The look of the werewolf was very much what SK wanted, even though De Laurentiis was opposed to it.
From the IMDb trivia:
"Stephen King asked that the werewolf be ambiguous, plain, and hard to see, in contrast to the hulking monsters seen in other werewolf films and books in the early-to-mid-1980s, with the end result being a creature which looked more like a black bear than anything else and did not really have any identifying characteristics. After seeing Carlo Rambaldi's design, per King's request, producer Dino de Laurentiis was very unhappy and demanded a change, which both King and Rambaldi refused. Eventually pre-production fell behind schedule and director Don Coscarelli opted to start filming the non-werewolf scenes without knowing what would happen with the werewolf suit. After completing the non-werewolf scenes and not having any clear picture about what would happen with the film Coscarelli resigned as director and was replaced with Attias. When pressured to either cancel the film or accept the design de Laurentiis relented and allowed filming to continue with Rambaldi's werewolf suit. A modern dance actor was hired to perform the stunts inside the suit but de Laurentiis was also unhappy with his performance and demanded a change. As a result, Everett McGill, who played Revered Lester Lowe in human form, wound up acting out most of the scenes in the werewolf suit and was credited with a dual role."
Can't wait til I get the blu-ray which has commentary by Attias. I wonder if he adresses all this. There are few commentaries (or other extras) which adress all that went wrong with a film, they tend to prefer to be rather positive about it. I don't know if they are urged by the companies to be positive, or that they think it's more fun to listen to. There often is a disclaimer about comments not being representative of the company, so I wouldn't see why they couldn't adress negative aspects.