A movie like Tremors shouldn’t be as good as it is. Released during the winter of 1990, it was typically reserved for the bottom of the barrel of movies. Tremors boasted a nice cast of Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Reba McEntire and Michael Gross. It had also been scheduled to be released during the Fall of 1989 but more on that later.
Valentine “Val” McKee (Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Ward) are two handy-man for hire who live in the Perfection community just east of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It’s a desert wasteland of maybe a dozen people. One day, Val and Early become fed up with their jobs after they end up covered in raw sewage when a septic disposal hose malfunctions. They head out toward Bixby, the nearest more civilized town. But on their way out, they see a local elderly man, Edgar Deems (Sunshine Parker), high atop an electrical tower. When Val climbs up to see what the problem is as Edgar isn’t responding,, he discovers Edgar is dead.
They take his body to the local doctor, Jim Wallace (Conrad Bachmann), who concludes Edgar died of dehydration despite having a Winchester rifle on his possession. He would’ve had to stay atop the tower for days. A geology graduate student, Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter), has asked Val and Earl if they’ve noticed any odd because she’s getting a lot of strange readings on the seismographs. Things go from bad to worse as they discover a local sheep farmer and his whole flock have been massacred by something.
They go back to Perfection to notify the authorities but the phone lines are out and when they take off toward Bixby, the road has been blocked by falling rocks and phone workers have been killed. Walter Chang (Victor Wong), proprietor of the local general store used as the go-to hangout spot, gives Val and Earl his horses and some supplies as they ride toward Bixby to notify the authorities. Burt and Heather Gummer (Gross and McEntire), two Doomsday Preppers and gun enthusiasts do a survey of the area but can’t find anything.
But Val and Earl soon find out that there are some huge worm-like creatures with four tentacles that grab on to their prey. One of them is killed when it chases Val and Earl to a concrete drainage ditch and runs head on. Rhonda discovers them nearby and deduces there have been four of the creatures from her seismograph readings. Realizing the creatures sense vibrations from their movements and talking, they eventually make it back to perfection but find themselves trapped as as Val says, “one big smorsgasbord.”
To survive they have to work together to make it out of Perfection and destroy the creatures that Walter has call Graboids. During one of the memorable scenes, Burt and Heather used their arsenal of rifles, shotguns and handguns to dispose of a Graboid when it bursts through their basement which is their rec room. Burt gleefully tells the others by radio they got one of the “motherhumpers.”
Originally, the movie was intended to be rated R as writers Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson had about two dozen F-bombs in the script that was filmed. However, Universal Pictures, which felt the movie would be more commercial, had the actors come back to redub dialogue and cuts were made. Still, it would’ve been great to hear Gross who had become famous as the political liberal-minded Steven Keating on Family Ties drop the F-bomb. Unfortunately it didn’t happen. The movie was released on Jan. 16, 1990 in fifth place and never claimed the No. 1 spot. Produced on a budget of $10 million, it only made $16.7 million despite receiving rave reviews from many critics.
Tremors is a like an ode to the old giant monster movies of the Nuclear War era in the 1950s and 1960s. But it has a sense of humor to it that never become tired because it never takes itself too seriously. Bacon and Ward are such a great pairing bickering like brothers constantly debating on who has to do the menial tasks of making breakfast or climbing up to get Edgar down. While it seems Burt and Heather can be parodied, their lifestyle seems to fit the laid back rustic setting of Perfection. Nowadays, it’s harder to laugh guessing they would probably be the type who would’ve been telling people about Pizzagate or storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. At the time the movie was made, preppers weren’t taken as seriously.
But the movie does factor in with the same tension as Jaws where the characters are in an isolated location where they can’t venture out without the threat of apex predators. There’s really no place to go and the Graboids are actually a little smarter than the people give them credit for at first. Because they’re in a location where the ground is mostly composed of rocks, Burt can’t even use his elephant gun to shoot them. What makes the movie so fun to watch is that you can tell the actors had a fun time making it. And the Graboids don’t look so bad for practical effects. I’d argue they’re intended to look a little hokey just as a homage to the old monster movies that used camera tricks and obvious models.
Despite the meager financial return, Tremors found its audience on the home video and cable markets. In 1996, Tremors 2: Aftershocks opened in limited release. Only Ward and Gross return. Bacon was shooting Apollo 13 at the time of the production and McEntire, who made her film debut in the first one, was on a tour. Val’s absence is described in a line of dialogue that he got married and Heather’s is because her and Burt have separated making a joke that it’s serious because she asked for some major firearms.
Aftershocks had Earl and Burt being hired to hunt the Graboids in a Mexican oil field. Directed by Wilson to save money who wrote the script with Maddock, it reveals the Graboids have “Shriekers,” bipedal carnivorous predators that burst out of them at a certain point and sense someone’s body radiation. Other sequels and even a prequel have all been straight to home video market. A series ran for one season on the Syfy Channel but was canceled. In 2017, Bacon returned to filmed a 60-minute pilot but nothing reportedly came of it.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 