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Thirty years ago, Wayne Coe released the only film he would ever direct as a passion project. He brought together Brad Dourif (Child’s Play, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and James Earl Jones (Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian) to create Grim Prairie Tales. Looking back, it may be much more fun and important than we initially thought, giving us a rare film in an even rarer genre and teaching us great lessons regarding things like racism and cultural respect.
The film introduces us to clerk Farley Deeds (Dourif), who’s on a trek across the west to get to his wife in Florida. Deeds meets hardened bounty Hunter Morrison (Jones) when he shows up at his campfire in the middle of the night. They ultimately decide to pass the time by each telling two horror tales from the Prairie. The two have fantastic chemistry and banter, bouncing off each other’s extremely different acting styles. In some horror anthologies, you run into the issue of the bookends feeling forced, boring, or too long. In this film, these moments took up a lot of screen time, but felt fluid and the interactions were fun. Both actors have greatly recognizable voices that movie lovers are familiar with anyway, so choosing them for these storyteller roles was brilliant. They set the scenes perfectly and you find yourself hooked immediately.
The first story, told by Morrison, is probably the weakest of the film. The story focuses around a grumpy old curmudgeon that stomps his way through a Native American burial ground, desecrating it, and the punishment that will entail. Although the story doesn’t offer much value in the way of shock or horror, that seems to be the point, as it’s a plot device created to continue the conversation between our leads. This truly is a different kind of anthology. Typically, the bookends are created to compliment the stories, and this film, the director knows his talent, and uses the stories to compliment the bookends. It’s extremely creative filmmaking.
After not being impressed with the first story, Morrison tells another, this time about a pregnant woman wandering through the desert, and the man that comes to her aid. In a classic siren song story, this segment offers one of the weirdest moments and effects in horror. I won’t spoil it for you, but put it this way, I rented this movie when I was kid, and this was the only moment I remembered from it before I re-watched it as an adult. If you don’t feel like sifting through the film, Google “Grim Prairie Tales Gif” and you’ll get your satisfaction. This segment by itself had audience members and press thinking that Coe had written this as an intentional piece about the empowerment of women. He’s since said that wasn’t intentional, but the effect remains the same.
The third tale really starts to get the wheels spinning as Deeds takes over the storytelling. The story follows the relationship between a girl and her mother, as they try to come to terms with the fact that although he helped them when they needed it the most, the man of the family is also a murderer. This segment features William Atherton (Die Hard) who does a pretty decent job portraying a nice guy psycho. This one gets Morrison fully engaged, and he doesn’t want the Deeds’ best story to be the last, so he decides to go supernatural in the last tale, claiming it’ll “stick to you like an eyeball on a cactus needle.”
The fourth segment is most in-depth and visually pleasing. Coe very much saved the best for last. A gunslinger is haunted by the man he kills in a street duel. There is an extremely detailed animated dream sequence scene where the main character sees his own head in the chamber of a six-shooter, which seemed a little out of place, but was cool, nonetheless.
The film ends with the two having a few great moments of dialogue before seeing each other off on their own ways, being open to a future of friendship. Apparently, Coe had planned on making a sequel in 1992, titled Grim Prairie Tales: Rescue Party, but it never got off the ground.
Grim Prairie Tales isn’t the most groundbreaking, or even close to the best in the horror anthology genre, but there are some excellent moments in it, and the chemistry between the two leads is worth a watch on its own. This is especially the case if you’re looking for something you may not have seen. Unfortunately, I don’t believe the film ever made the production jump to DVD or Blu-Ray, so you will either need to find the VHS, or you can watch the entire film on Youtube. Give it a watch!
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