Tremors!

I love this movie! I don't remember if I saw it in the theater at all, likely not since I rarely go to the movie theater anymore. But from the first moment I did see Tremors I've been a fan of this smart monster movie. And the keys are really the characters and exquisite storytelling.

The movie is a love story. The main character's name is "Valentine McKee" for goshsakes! He and his partner Earl Bassett are down and out "handymen" in Perfection, Nevada a tiny isolated town populated by eccentrics, adorable eccentrics admittedly. The community comes under attack by an unknown foe, which of course turns out to be a monster which moves under the ground, a "landshark" of sorts. "Landshark" was in fact the working title for the movie for a time.

But if this were just another monster movie, it would be fun but I doubt it would have hooked so many fans or yielded so many sequels. It's a movie about smarts, the fundamental All-American smarts that we celebrate. It hearkens back to Howard Hawks' The Thing which also shows a stranded group of people having a battle of wits with an invader. What's really on display is the ability of people to think and work together to solve problems. It's classic and very appealing stuff.

On another level this is a love story. Val is a man "looking for love in all the wrong places" as the song says. He stumbles across Rhonda LeBeck a lovely girl who doesn't fit his prototype honey, but who nonetheless attracts him. It's a movie that is about a man finding himself and discovering his real needs. The symbolism of the monsters only reinforces this tale. I long ago developed an overly complex analysis of the symbols of the movie, but I've forgotten most of them and while still valid are less interesting in themselves than what they add to the fiber of this story.


Tremors 2 : Aftershocks is Earl Bassett's story. His partner Val has found love and relative success but after the "Graboids" (it's what they called them) have gone Earl is still down on his luck after some poor investments. He is called upon by a fan named Grady Wilson to go to Mexico to battle a Graboid infestation. There they call upon another holdover from the first movie, Bert Gummer, a survivalist and gun expert. The guys battle the monsters but have to deal with some surprising changes the creatures undergo.

This movie is less complex and less compelling. What is smart is that the moviemakers know that fans want monster lore and they offer it up. The monsters are more front and center in this one with the love story taking a backseat. But love does find a way and we get a satisfying solution to Earl's saga.


Tremors 3 : Back to Perfection gives us the story of Bert Gummer eleven years after the first outbreak. Bert has become a "specialist" in monster hunting, but it's cost him his personal life and he lives increasingly isolated in his bunker. But the monsters return and once again undergo some surprising changes that demand the community to think of ways to solve this latest threat.

There are some intriguing new characters in this one, a little girl from the first movie Mindy who is all grown up, a guy who runs bogus tours of "Graboid" country and a Chinese-American grocer who is trying to follow in the footsteps of her grandfather who was among the first people killed by the monsters in the first flick. This is a fun action movie, but doesn't have the complexity of personality the others had.


Tremors 4 : The Legend Begins is a real hoot. It takes us back one hundred years to the valley where before the town of Perfection there was a mining community named "Rejection". The mine comes under attack by "land dragons" and the silver stops flowing. The owner a man named Hiram Gummer (Bert's great grandfather) appears and the story follows him as he learns what it means to become a worthy member of a community and essentially become a man.

This is clever, witty, and fun movie. The story neatly echoes the original in many ways but adds plenty of fresh takes on now vintage expectations. Of all the sequels this one has the most compelling characters since the original. Billy Drago as the gunfighter "Black Hand Kelly" is especially entertaining.


At the same time they were making the fourth movie, they were shooting a television series. There are thirteen episodes of Tremors : The Series, a Sci-Fi Network offering. Bert is back as the core of the story and the valley of Perfection has become a national wildlife preserve where a single protected graboid named "El Blanco" (from the third sequel) lives out his life. Being an albino he cannot mutate as other of his kind does, so he lives on and on and on.

The show gives us the by now usual gang of townfolk, but realizes that weeks of the same monster will get pretty lame quick. So a hidden, secret, abandoned bio-tech lab is discovered and the result is a compound named "Mixmaster" which plays havoc with wildlife, blending the traits of all sorts of living things.

Christopher Lloyd shows up in this one a few times as a bedraggled scientist, a bit loopy of course. He's fun and the series in general is a lot of fun. The forty-five minute episodes being just the perfect space for the stories told. They are tight and well acted bits of entertainment.

Sadly the series does become a bit about the monsters, which denies the key to the success of the series as I understand it. The monsters don't matter. They are what the creators and the audience need them to be to force the characters to do interesting and compelling things. That's what makes a Tremors movie or show work. It's not what's underground, it's what's in your heart. That's the tremor that matters.

If you want to find out more about the Tremors movies, check out this very rich link from the producers of the movies. There are FAQs for every flick with all sorts of neat trivia.

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