Silver Bullet (1985)

Any movie based on a Stephen King book is usually bound to be, uh, interesting at least. This one, called Silver Bullet, is about a werewolf and a kid in a magic motorcycle wheelchair invented by Gary Busey. Do I even have to say anything else to get you to read more? I mean, really?

Director: Daniel Attias

Starring: Gary Busey, Corey Haim

IMDb

Co-written with Nathan.

This thing starts with a truck driver guy hangin' out by the train tracks, digging with a shovel to find something I don't even want to know about, I'm sure. Then he gets decapitated by a werewolf, which is always really a bummer way to end the night. But people in town just assume he got decapitated by the oncoming train in a preventable accident. Because, you know, it's one of those trains that extends a mechanical arm holding a Japanese Katana to decapitate everyone standing in its vicinity. It's just how trains work and is pristine, prime technology!

So we've established that everyone in this town is truly stupid and/or doesn't care at all about their fellow townspeople. Great... now we establish that our main characters are a little boy and girl living in town. The little girl is especially suited to be the lead in a horror movie, we see, as she gets scared by an obviously fake snake hanging from a tree in the middle of the fucking day. I'm not sure why that scares her – maybe cardboard and paper fake animals and bad attempts at pranks are just terrifying for her.

"Do you have any Halloween props from the costume store? BECAUSE THAT WOULD TRULY SCARE ME TO DEATH!"

Then she and her wheelchair-bound brother, played by Corey Haim of many 80s movies fame, are going home and she blames him for the prank, being that his friend was the one who did it. She says it isn't HER fault that he's in a wheelchair – so why does she have to take care of him, right? Yeah, if it's not your fault directly that someone is wheelchair-bound, you can just say fuck it and toss them to the curb. That's how it works.

I guess their drunk loser uncle comes into the picture, played by Gary Busey, whose acting direction in this seemed to be “just do whatever you want.” He mugs for the camera a shitload, screams a lot, and then accuses the mother of not really knowing her son and thinking his only personality is to be stuck in a wheelchair forever. Yeah, I love it when loser relatives stay at my house because they have nowhere else to go and then criticize me, too.

"I'm the kind of jackass who just says whatever he wants."

While that's going on, we get introduced to this idiot redneck guy who is about every cartoon stereotype of that you can imagine - he talks to himself about kicking peoples' asses, he drinks beer and he screams at everyone. What a rich, compelling character. Apparently he's interrupted watching pro wrestling (the injustice!) by the sound of someone messing around in his greenhouse. So wait a second, how does this guy have a greenhouse again? He really just doesn't seem like the kind of guy to have one. What is he growing in there? Weeds he can trample all over when he's drunk tomorrow?

Hey now. I'm sure this man has a Shakespearean background that would totally vindicate him for us.

I love how seemingly every setting in one of these movies looks like the architect went, “Okay, just make it look like it belongs in a horror movie.” They're already fucking creepy places to begin with. Did this guy just ask for the Jurassic Park set to be built on his property? For that matter, it takes a while for the werewolf to kill him... this werewolf seems to have an unusual amount of patience and discerning for a bloodthirsty monster.

The werewolf is not content to just slash peoples' heads off anymore... he's got a taste for plotting now. He has blueprints and carefully constructed plans and shit.

The deaths of luminary town members like this guy prompts outcry around town as they plan to go on a manhunt for the thing. They do try that, and they even bring along their one black guy in town so he can die instantly, because this movie and others like it are the reason that trope exists in the first place!

Then one other guy attacks the wolf with a baseball bat, only for the wolf to, apparently, take it from him and start beating HIM up with it!

You have to admit, it would be worth it to die for a cause such as the badassery of this scene.

I fucking love that. A werewolf wielding a baseball bat. How is that not the new coolest thing ever?

After that, I guess, the whole town is in mourning and they have a funeral service where everyone else also turns into werewolves, which is probably not how their dead loved ones would've wanted them to react. But it's all just a dream by the priest... I guess his active imagination is getting way out of hand. Maybe he should quit reading so many Stephen King books before bed.

Not good organ playing. Try again.

I guess everyone has different ways of coping, though. The priest may have dreams about werewolves, but Gary Busey makes his nephew a wheelchair that is more like a goddamn motorcycle, for the kid to ride. My favorite part of this scene is that Busey tells him to be safe and acts like it's just a normal bike. Dude, you made a fucking war tank for this kid. Seriously – he can drive at like 60 miles per hour on that thing. You can see him outspeeding cars on the road later!

"Remember to be safe on the horrific death machine I made you, kid."

A cop driving by scratches his head: "Is there even a law regulating what that thing is?"

Then the kid proceeds to race around also setting off fireworks while doing so! Because fuck safety, I guess. Hey, I'll give the movie this – at least it's versatile. I wouldn't want the only deaths in a horror movie to be from a werewolf, after all. Some of them can be from wheelchair/fireworks-related accidents.

But he doesn't die, further teaching him that he can do whatever he wants and be completely invincible. He can ride off into the sunset like this is some completely different, feel-good movie, because hey, why not?

Oh, should we maybe get back to the werewolf plot now? I mean, I had almost forgotten it was part of the movie. I thought this was just a movie about magic wheelchair daredevil stunts now. The kid DOES get into some trouble when the werewolf finds him while he's out at night shooting off fireworks – why are his parents letting him do that anyway? Do they just have no curfew and WANT the wolf to kill him? I mean, I know he's disabled, but... oh, God, are they trying to have him killed like some old Biblical shit where disabled children are deemed unworthy? Jesus. I mean, that's the ONLY explanation for something this stupid.

Or... maybe not. I dunno. Either way, the kid shoots the wolf in the eye with a firework, and is then able to escape.

The next day, he and his sister go hunting all over town for a guy with only one eye, thinking for sure that that means they'll find the werewolf. Personally, in a podunk small town like this, I dunno if "werewolf" is the only reason someone would have one eye – walk a block over and you could just find a guy who poked his eye out with a drill or something while making a new chair for his living room. But I like their optimism.

They find him pretty easily – it's the priest, who now wears an eyepatch and also has a garage full of a whole pile of shit unceremoniously thrown there with no order at all. Wow! You'd think he'd hide this better! I guess not! Gotta love the sister's reaction to seeing a small field mouse in the garage - she's more afraid of this and that dumb fake snake from earlier than she is of the real werewolf. I guess everyone is different!

Oh, and the way she figures out he's the werewolf is because she sees that baseball bat from earlier. Whoops. You'd have thought he would try to hide that better. I guess you would have too high expectations.

Pictured: the scariest thing in the movie.

It doesn't exactly take a master fucking detective...

Speaking of which, what did that priest tell everyone in town about why he suddenly has an eyepatch? “I was drafted in the Vietnam War for a day”? Not sure that would be convincing. But maybe it is, and maybe everyone in town is a fucking idiot.

Then we see how he acts when he's not a werewolf – he drives around spying on little boys playing baseball. Huh, that's odd – most monster movies usually don't have the monster's human form as the scarier part of him.

The two kids convince Gary Busey to believe them just enough to talk to the sheriff about it. The sheriff then goes out to the house alone with no backup – you know, like cops are supposed to do when investigating a possible suspect in multiple murders.

Surprisingly (did you read that with sarcasm?) the wolf easily kills him – so easily that it's like he wasn't a sheriff but a newborn baby, completely helpless and dumb. I love how, after this, nobody in town says a word about the sheriff at all. I guess you could say it's because the movie is nearing its climax and didn't have time to spend on him, but I prefer to think it's really just like “Oh, the sheriff vanished? Who cares!” This is how it is in my imagination.

What is the obsession with using bats in this movie? Does the writer know werewolves don't usually use baseball bats to carry out their kills? For a movie with a fucking werewolf in it, this has a surprisingly light amount of actual wolf-related carnage going on.

The climax is Busey and the kids holed up in their house and waiting around for the werewolf to show up, like the world's worst date who is late for everything. Apparently the wolf waits for Busey to get annoyed and shout at the kids for making the whole thing up to cut the power and attack them. He really has a theatrical flourish for timing. This wolf should be a magician or something else that needs good timing.

The ensuing fight scene is OK I guess. They kill him by shooting him with a... wait for it... SILVER BULLET! And then he turns back into the priest, in what I have to admit, is a pretty cool use of effects.

Well this doesn't look healthy at all. I wonder how they'll explain the dead priest in their house anyway. I'm sure that will be a fun conversation.

The film ends with some narration about how the sister loves her brother and what not... and then the movie ends without showing us the inevitable future where the brother rides that crazy wheelchair thing until he collides with a car and it kills him. So it's a happy ending, as is!

That's Silver Bullet, the silly movie about werewolves and wheelchairs and priests that become less scary when they turn into werewolves. The story is pretty over the top and Gary Busey only adds fuel to that fire. In the end, it's not too bad of a flick. Certainly one of the more entertaining King adaptations I've seen. If you want something fun and a bit goofy, Silver Bullet is a decent pick.

Images copyright of their original owners, we own none of them.

Predator 2 (1990)

You'd think it would be really easy to make a Predator sequel. I mean, the first one wasn't exactly the stuff of geniuses – you take a bunch of musclebound meatheads, stick 'em in the jungle and watch them get killed off by a sometimes-invisible alien. I had never seen this one, so I was like, oh, it'll probably be more or less the same, right? Right?

RIGHT?!

Nooooooo.

Director: Stephen Hopkins

Starring: Danny Glover, Gary Busey

IMDb

We start this one off with some news reports detailing the dystopian future we all have to look forward to: in 1997, apparently voodoo gang members rule Los Angeles and the police are helpless to stop the constant gunfire and gang warring going on. You read that right, yes – voodoo gang members.

I...just can't even comprehend what kind of bungled thought process went into THAT one – hey, let's make a predator sequel! Cool, what ideas do you have? Well, I thought I'd add in some voodoo gang members in a dystopian future landscape to really exemplify what the Predator is all about and...hey, why are you running for the door? Come back!

Well that's what should've happened. Also, yes, 1997. I do remember the violent gang wars that ruined LA at that time – what a fiasco. And to think all we have to worry about these days are lesser issues like ISIS and the economy and shit. We have it easy!

So apparently our main character is Danny Glover, playing a horrible actor. Or is that not a role at all? There isn't a lot to say about the first twenty minutes or so, as much of it is just a haphazard dive into gratuitous shooting and violence. This isn't necessarily bad, but it's tough to get invested in a film that doesn't seem to give two shits about actually introducing you to any of its characters in the least – instead it's just “Hey! Look at how much violent shit we can put in!”

The gunfire and the cars getting blown up have more character development than the actual characters.

Although there is one guy who we'll rememeber, though mostly for cocaine induced reasons:

Well that's how everyone on set got through making this thing, anyway.

This whole thing goes to shit when the Predator shows up and slaughters most of the gang members. The last guy, Mr. Cocaine over there, is left to jump off a building when he sees the Predator coming for him. This surprises exactly nobody until they notice the little detail of the one other guy in the building who was randomly chosen to be strung up like cattle with his heart cut out.

One of Glover's guys, Danny, goes off by himself and ends up getting killed. Glover gets shit for messing up the operation back at the base, because they weren't supposed to go in the building at all, and apparently he has a history of not obeying orders.

Astonishing; a movie cop that doesn't obey orders? What's next, a hot chick that needs to be saved from a villain twirling a mustache? Whatever will you do next to buck the system and fight against cliché, movie? I'm just on the edge of my seat.

We also get introduced to some other characters, like Gary Busey playing some hard ass special ops guy trying to take over this whole thing as his own. But really his job just seems to be showing off that gap between his front teeth.

Then there's Bill Paxton, who loves to tell wacky stories at crime scenes, because that's how a good cop acts, you know. This character is a constant annoyance on screen and there's really nothing about him that I enjoy.

While that's going on, the Predator is busy killing off a bunch of the Voodoo gang members in some condominium. The cops come and investigate, finding a little spearhead thingy, which Glover and his sidekicks take to some white-haired scientist lady who I think has been locked in a room for seven years with no way out:

Hi, character invented for no purpose but to dole out exposition like a Blackjack dealer!

The lady looks at the spearhead, proclaims she's completely baffled by it because it has no metals known to the periodic table, then just shrugs and lets the cops take it out with them again. You know, no point in actually researching that shit; just let them take it out with them and never bring it up again, like any good scientist is wont to do. Brilliant work, lady.

Then we get more action when a bunch of guys on some train are harassing some women when the entire train whips out guns, because this whole thing is really just the NRA's wet dream fantasy:

The Predator was apparently just waiting for this opportunity, as he comes down and slaughters most of the people on the train. The cops get there, and we see the movie's fetish for scenes where people wander around in the dark for a while before something jumps out and scares them, which is NEVER something overdone in these kinds of movies!

Run! The Invisible Man has gone INSANE!

Fortunately Paxton gets killed off in this scene, which raises the movie up a notch for me personally, as I was about to claw out my own ear drums if I had to listen to another scene of him telling jokes in the middle of a crime scene.

DIE!!!

Like clockwork, Glover gets chewed out back at the station and it's revealed he has a history of being psychologically unstable and violent, yet has been on the force for a jawdropping 18 YEARS. Are you shitting me? In the real world he would have been fired and then gone through rehab twice in that time! 18 years? Were they really that short on people? What did their other options look like?

Oh. Oh, I see. Well THAT I understand - carry on, then.

Anyway, Glover then immediately goes out and violently confronts Busey, which I'm sure will really change the higher-ups' outlook that you're some violent, crazy madman...oh wait, no, it really won't.

Oh, the guy with a history of psychotic angry breakdowns in public just did the same thing again after an 18-year career of the same shit over and over? OK, you can stay on the force.

While Glover is visiting his buddy's grave, the Predator stalks him because he has that arrowhead thing, or something like that – this scene is just an excuse for the Predator to have a scene where he runs into a little boy with a gun. C'mon; are we really that bereft for ideas that we're putting a “monster runs into little kid” scene in this shit? Is that the level we've stooped to?

Be careful, kid; you could get expelled from school for having a toy gun these days. Gotta appease the overreaction culture!

Then we get an interminable number of fight scenes which pretty much go like this: people wander around in the dark, then the Predator reveals itself, and we get a decent splurt of actual action. These scenes aren't bad, but they certainly aren't good enough to rival the intensity of the first film. I guess the most pressing thing going on is that Busey and his Special Ops idiots have figured out how to detect the Predator with some kind of thermonuclear detector or something.

Great! How will that wo---oh, I forgot, having any characters be competent would just be silly. Instead the losers and fuckups are the only ones who can survive in a movie like this!

He died as he lived, with his mouth open.

Glover and the Predator have a showdown where Glover takes off his mask and the Predator does his whole "repeat a line from earlier in the movie" thing like in the first one. Only unlike that movie, this time it's a really dumb, lame line that mostly embarrasses me for the makers of this movie. Are you ready for this? The Predator, this ultra badass alien super-warrior, utters this line: "Shit happens!"

Fuckin' seriously? THAT was the best you could come up with, writers? "Shit happens" was the summation of your creative wit? On the one hand, it doesn't even make sense; how does that have anything to do with the situation at hand? On the other, at least it kinda sums up the making of this movie. Shit does happen. As is quite evident here.

You'd think THIS would be the end of the movie, but no, there's still 30 minutes left. 30 minutes? How? What more do you really have to do with this story? Are we going to have the all-important scene where the Predator talks to his therapist about how his mother never loved him and that's why he turns invisible and kills people on other planets?

What about the scene where the Predator helps his best buddy set up a wedding reception? Is that one included?

I'm just asking out of curiosity, as really, this thing is dragging on like a party thrown by your great aunt where she tries to get you to play Parcheesi with your redneck hick cousins who you haven't seen since you were in diapers because oh, it'll be like the old days, except she ignores the crushing reality that the reason you haven't come over in a decade and a half is exactly because of this, and because she also sneaks in snide racist comments she doesn't realize are outdated and kind of offensive and you just don't want to get mixed up in that kind of thing anymore, so you just stick to calling her twice a year on Christmas and birthdays from now on.

What? Oh, where was I? Oh yeah. 30 minutes left after all this? Nobody was around in the editing room nodding off to sleep going “hey, maybe we need to cut this thing down by at least 20 minutes”? I mean that's really all you're doing at this point – creating a cure for insomnia.

But hey, it's not all a loss...we do get the scene where he scares an old lady in the bathroom.

The Predator tries heroin...his experimental days...

In the alternate ending, the Predator is killed by an old lady with a broom. This ending was eventually rejected after test audiences thought it was too realistic.

Because yes, this movie was so desperate it needed to include both the 'little kid' cliché AND the 'old lady' cliché just to show how lighthearted and goofy it really is with its monster movie concept. That's fuckin' astonishing, the level of pandering here.

Then somehow Glover slides down an elevator cable and finds a spaceship with an inside that I think was decorated by the crew from Big Trouble in Little China.

Except Kurt Russell could have made this movie awesome. Seriously; who thought replacing Arnold Schwarzennegger with Danny Glover and Gary Busey was a good idea anyway?

Glover fights the Predator and somehow beats it down, but then a bunch of its buddies pop out of thin air and carry him away. But not before tossing Glover a gun from the 1700s for no reason whatsoever!

What the hell was that about? I have no clue. I guess they intended to have a sequel to this thing, but obviously after 24 years that isn't happening.

And why should it? This thing is just a mess. There are some goofy fun moments, and not all of it is bad, but for the most part it's too long, the characters are annoying, there are a bunch of cliches and the story is just kind of a mess – the Predator mostly just seems like he's stumbling around aimlessly, and what is he even doing in this setting? I get wanting to change things up from the first film, but this just seems like some entirely different movie, some sort of dystopian gang-war thing like a discount The Warriors, with the Predator thrown haphazardly into the middle. Half the time he just seems like he's confused, as he doesn't have much purpose or direction in this movie and just pops up wherever.

There's no consistency to this thing and with a near two-hour runtime, it gets tiresome by the end, real fast. I guess I can see why some people like it, but really to me it is just an overly long, ridiculous bore for the most part. I guess you could do worse though. You know, the best thing you can say about any movie!

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.