Grim Prairie Tales (1990)

Captivating movie !

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Brad Dourif and James Earl Jones introduce four prairie tales around the campfire, trying to out scare each other. While they most definitely are on the prairie, the only thing grim about these tales, is how pitifully boring they are. Dourif is the city boy heading west to join his wife, while Jones, looking like a cave man, is a bounty hunter with a human package to deliver. Story #1 is about the danger of crossing an Indian burial ground and is bad. #2 Concerns an apparently pregnant woman wanderer, which leads to a Stephen King-like moment. Also bad. #3 Story of a displaced Southern family featuring Lisa Eichhorn, and lots of talk about a hate crime. More bad. #4 A gunslinger competition that is about as scary as a basket of bunnies. Bad. The only redeeming factor about "Grim Prarie Tales" is the banter between the storytellers, but it isn't enough to save it. - MERK

Blustery bounty hunter James Earl Jones and jittery eastern tenderfoot Brad Douriff share a campfire on the prairie and swap horror stories, some of the supernatural variety while others are all too natural.This is a low budget but ambitious and atmospheric horror western, worth a look for fans of either genre, though some fans of traditional westerns might not be amused.The vignettes are great but the wraparound with Jones and Douriff is so entertaining that the stories they tell pale in comparison.Other than Jones and Douriff, the best performance in the film is by William Atherton as a frontier dad with a dark secret.

Coming in a close second behind "The Shadow of Chikara" and certainly the strangest picture to get made during the short-lived 90's revival of the Western movie genre, this refreshingly off-beat 18th century set omnibus oater rates as the finest horror-Western to ever grace celluloid, a fascinatingly unusual film which dips into America's rich, but largely (and shamefully) underexplored past with often hugely effective results.The remarkably strong wraparound segment concerns prissy intellectual city slicker Farley Deeds (a pleasantly low-key portrayal by the often over-the-top Brad Dourif), who's forced one night on the cold, lonely open prairie to either listen to or relate a quartet of spooky campfire stories in the less than prepossessing company of uncouth, vaguely menacing bounty hunter Morrison (a wonderfully ripe, robust, rip-snorting turn by the always great James Earl Jones).First tale: grouchy old cuss Lee Colby (amusingly essayed by grizzled character actor Will Hare, who also acted in the arrestingly oddball horror-Western doozy "Eyes of Fire") desecrates a sacrosanct Native American burial ground and promptly regrets it. Second yarn: a sweet young man (affable Marc McClure, who appeared in the equally underrated fright film anthology flick "After Midnight" around the same time) meets a lovely young woman (the gorgeous, raven-tressed, almond-eyed Michelle Joyner; Michael Rooker's doomed wife in "Cliffhanger") with a ... well, I don't want to spoil the deliciously nasty shock ending to this one. Watch and find out for yourself; it's sure to hit guys especially right where they live. Third story: a family of homesteaders must contend with a bloodthirsty lynch mob who want the sole man of among the beleaguered threesome to help them catch and subsequently hang an escaped slave. This particular tale is too sentimental and obvious to really work, although it boasts a strong performance from the under-appreciated William Atherton (the jerky TV reporter in the first two "Die Hard" movies) as a basically decent, but hateful man who's gamely struggling to control his more base impulses. Fourth anecdote: a sleazy gunslinger (marvelously played to the slimy hilt by Scott Paulin; the first victim of the rampaging mutant monster in the terrifically trashy "ALIEN" rip-off "Forbidden World") competes to be top dog in a tiny desert town and later regrets that he did.Capably directed and smartly written by novice filmmaker William Coe (who previously designed the posters for such features as "Back to the Future" and "Out of Africa"), with uniformly fine acting from a nicely varied cast, plenty of eerie atmosphere, a flavorsome recreation of the 1800's, and a welcome emphasis on vividly drawn characters and similarly colorful old-fashioned storytelling over any needless excess flash or pretense, "Grim Prairie Tales" ranks as a most rewarding and highly different kind of horror movie, one in which story and character are more important and meaningful than either cheap shocks or disgusting gore. The anxious, intriguing, masterfully developed and sustained rapport between Jones and Dourif, both in superior personable form, is extremely enjoyable and unexpectedly affecting (the film not only deals with the expert telling of four scary stories, but also delightfully details the gradual genesis of an unlikely, but sturdy friendship between two radically contrasting individuals). The spiky, frequently hilarious, insult-laden rat-a-tat-tat banter that Jones and Dourif heatedly exchange throughout is a tremendous source of rousing entertainment alone, highlighted by the sidesplitting moment a fuming Brad calls Big Jim "a corpulent old buzzard!" It's a small, but bright and sparkling little gem of a sleeper.

Grim Prairie Tales is an acclaimed film of bizarre anthology and spellbinding horror featuring an all star cast. Academy Award nominees James Earl Jones and Brad Dourif lead a cast including Scott Paulin (Turner & Hooch), Will Hare (Back to the Future), Marc McClure (Superman), Lisa Eichhorn (The Talent Mr. Ripley), William Atherton (Die Hard) and Michelle Joyner (Cliffhanger) to star in a tale of two pioneers who cross paths in a Western desert land and tell tales of both ghastly hauntings and supernatural tragedies. It's a low-buget film, but has some good quality of directing and acting. I especially liked the first and last stories the most.