Product Details

• Actors: Richard Harris, Sheila Tousey, Alan Bates, River Phoenix, Dermot Mulroney
• Directors: Sam Shepard
• Writers: Sam Shepard
• Producers: Bill Yahraus, Carolyn Pfeiffer, Catherine Scheinman, Gene Rosow, Ludi Boeken
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Rated: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Vidmark / Trimark
• VHS Release Date: January 1, 1998
• Run Time: 102 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6303113192
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,494 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal ghost story. Very theatrical in tone., November 22, 2000

By 

A. C. Walter "awalter" (Lynnwood, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Silent Tongue [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Sam Shepard, the writer/director of "Silent Tongue," is one of the big names in contemporary American theatre. So it comes as no surprise that his two feature films--also, "Far North"--have a distinctly theatrical tone. General audiences may not have a taste for this, but Shepard's films do reward additional viewings, and both have grown on me in a big way.

"Silent Tongue" is a ghost story which uncovers a disturbing sickness at the heart of the Old West. River Phoenix becomes mentally unhinged when his Native American bride dies in childbirth. This sends his father, Richard Harris, on a journey to try and find another woman for his son. Exhibiting tragically limited imagination, the father returns to the traveling circus where he traded horses for the first woman, and he attempt a second bargain for the woman's sister. In the end, the sister must confront the dead woman's ghost, and we learn the dark secret of their past.

Phoenix is eerily convincing as the mad Talbot Roe, and Richard Harris is uncharacteristic low-key as the world-weary Prescott Roe. My only complaint is Dermot Mulroney who is miscast and unable to make his character's diction convincing.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unbelievable, NO, BELIEVEABLE, February 16, 2004

By 

Tom Gaulding (South half of Franklin Co. Kansas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Tongue [VHS] (VHS Tape)

One of the best. I've read the critics' reviews of Sam Shepard's directorial effort, hogwash. If you don't like what Shepard did in this one, you've missed the point of the movie. You can't roller-skate in a buffalo herd! There are two tragedies to this film: one, it has gone so unnoticed as a whole; two, Sheila Tousey has gone so unnoticed. I believe this is the greatest Native American actress. Couple this with Mr. Bates, Harris, Mulroney, Pheonix, Shepard and Ms. Arredondo, and it was a loser in any way??????

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What is love?, October 15, 2009

By 

C. 'Chevy' Pickup (Spokane, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Silent Tongue (DVD)

In a tribute, a Rolling Stone reviewer suggested this was the quintessential River Phoenix movie. I disagree, he gives a much better performance in 'My Own Private Idaho' but this story is better written. It's not really a western, though it is set in that time and place we nostalgically yearn for, with stark wide open spaces in hues of tan and brown. There's lots of dust and horses and broken people trying to mend their fragile lives. There's even a snake oil salesman and his son, complete with sideshow and assorted freaks. Richard Harris plays a father who loves his son (Phoenix) so much that he will purchase a wife for his sad and lonely child, but when she dies in childbirth, why not purchase her twin sister from the shifty, snake oil hawker who fathered them? Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Phoenix broods over the body of his lost love wrapping her in hides and suspending her body in a dead tree. He will not let her go and her spirit doesn't want to stay. Her soul visits him in visions that become so real to him that he almost shoots himself. He can't or won't do it, to join her would be love, to hold on to her is pure selfishness. Her twin sister knows that the dead are powerful and she agrees to help Harris break the hold his son has on her sister, but then she's outta there. Conceived in rape, she knows that she is a double second class citizen. One, she's a woman, and two she's half white and half native. She has nothing but her wits and a dark opportunity to free herself from her father and his mad schemes. She'll take four horses for her trouble and the hope for a new life. (Even the female actresses, who deliver wonderful performances, are overshadowed by their male co-stars in the marketing of this film.)

Although told like a ghost story, this is really a love story about a father's love for his son. Harris will do anything for his child, even fight the apparition of his former daughter-in-law that appears in the form of a wolf. Steeped in native mythology and mysticism this story speaks of ties we create between those we love and those we use. In contrast, the snake oil vendor sees his daughters as commodities. The only love that exited for these lost, little girls was their mother, Silent Tongue, who couldn't even cry out when she was raped by their father. Another victim of his entrepreneurial father, is the twin's half brother, who insists on setting out after his half sister is abducted by Harris, and dragging his father along to do the 'right thing' and rescue her. The entire cast give strong and beautiful performances. It's a crime this is not available in wide screen because the melancholy landscape, is itself, a character in this tale. The film is rife with metaphor and if you want to think and be entertained this is the journey you'll want to take between real love and what poses for the love between us. Even though it is offered in a full screen format it is a good value for the prices that it is offered at. For those who prefer to have nonviolent fare, there are a few scenes including the rape that are inappropriate or upsetting. Overall I didn't know what to expect, but I was surprised and pleased by this complex study of relationships that transcend time and place.