Tremors (1990): Favourite Films Series

Tremors (1990): Favourite Films Series

 

At first glance, Tremors looks like an average B-movie with a silly monster and a cast of characters you won’t care about. That’s the impression the poster, home video cover, and trailer all give. What the poster does do well is convey the basic premise: an underground monster is trying to eat some people in a desert town. That’s what first attracted me to the movie when I was just a kid, but it holds up to this day, and that’s because it goes beyond the simple concept indicated by the poster, but also executes its monster movie concept flawlessly.

I watched Tremors for the first time on TV when I was about eleven, ironically while eating a plate of leftover spaghetti—such an appropriate coincidence, because when I asked my mom what it was about as I slurped up the worm-like noodles, she said it was about giant killer worms. Her summary was accurate, too. Think Jaws but on land, and prehistoric worm monsters instead of a shark (going back to the poster, it’s very comparable to the poster of Jaws). The original title for this movie was in fact Land Sharks, but the script was reworked (for the better, I’m sure). The premise is pretty straight forward, but what makes it unique are the characters and the setting. It’s not only a great creature feature, but a surprisingly smart one. Of course, I didn’t notice that until re-watching it years later. 

The town of Perfection, Nevada is barely a town. It’s a few trailers and houses and a general store, but for a group of quirky characters, it’s home. The two main characters are Val and Earl, played by Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, who don’t want to live in Perfection anymore, so they decide to pack up and leave, but they end up trapped there after they discover the one road that leads out of the valley in which the town is situated has been blocked by fallen rocks. They also discover some kind of subterranean creature is killing and eating people. Rhonda, a seismologist student working nearby, finds out there are more than one of these creatures, so the townsfolk group together and try to figure out a way to escape, which in any normal town would be pretty straight forward, but Perfection is literally in the middle of a desert, and the creatures are quickly learning their survival tricks.  

Tremors is a one-of-a-kind creature feature. It delivers on the monster action and character development in equal portions, and despite being about monstrous prehistoric worms trying to eat people, is really clever, upbeat, and funny. Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward have great chemistry together, and the dialogue is witty and smart. The only character I would single out as being really annoying is the young boy, who jokes about the killer worms in the first half then is a wuss the rest of the movie, but to be fair, that’s the whole point of his character, and he only has a minor part. Everyone else is great, and you actually root for them to live. They aren’t idiots, either. There’s no one making obvious mistakes or stupid decisions out of fear like in a generic horror movie. For instance, it doesn’t take the main characters long to figure out the creatures can’t go through rock, and that’s just the start of them figuring out how to outwit these ancient beasts. 

Typically in a great monster movie, be it Jaws or Alien or King Kong, we get a basic amount of information about the monster, but they are never focused on too heavily, either from a screenwriting standpoint or visual standpoint. In Tremors, we actually get a good look at the creature, in a scene that’s both interesting and hilarious. After accidentally crashing into a concrete barrier and killing itself, the characters clear away the broken concrete to examine its smashed head and dig up the dirt around its body (“I found the ass-end!” Kevin Bacon remarks). We get a full look at the creatures, which become known as “graboids” (a name I was never a huge fan of, I usually just refer to them as the "Tremors' Worms"), and get an idea of how they work. They have spikes on their bodies that help them move, snake-like grabbers within their larger beak-like mouth (hence the name graboid), and oozy-red blood. It’s not an overly complicated creature design, but it works, and would be expanded on in subsequent sequels. 

Sometimes a movie monster gets over-explained, which makes it less scary, but here, it’s just the right amount. The graboids are underground most of the time, so they’re still scary, because they can sense the vibrations of things moving above ground, and just like how the shark’s presence is known by the barrels moving along the ocean surface in Jaws, you know the graboids are coming by all sorts of ways: dirt moving, dust billowing, things falling over, things being sucked into the ground, etc. 

 

But that doesn’t mean the graboids don’t get their chance to shine. They make a few impressive kills, and one famous scene in the bunker of the town’s two survivalists/gun nuts shows off the impressive special effects better than any other. PG-13 horror movies can often feel softened or censored, but here it is not a detriment, and that’s largely because it’s not a straight-up horror show. The characters acknowledge, to a degree, the absurdity of their situation, and they’re always joking with each other or being sarcastic, which lightens the mood. There’s a moment early on when Earl curses in front of Rhonda, then says “Pardon my French.” Later on, when they’re on the rooftop of the general store trying to figure out how to get past the graboids, she curses, they look at her, and she says, “Pardon my French.” It’s these little moments that give the characters, and by default the entire movie, so much personality.  

Tremors is definitely what you would call a cult film, because it didn’t make a ton of money at the box office in 1990, but it found greater success on home video and TV. It holds up well, too, thanks to high-quality practical effects and the remote setting—honestly, it looks like it could be set anywhere from the 1970’s to early 2000’s (but for the record, is set in the late 80’s/early 90’s, as far as I know). There were many sequels and one prequel, but they were all home-video releases, and none of them live up to the quality of the first movie. 

Tremors is a fun but smart monster movie with undeniable personality and original creatures that still hold up. If you enjoy this movie as much as I do, consider checking out the sequels; at least the second and third. They don’t have as many memorable, original characters, or plots that are nearly as intelligent, but the character Burt Gummer played by Michael Gross returns for all of them, and the evolution of the graboids is entertaining and over-the-top, the highlight being the "assblasters" from part three.