his fate and embraced this dark shadow within him. Resulting in the werewolf quenching his thirst for blood on the “sinners” of the town- as McGill puts it speaking to the Shadow Nation podcast. However, he wasn’t even the first choice! Attias had hired a dancer to wear the suit, but apparently, it didn’t work out, resulting in McGill going hairy balls deep in the role-playing of both the wolf and his not-so-holy counterpart. More demanding stunts in the costume required a double; which was taken on by Julius Le Flore, the stunt coordinator for the film.
Now. We certainly can’t talk about the effects without mentioning the greatest scene in the movie that brought together a record FORTY werewolves on screen together, the most in any film to date. Instead of Rambaldi, make-up artist Michael McCracken, Jr. was in charge of the dream sequence that involved a few actors already in the film, and the rest were made up of Julius Le Flore’s friends of gymnasts and dancers. Clearly distinguishing themselves as different from Lowe’s wolf persona, but were taught the “werewolf walk” McGill had been practicing by the good ol’ Reverend himself.
The congregation of wolves was broken down into three groups. One group had a radio transmitting facial features, providing movement in the ears, forehead, and mouth. The second bunch had a “tongue device”; allowing the performer to snarl by simply moving the device around with, well, their tongue. The third had no special effects at all, other than make-up and served as the background werewolves.
And since it’s such a wonderful sequence, let’s give it a watch.
To say the least, there were a lot of painstaking elements involved in the production of these creatures. And while some may mock Rambaldi’s werewolf concept, including that of Producer Dino De Laurentiis, it was again the only one that gave me nightmares when I was a kid. That has to account for something!
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Nightmare Nostalgia 