silver bullets, can it be done?

[peter johnson]

In the original werewolf stories of Eastern Europe -- some documented by The Brothers Grimm -- the werewolf hunter would take the silver chalices from a Catholic Church to melt down to create a huge mine-ball to shoot from his flintlock/matchlock Blunderbuss-type weapon.  These things were round & maybe 50 to 80 calibre(!), if we're being literal.  It would seem to be the association with the Blood of Christ that would give the silver bullet its power, not just the type of metal used.
Francis Coppola's Dracula has Dracula walk down the middle of London, in broad daylight, just as he did in Bram Stoker's book.  Apparently, the only full day that the vampire has to hide in his hole for is the Sabbath -- which could get confusing if your vampire is a Seventh Day Adventist or Jewish --, though he only has his full powers in the dark of night.  Again, the religious thema are very important.
In the book of The Keep, the Wurdulak, or whatever the hell the old, Unspeakable Being is, has a long conversation with one of the Nazi doctors about his makeup & says he "loves garlic" & pops a whole bulb in his mouth by way of demonstration.  Pity they didn't keep that scene in the film.
In both House 1 & House 2, all the monsters defy conventions all over the place, willy nilly, and I think both of those films made money.
peter johnson/denny crane

[AlexB]

Well, I think the main advantage in having a traditional monster in your movie, is that  you save on explanation time. For obvious reasons, you need a monster that can't be killed easily (otherwise you'd have a really short movie), yet it has to be killed somehow (due to the need for a happy ending, or indeed some ending at all).
If you start from scratch, you need a professor type character saying something like 'the whatever-it-is can only be killed if it sneezes at full moon'. Then the Hero has to find some way of spraying the monster with pepper at the right moment.
On the other hand, if you use Dracula, you don't have to motivate why people go looking for stakes, garlic or holy water. It is simply a labour saving device.

That being said, I'm still not convinced of the effect of silver on the rifling. For one thing, I'd like to shoot werewolves from fairly a long way away. Secondly, who says you won't meet another one very soon?

[Jack Corbett]

Ah, great. Creature won't work, then. It has a pessimistic ending

[odinn7]

"That being said, I'm still not convinced of the effect of silver on the rifling. For one thing, I'd like to shoot werewolves from fairly a long way away. Secondly, who says you won't meet another one very soon?"

As Andrew stated earlier in this thread, silver is harder than lead but softer than copper. Many modern bullets are copper jacketed and work fine in rifled barrels as do lead bullets. I don't see that there would be any problem with the rifling and silver combination. Now, as far as how well the bullet would fly at a distance, I can't even begin to tell you.

[Jack Corbett]

I'm pretty sure it could work.