Sam Shepard’s Silent Tongue from 1993 is classified as a western horror film and, on IMDb, drama as well. While the movie has a fair deal of the paranormal element, it is difficult to find horror in it unless one views horror through a different, nonconventional lens. Where does it actually become a horror movie and for what reason?

Set in Llano Estacado (New Mexico) in 1873, Silent Tongue features the quest of an aging man Prescott Roe (Richard Harris) whose son Talbot (River Phoenix) has lost his sense of reality out of shock and denial as he grieves his recently deceased wife Awbonnie (Sheila Tousey) – a Native American woman that Roe bought him from her father Eamon McCree (Alan Bates). Fearing his son will die of grief while guarding the corpse of Awbonnie, Roe sets out to...

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