Cycle of the Werewolf (Signet)
by Stephen King

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Book Reviews of Cycle of the Werewolf (Signet)

Book Review: Werewolf in Maine
Summary: 3 Stars

But Cycle is not a novel, nor even a "novelette" as it's been called. It's not even a short story. I suspect that it was written as a screen treatment, a synopsis preparatory to a full-blown script, to interest studio executives into making it a movie. Which it certainly did.

I can imagine Stephen King writing this taut little tale while snowbound in Maine one weekend, with a movie in mind from the very start. Some of the scenes in the story, like Alfie in the June chapter, seeing the werewolf transformation reflected in his highly polished coffee urn, are quite effectively chilling, and would have played well on film.

There's one glaring faux pas in the August chapter, when Constable Neary is attacked while sitting in his "Dodge pickup" and killed a few paragraphs later in his "Ford pick-up!" Was this story proofread by anybody? And in the last chapter, December, Uncle Al is armed with a .45 Magnum. I think the .44 Magnum is as big as Magnum pistols come. In the movie it is a .44 that kills the Beast. And why, in every werewolf story, does the werewolf change back into human form after death? And how do you explain this dead, killed, all-too-human body now, to the cops? "But, Officer Krupke, he was a werewolf when I killed him!" "Sure, kid, sure."

Stephen King offers no explanation for why the werewolf is a werewolf, or what "werewolfery*" is -- the werewolf just is, like a random force of nature. Or why the werewolf skips killing people for two months and kills animals instead. Just for a change of diet?

Or why, in the last chapter, the werewolf can remember Marty and come after him, when it's been previously pointed out that the guy doesn't remember anything he does when he's in werewolf form, and vice-versa. Or why the werewolf can get scratched and bruised and have an eye put out by firecrackers, but plain ol' lead bullets won't hurt him? Marty uses two silver bullets to put the Beast down, and there's another mistake here, too: Marty has a ".38 Colt Woodsman" in which "two bullets are chambered." I believe the Colt Woodsman is a .22 caliber semi-automatic target pistol, in which only one bullet at a time can be chambered, with the others in the magazine. And wouldn't "pure silver" be too soft for effective bullets?

Just minor points, to be sure. I found the book quite enjoyable, especially with the excellent illustrations by Berni Wrightson, although there are inconsistencies here, too -- the werewolf has a tail in the text, but only one picture shows a tail, the last one, which also show Marty holding a revolver instead of a semi-automatic pistol. I would recommend this little book to all Stephen King fans, but they've probably already read it, and seen the movie, too. For werewolf fans in general, I would recommend Guy Endore's The Werewolf of Paris, Jessie Douglas Kerruish's The Undying Monster, and Jack Williamson's Darker Than You Think, which is also excellently illustrated.

*werewolfery -- the term used for the more correct "lycanthropy" in the 1935 movie The Werewolf of London. The werewolf in this landmark film has no superhuman powers, and is actually knocked out in a fistfight!

Summary of Cycle of the Werewolf (Signet)

Horror Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Horror