Copyright slashfilm
There are so many Stephen King adaptations that it can be difficult to keep up with them all. However, this isn't exactly a recent development. King has been around for decades, after all, and his work has been making the rounds in Hollywood since the 1970s. Every film buff knows about the seminal early King adaptations, such as Brian De Palma's iconic 1976 movie "Carrie" and Stanley Kubrick's 1980 take on "The Shining," which King personally disdains. However, one early King film has escaped widespread attention, possibly because it's based on a lesser known work. This 1985 movie is called "Silver Bullet," and it's a fairly run-of-the-mill Eighties horror tale of a werewolf terrorizing a small town. On the other hand, the novella the film is based on is far from King's ordinary fare. "Cycle of the Werewolf," which came out in 1983, is an atmospheric story that's broken into 12 chapters, each based on one month of the year. The narrative details brutal werewolf attacks the town of Tarker's Hill, Maine experiences each full moon, with a wheelchair-using boy called Marty Coslaw serving as the main character. Marty's life and the werewolf's reign of terror slowly intertwine as he comes face to face with the monster and discovers its human identity. Notably, King's writing is only part of the allure here. Illustrator Bernie Wrightson's morbidly beautiful images of each month's key events — more often than not, the werewolf attacks — bring the story to life, allowing the reader to experience the events in a particularly vivid fashion.
