Hi friends, happy Friday! I hope you’re all well! Today I’m back with another book in my Stephen King Project, his novelette, Cycle of the Werewolf.

I read this from November 19, 2023 – December 10, 2023 (1 month)

The Book (1983)

• January: So this short story opens the overall theme of the book, which feels will be turning into a werewolf. The imagery is really good and leaves us curious for more.
• February: The reader was wrong about turning into a werewolf – it’s about a werewolf terrifying/killing people each month. This one is about a woman desperate for love – it didn’t age well.
• March: This was really short and straight to the point; it had the chill of winter with the kiss of death.
• April: Once again, the imagery is so vivid as we see the werewolf attack its next victim; someone the town didn’t suspect, which made it even more chilling.
• May: This was truly a terrifying story. The reader is just realizing that all these short stories take place in the same town. In this one, some of the town’s people are now turning into werewolves; King gives the false hope it could be a dream… but slowly takes it away. Truly creepy.
• June: The last line in this short story is chilling. So it’s looking like the town is slowly turning into werewolves… one month at a time. The way each story is accompanied by art also brings out the scariness of the stories.
• July: This is by far the longest short story yet, but also fascinating. We meet Marty who is sad that the Fourth of July fireworks are canceled (because of the beast). He’s wheelchair bound and when he sneaks out he comes head to head with the beast… and lives. The reader wonders if this will come back in future stories, is this a foreshadowing for what’s to come? We are fully immersed and invested now.
• August: This story is chilling and gruesome. We do continue from the previous story as the police officer who’s working the case comes face to face with the beast. The art for this story was so grotesque but it fit really well. It really helped bring out the tension that is definitely starting to slowly build up as we near the end of the year.
• September: This story was gross, but also surprising as the beast didn’t attack humans for the first time, almost like it was taking a break for what’s to come. This story was a little lacklustre compared to the previous stories; the art was again, really gross, but really good.
• October: So Marty does return! He’s out trick or treating when he runs into the beast as a man and he’s the only one who knows. It’s so chilling because does the beast know Marty knows?! Are we going to find out? The suspense is killing us.
• November: This short story is told from the beast’s POV, but while he’s human and we get a bit of a backstory on his wolf-life. It was an interesting perspective; it gave the reader a taste of who the beast really is, but it felt like we didn’t get enough.
• December: And we wrap up the year back in the Coslaw house at NYE where Marty is ready to take down the beast. The overall story comes full circle and people start to find out who the beast really is. It wasn’t a bad ending since it answered all our questions.

Final thoughts: This was a really creative way to tell a creepy story. Having each month of the year follow this werewolf beast and how it caused chaos in this small town. The way tension was built up throughout the different months and the different characters was really effective. The reader enjoyed reading and finding out more as we progressed. It was really captivating to know that only one of the characters had come face to face with the beast and survived and to see how that played out was fascinating because the reader had no idea how it would all end. King did a good job of keeping the story short and concise, which really brought the creep factor up and made this a chilling read. The writing was really well done, there were a few parts that could have been written better, but overall it was well written and well crafted.

The Movie:

Silver Bullet (1985)

• This film took a different approach to the book, but that is probably for the best as if this movie had followed the same trajectory as the book it might have been boring and very disconnected. The movie flowed really well. This still had the essence of the book where we see there is something that is attacking the town, and slowly they’re realizing they shouldn’t stay out after dark.  
• We definitely see more from the Colsaw family and we learn more about them than we did in the book and it was really well done. 
• It takes a little bit of time, but we slowly realize why the movie is called Silver Bullet and it’s interesting. Like it makes sense that they would call Marty’s electric wheelchair the silver bullet because of how fast it goes, but the double meaning behind it is really clever. 
• They really opened up Uncle Red’s character in the movie. In the book we only see him very briefly, but in the movie they give him such a complex character. He’s very eccentric, and not always the greatest guy. He’s very fleeting but we can see how much he loves Marty, would do anything for that boy. Marty’s mom even tells him, why can’t you be like this all the time. So it was really nice to see this character come to life. 
• The first half of the movie was a really slow build up for what was to come. But once we got to the halfway point where Marty makes the discovery, the plot gets thick fast, and the movie goes by super fast. 
• This movie was also less gory than the viewer thought it’d be. From the book and the illustrations in the book it all seemed so chilling, but the movie skipped out on all things gory and chilling and went straight for creepy. A lot of side long looks and shadows used for effects. 
• They changed the way that we find out who the werewolf is, but again, it was done really well and effectively because it was so tense.
• The direction to have Mary’s sister narrate things as we went along, was an interesting choice. It made it feel like a storybook and it took out the scary in this a bit, especially with how this ended. After everything they went through, to 1) end on a freeze frame and then 2) have Jane talking about loving her brother, really took the chill out of everything and gave it this really cheesy ending. 
• Overall, this movie was really well done. It was captivating in all the right parts, sure things were changed around from the book to the movie, as to be expected, but they did a good job of making sure everything that happened in the book was in the movie – all the core moments were accounted for. The movie gave us more in terms of character development because the stories were so short in the book, it was mostly plot driven, but the movie actually gave us a chance to see and explore these characters in a more real and relatable sense. 

I also filmed my thoughts on the book if you’d like to check that out:

Up Next: The Talisman