Stephen King’s unsung werewolf classic – Silver Bullet – hit theaters 40 years ago today. It marks a major anniversary for a 1980s horror film that’s perhaps never achieved the appreciation it deserved.

The works of Stephen King, who has been writing books since the 1970s, have been receiving movie and TV adaptations for several decades now, going back almost 50 years. This trend dates all the way back to 1976 when Carrie hit theaters. In fact, Carrie is just a year away from its 50th anniversary, which says a lot about how the length of time King has been a part of the horror movie genre.

Another Stephen King adaptation has just reached a significant milestone of its own. As of today, October 10, 2025, Silver Bullet is now 40 years old.

Silver Bullet Is Based On Stephen King’s Only Horror Story About A Werewolf

Across his entire career as a writer, Stephen King only penned two stories that featured werewolves. In 1983 and 1984 respectively, Stephen King wrote Cycle of the Werewolf and The Talisman. The Talisman, though, was actually a Stephen King fantasy story in which a werewolf character participated in the protagonist’s adventure.

Cycle of the Werewolf, on the other hand, was a conventional werewolf story where the creature was the focus of the plot. Covering a time period of several months, Cycle of the Werewolf explored the turmoil, suspense, and mystery that unfolded in the small Maine town of Tarker’s Mills, which was being terrorized by a werewolf during every full moon.

Directed by Dan Attias, Silver Bullet served as the first and only adaptation of Cycle of the Werewolf. With recognizable actors like Gary Busey, Terry O’Quinn, Corey Haim, and Everett McGill playing the people of Tarker’s Mills, Silver Bullet saw the community reckon with a string of murders and eventually come to the realization that the perpetrator was a werewolf.

How Silver Bullet Is Different From Most Werewolf Movies

A big part of Silver Bullet’s story is the mystery concerning the werewolf’s idenтιтy. Unlike the situation in many other werewolf movies, such as American Werewolf in London, The Wolf Man, and Teen Wolf, the werewolf himself isn’t the protagonist, allowing their idenтιтy to be a subject of various questions and therefore casting suspicion on multiple members of the film’s cast.

Silver Bullet’s tone and approach to the werewolf formula differed greatly from its contemporaries in other ways as well. For instance, Silver Bullet was cleverly able to work both as a coming-of-age film and a gory, R-rated horror movie filled with grisly murders. Its main character was a paraplegic child (played by Corey Haim) who discovered the werewolf’s existence and took it upon himself to expose – and eventually defeat – the creature.

Silver Bullet Is A Highly Underrated Werewolf Movie

Due in large part to the sheer volume of Stephen King adaptations that have been pumped out by movie studios in the last few decades, Silver Bullet has understandably been overshadowed, and isn’t often cited as one of the author’s best movies. Even so, there’s a lot to enjoy about Silver Bullet, which may very well be Hollywood’s most underrated werewolf movie.

Thanks to its decision to keep its focus on younger characters as its heroes, it’s easy not to take Silver Bullet too seriously and to simply just enjoy nearly two hours of campy, werewolf action and other great horror tropes. It helped that the cast – particularly Gary Busey and Corey Haim – delivered memorable performances.

And, of course, there’s also the matter of the werewolf himself. It’s a 1980s film, so the visuals don’t match today’s standards, but the werewolf suit worked well regardless, and yielded a vicious-looking creature that appeared both powerful and menacing, as befitting a werewolf.

The special effects for the werewolf transformations, including a scene where multiple transform in a dream sequence, are handled rather impressively, and serve the purpose of building excitement. Silver Bullet certainly has that abundance; it got off to a great start with a surprising werewolf killing in the opening sequence, and though it briefly stepped on the brakes after that, it didn’t take long for Silver Bullet to pick up steam again.

Fundamental to Silver Bullet’s appeal, and also one of the reasons why it’s a must-watch, is how it functioned as the only combination of two cornerstones of the horror movie genre – Stephen King and werewolves. And that’s not just because they’re both cinematic horror icons, but also because the two prove to be a perfect match when it comes to great storytelling.

A staple of Stephen King’s stories is the basic concept of something sinister hiding within what would otherwise be an ordinary town full of ordinary people. As a monster typically depicted as a normal person cursed to transform into a bloodthirsty beat under the full moon, the werewolf is one of the most fitting antagonists for just such a story.

All things considered, it’s a shame that no further adaptations of Cycle of the Werewolf are in sight, even 40 years after Silver Bullet’s release.