By LINDSI HEBERT, Staff Reporter.
Directed by Ron Underwood and released in 1990, “Tremors” shows you exactly what you’d think it does: Earthquakes. Well, earthquakes caused by giant, gross prehistoric earth worms with a taste for flesh.
The story starts with Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward). Two low lives that want to get out of their crummy little town known as Perfection Valley. As they start to head out, they notice some strange earthquakes happening, coupled by the disappearances of a few local cattle ranchers.
At the same time they’re discovering this weird stuff, geologist Rhonda LeBeck is in the area noticing strange seismic activity all around the valley. Before anybody has a true grasp of what exactly is happening, the monster strikes, making itself known to be a giant carnivorous earthworm that’s thousands of years old, and it has the town surrounded. It’s up to McKee, Early and their friend Burt (Michael Gross) to save Perfection Valley and everybody in it.
There is definitely a soft spot in my heart for this monster movie. Don’t get me wrong, production quality isn’t that great and the writing is actually super corny. There’s just something about “Tremors” that makes the entire story great; and that’s the giant 50ft long earthworms.
The idea of having a monster that’s confined to the dirt is a pretty cool idea, and the mechanics for how they move around is pretty cool. How they work in weird little history facts and give the monster a whole background and (eventually, in the sequels) an entire evolutionary track is an incredible amount of detail that has to be appreciated. Do you ever get the evolutionary history of Godzilla or King Kong? Nope, but you do get it for Graboids.
Yep, they’re called Graboids, coined by a cattle rancher that lost his life to one of the gross suckers. The name is dumb, but you have to honor your fallen somehow, right?
Probably one of the main reasons why I love this movie so much isn’t so much for nostalgia sake as it is for this movie being about nothing but blowing up giant evil earthworms. When I say blow up, I mean “KABOOM” and guts and entrails rain down from the heavens onto the poor people that happened to be standing too close without their umbrellas. The overly gross explosions are probably what made this movie its money, and honestly it’s what keeps me coming back to watch it.
“Tremors” suffers, though, from what all cheeseball monster movies suffer from: bad acting. Not to put too much hate on Kevin Bacon, because he makes more in a month than I do in an entire year, but the acting just isn’t that great. There’s a little weird love triangle going on with McKee, Earl and Rhonda the geologist and honestly it is the second most poorly written romance with 50 Shades of Grey being the first. It doesn’t flow, the characters lack chemistry.
On a scale of one to five gummy bears, with five being the highest, Tremors crawls up from the depths to snag four gummy bears. It’s a fun monster movie, and a classic that’s spawned three sequels. Watch them, enjoy them, and share them with friends.