Silver Bullet: C-

A crippled kid has to convince Gary Busey, his alcoholic uncle, that a werewolf is behind all the murders in their little redneck town. You can imagine how difficult this would be for the kid to accomplish since crippled kids probably want all sorts of special attention all the time and adults in his life, like Busey, are all but conditioned to drink more whenever he opens his crippled little mouth to tell his crippled little stories. Like all kids in horror movies who figure out who the monster is, he sounds like a raving dumbfuck every time he tries to explain his theories. Plus, all Busey wants to do is drink Wild Turkey 101 and sing anti-Union Civil War songs. It’s clear he loves his crippled nephew, but his monster obsession is a real buzz-kill.

This is a Stephen King movie, so if that matters to you, there you go. The werewolf looks pretty cool but he keeps slaughtering people in a disappointingly non-werewolf manner. Here’s what I mean:

1. When the sheriff (John Locke from Lost) gets wise to what’s going on, the werewolf… beats him with a baseball bat.

2. The werewolf breaks into a young girl’s bedroom and… throws her against the wall.

3. The werewolf hides in a redneck’s greenhouse and… impales the guy on a broken floorboard.

The movie is funny as hell and has basically every ugly thing from the 1980’s you could think of. The soundtrack is entirely horror synth stabs and 80’s butt-rock. At times, you’d swear you were watching The Goonies or Karate Kid. The cripple has a motorized wheelchair which he later swaps for a WHEELCHAIR/MOTORCYCLE HYBRID. He does wheelies and cheers during a four minute long butt-rock sequence.

Busey’s acting is cranked to level-11; you can almost see the coke dumping out of his pores and his neck veins look like fucking tree roots. So fun to watch. There’s also a priest with an eye-patch and unlimited expendable rednecks who drink Red Stripe with the labels ripped off.

There is a werewolf showdown at the end and, yes, there is a silver bullet involved.