(Originally posted on
I saw Tremors when it was first released in theaters back in 1990. I went to see it when I was stationed in Monterey, California with a couple of local friends. My assumption was that it was a mindless monster flick. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We had a blast.
It’s actually a very clever and subversive movie in several ways. The film manages to take an old formula, brush the dust off and resurrect it with style. Setting it in the American Southwest hearkens back to Them! and Tarantula, along with less-distinguished potboilers. You’ve got a classic list of colorful local characters who are trapped in the threatened town and have to escape. You also have a slow build before finally seeing the underground “graboids”. Standard stuff. Nothing new there.
Only everything gets a twist.
The two main protagonists, Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) are a couple of ne’er-do-well handymen who are moving out of the town (Perfection, Arizona) to bigger and better things when the monsters attack. They’re not policemen, secret agents or scientists. Just a couple of hicks. But they’re not unlikable and they’re easy to identify with. Heavy on common sense, even if they’re not geniuses.
The only scientist, Rhonda (Finn Carter) is mostly clueless about the nature of the monsters. She’s a student who is studying seismology, so she only understands that part of the underground creatures. Whenever anyone asks her about something else, she gets frustrated. This is obviously an ironic thumb in the eye to every movie where the scientist seems to have a degree in “Science!” rather than something specific. She just doesn’t have the answers.
We also have the two survivalist “nuts”, Burt (Michael Gross) and Heather (Reba McEntire) who spout paranoid fantasies at the beginning of the movie. They’re set up as the foolish idiots, but end up having the coolest scene in the entire movie. Pretty rare to see “right-wingers” portrayed as anything but lunatics or villains in most Hollywood movies, so this was a real treat. They end up being the de facto saviors of the town.
The great character actor Victor Wong plays Walter Chang, who names the underground creatures “graboids”. This is shortly before he’s eaten by one.
The movie is intelligent, well-written and has a wicked sense of humor. It’s both a homage and a parody of 1950s monster movies. It also has Kevin Bacon. Keven fucking Bacon. This was probably Kevin’s last “lowbrow” film before he advanced to stardom. Apparently he mourned that he was in a movie about “underground worms”, but it did moderately well at the box office and has become a cult favorite, followed by several sequels of declining quality.
I can favorably compare it to such movies as Evil Dead 2 in its ability to combine humor and horror. Also, like Evil Dead 2, it paved the way for movies to play with older formulas. Filmmakers started feeling the freedom to play with the combination of horror and comedy.
In short, I just love this film And remember: “Broke into the wrong goddamn rec room, didn’t you?”
