Tremors (1990)

Review

Valentine and Earl are two handymen who are surprisingly supported by the small, isolated, rural community of Perfection. They dream of getting away to a bigger town, and we assume more actual paying work, but are thwarted in their goal by the arrival of giant "worms". The "worms", named graboids, are doing their level best to reduce the already small population of Perfection, but standing in their way are Valentine and Earl. Just when the world needs saviours, do we really want these two?

As the graboids start moving toward the town, or hamlet if we wanted to be accurate, it's up to our heroes to save the day and figure out how to resolve the worm infestation issue.

As stated before, it's bloody hard to get a horror comedy hybrid to work; most horror movies are pretty much self-mocking at the best of times. See the "Love Hurts" scene in Zombie's serious Halloween remake for example; I can guarantee you will almost fart you will be laughing so loud. When the mix is done right it does however produce excellent cinema, for those able to take the thrills and spills with a tongue in cheek approach and plenty of punch lines. So does Tremors work, are you going to be grossed out while trying not to burst something laughing?

Tremors isn't very high on the scare meter, unless you are naturally unnerved by giant worms, and for sure isn't throwing much gore at the screen. I'm not counting graboid guts and blood as gore here, and besides which there's almost "Keystone Cops" approach to its use. To be honest the movie has almost no plot "shut up in the back row, decent horror always had a plot" and the characters aren't developed much beyond cardboard cut-outs. Did anyone actually wake up one morning and decide it would be cool to see Michael Gross and Reba McEntyre as gun crazed survivalists? The rest of the cast are pretty much a bunch of no-namers who haven't exactly been top of the Academy's list in the intervening years since the movie's release and this review. The one exception, of course, is Kevin Bacon, who has had some decent roles but keeps popping up in the most absurd flicks in horrorland. Does the dude like horror or does he have a crap agent? Tremors is an early example of a movie being made to score a PG13 friendly rating and as such is slightly too family-orientated for most horror fans. It even has two kids, one of which is incredibly annoying. What no Spielberg dog? - did someone forget that detail!

Having said all that, Tremors was of course one of the great horror movies that lead the charge in the 1990s. We know it's great because Sci-Fi sites have been claiming it's one of their movies ever since the release; sorry nerds, you are completely wrong on that idea. One of my bugbears, to use a term our cousins in North America came up with, is other genres deciding horror flicks are acceptable in their august environments. But let's move on with our discussion of Tremors shall we? The movie knows it has an insanely silly plot, plays things for laughs, and at no stage goes down the road to seriousville (a mistake oh so many horror flicks make). It's all good fun and the whole family can happily dive into the Nevada sands here.

Director Ron Underwood knows he has one ace up his sleeve, the actual graboids, and he does what any good Director would do under the circumstances: hide his ace up his sleeve for the majority of the movie. This actually works in a very Spielbergian way - am I on a Spielberg jam here today or what? - as we don't know where the worms are and hence are with the characters as they try their level best to keep off the ground. Ironically, and it brought a smile to my dial, we keep getting creature POVs that were interesting due to the fact that said creatures don't actually have any eyes to form a POV from. That to me spells instant cult classic amigos. For those with a technical bent, the creature effects were achieved via miniaturisation rather than prosthetics or computer wizardry. It does actually work as you are so entranced by Tremors during the movie's runtime that you don't note any technical issues going down.

Kevin Bacon (Valentine) is actually pretty good here in a role that demands he plays a hick with the ability to throw around one liners. I rank this performance as Bacon's second best horror outing behind his stint in Stir of Echoes. Fred Ward (Earl) is equally on his game and is playing off Bacon like he was born to do it. One of the fun parts of Tremors is Valentine and Earl's verbal sparring. Finn Carter (Rhonda) is also outstanding and thankfully isn't used simply as the bimbo with cleavage that was hinted at prior to her first scene. Stealing the show, however, are Michael Gross (Burt Gummer) and Reba McEntire (Heather Gummer) who play it straight, pretending they aren't in a silly "B" grade monster mash. Loved the licence plate of their truck: "UZI4U".

Since the producers were hell bent on delivering family fare here there's not even a hint of T&A going down. This is meant to be a movie the whole family can watch post dinner, so people getting eaten alive by giant worms is okay but the odd boob shot isn't. Sick sad world, folks.

Ernest Troost handed in a score that worked for me. Loved the Country & Western feeling to things with a touch of latin. Well worth a listen.

I had completely forgotten about the whole Tremors thing till the movies arrived out of the blue on my desk. Pretty much back to back viewing eventuated with Jethro Jnr and Missus J also attending the screening over a wet Sunday afternoon. This is family viewing with a touch of the gross-outs that young teen males will enjoy. I had a great time with it all and now have rival franchise Critters geared to go as well. Please rain this weekend!

To date there have been four movies in the franchise. In 1996 Tremors II: Aftershocks was released in the face of the original movie's successful cinema run of $16.7 million in North America. 2001 saw Tremors 3: Back to Perfection turn the tide on franchises switching to roman numerics, and finally in 2004 a prequel Tremors: The Legend Begins went straight to DVD. Which possibly means its about time we had a fifth movie.

Full recommendation, put it on at a family reunion while drinking tea and eating cake. A good fun outing that is sure to make your day that little bit better, and it even allows you to edge the young ones in the household toward the horror genre without overly frightening their poor fragile minds. They are like sponges in their early teens really, which is why I implore all fathers with daughters to immediately spend a family weekend with the Friday the 13th series of movies. You can then gently point out that if they ever have sex, a big man in a hockey mask will kill them violently! Even wonder what the feeling is after eating that worm in the bottom of a tequila bottle? Well it's probably nothing like watching Tremors, but hey, early morning and that's the best I've got.