Tremors

MOVIE DETAILS

Rating: 7.1 out of 10
Director: Ron Underwood
Writer: S.S. Wilson, Brent Maddock, Ron Underwood
Star: Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter
Genres: Comedy/Horror
Release Date: January 19, 1990 (United States)

Tremors

Tremors is a film that fails theatrically but succeeds on video. There are numerous examples of movies like this during the VHS/DVD era (post-1983), but none more dramatic than Tremors. It’s not hard to see why it eventually found an audience. It’s a good monster movie: The special effects work, and there’s plenty of tension in the action scenes. It also has a sense of humor and never takes itself too seriously. Horror/comedies often have trouble staying on the right side of that line; Tremors walks it like a tightrope we jump when we’re supposed to jump and laugh when we’re supposed to laugh (not the other way around). If anything, it’s still mystifying that it had to wait for home video to find its audience.

Audiences “discovered” Tremors in their living rooms, where it became one of the early success stories of the home video market. After making only $17 million at theaters, it made more than three times that much on VHS. People rented or bought the tape. The film’s newfound popularity begat three forgettable straight to video sequels and one short lived TV series (which aired 13 episodes during the 2003 season). Other than Michael Gross, who appeared in all four Tremors movies as well as the TV show, there wasn’t much continuity between them; director Ron Underwood was involved only in the first movie, then moved on.

The film is set in Perfection, a little town that looks left over from the Old West isolated, with only one road leading out toward civilization. Its population is 14 (or fewer by the end). Everyone knows everyone else’s business not that anyone has much business for everyone else to know about. The biggest news in Perfection is that grad student Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter) has arrived to take seismology readings in the desert. She may not be the prettiest girl around, but she’s cute enough to attract the attention of laconic handyman Earl Bassett (Fred Ward) and his tomcat buddy, Val McKee (Kevin Bacon).

But no sooner does Rhonda arrive than people start disappearing or turning up dead. It becomes apparent there’s something under the ground that likes the taste of human flesh. Rhonda checks her readings and determines that there are four of them, which dampens everyone’s spirits when Earl and Val kill one of these behemoths by accidentally enticing it to crash headlong into a concrete barrier.

Taking Tremors seriously is futile. It’s a tongue in cheek script and the actors play it that way. But it never goes into outright camp; there’s tension in the action scenes and, while they’re broadly drawn, we like these characters enough to want them to make it through. The film’s late-blooming success resulted in a lot of copycats but none of them, not even its direct sequels captured the mix of humor, action/adventure and gore with Underwood’s deftness. The longer one looks at all those failed Tremors wannabes, the more impressive this underrated aspect becomes.

It is a wonderful cast for a low-budget film. The biggest star is Kevin Bacon, but he does not have the power to open a movie even though he has his own game. He throws around both his 100-watt smile and his one-liners to equal effect. More gruff and reserved, Fred Ward is effective as his foil. Finn Carter, who would go on to be a career television guest star, does what she can with an underwritten love interest role; the film might have been more interesting if there had been chemistry between her and Bacon. The Big Moment kiss feels weirdly out of place.

Michael Gross and Reba McEntire play gun-loving survivalists and they steal every scene they’re in they also get all the best lines. Gross, at that time relatively popular from recurring as Michael J. Fox’s father on Family Ties (which had gone off the air less than a year before Tremors was released), is particularly good at line readings like “Broke into the wrong goddamn rec room, didn’t ya you bastard?!”

McEntire was of course known for singing (this was her acting debut) but really nails some of her funnier moments here just look at how she says “Burt I don’t THINK it’s armed!” Bobby Jacoby (a.k.a. Robert Jayne, as he would later become known) plays an annoying kid who’s probably the only one in town we hope gets eaten by the graboids; he gets some funny bits too but Richards’ character has more depth (and she gets one last memorable moment right at the end). Finally there’s Ariana Richards as Pefection’s youngest resident; considering what she would be chased by three years later in Jurassic Park she gets off easy here.

Tremors did not have much money so unfortunately there aren’t many special effects treats available here. However! Given its limitations this movie does a really good job of making the graboids genuinely menacing. Like Jaws, they’re mostly hidden for most of the film; instead of swimming under a boat though, here they burrow under ground and stick their snake-like tongues out from under the sand but their gargantuan cone-shaped bodies stay buried. It’s actually a credit to how this movie is assembled that we never once question whether or not those creatures are real. There’s never an instance when we’re pointing at the screen and laughing at something that’s obviously just a bunch of rubber.

There is a LOT of action during the final third of this film as our characters become the hunted. They have bombs and guns at their disposal (thanks to the Gross and McEntire characters) and know that while graboids can collapse houses, they can’t get to you if you’ve reached the safety of a rock outcropping. The problem is getting from there to the mountains when there’s a massive smelly ugly thing chasing you from beneath. Proving he’s good for more than a smile and quip, Val puts his life on the line in a suspenseful sequence where we’re sure he’s dead meat (this part was too scary for me as a kid). But that’s what this whole movie is like: little action scene, little gore set piece, then joke to ease tension repeat until climax!

People remember Tremors with fondness because, while the film has its fair share of edge-of-your-seat moments, it also provides viewers with a chance to breathe. All the characters are likeable; there are no uncomfortable factions or power-struggles or two-legged villains. The humans don’t do stupid things in the name of greed; their only goal is survival. There’s nothing new about Tremors; it borrows heavily from many of the monster movies both good and bad that were popular earlier this century. Although intended as a stand-alone movie, three sequels were made due to its delayed yet sustained popularity. Even today, 18 years after hitting multiplex screens and barely being seen by anyone, Tremors still feels fresh and fun.

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