Directed by Ron Underwood
Starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross and Reba McEntire
"What kind of fuse is that?"
"Cannon fuse."
"What the hell do you use it for?"
"My cannon."
Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Paul Heyman...nope, that's not it. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the next wave of Lick Ness Monster reviews: the all-out Tremors Attack-a-Thon. That's the name, and I'm sticking to it (/Colin Quinn).
First things first: I'm a huge fan of the Tremors franchise, and have been ever since that one Saturday afternoon I spent as a 12-year-old watching the flick in question today as a rental from the Greatest Video Store Ever. No point in keeping this cat in the bag, either - this movie right here is one of my Top 10 favorites of any genre. Great action, great tension, great effects, great characters, any way you slice it, the flick is just awesome. And then there's this irresistible sense of humor and a plot that pays tribute to classic '50s monster movies without ever turning snarky about it. A rare feat in and of itself when it comes to films that spent the vast majority of their time paying homage. Nonetheless, audiences at large also really liked this movie, since it made its budget back some four times over and still pops up on cable every so often.
Explaining the appeal of Tremors, and this original movie in particular, is really one of those difficult things. I mean, we're dealing with a movie about giant killer worms terrorizing a small community of people who live, almost literally, in the middle of nowhere. Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson, the founders of the Stampede Entertainment production company who helmed every movie in the series, had an original idea to make a badass throwback to old-school monster flicks, something that the general public at large couldn't possibly have cared less about. And yet people love it, and not just horror fans either. I've met plenty of ordinary people who also love this flick. Folks, Roger Ebert's adage that it's not WHAT a movie is about but rather HOW it's about it is proving more true as the years go by, because the execution of the movie is forward momentum, quirky characters, and 100% fun all the way through. With that, let's get to it.
Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward) are a couple of down-on-their-luck handymen who ply their trade around the "town" (quotation marked because population 18) of Perfection, Nevada, an old mining settlement that now sits comfortably in the middle of the Nevada desert with no towns for miles. It goes without saying that a place like this attracts some interesting cats, and the movie delivers us no shortage of those. There's Walter Chang (Victor Wong), friendly local general store proprietor who loves this opportunity to monopolize the nonexistant competition. There's Melvin Plug (Bobby Jacoby), abrasive teenage kid who spends his days annoying our intrepid heroes. There's Burt Gummer (Michael Gross) and his wife Heather (Reba McEntire), paranoid survivalists who live in a fallout shelter and have a downright obscene collection of firearms and weapons that come in handy later on. And then there's Rhonda LaBeck (Finn Carter), young geologist sent to study the strange collection of underground vibrations rumbling near Perfection as of late.
The early goings of the flick show us the daily grind that Val and Earl go through, and it does wonders for establishing some investment as the flick goes on. They're sick of their jobs and sick of Perfection, deciding to pack up shop after (literally) cleaning up shit and heading for a nearby town to live out their hopes and dreams somewhere else. But cruel fate deals a stunning blow, as a pair of dead bodies they discover (one on top of a telephone pole, dead from starvation, the other a farmer who appears to be decapitated) keep them in town a few days longer.
The reveal of the giant worm villains was one of the more skillful things that I've seen a horror movie do. The poster art and the execution here decided to go the Jaws route and build up the concept of the worms in your mind. We even get a pretty good fakeout as Val and Earl's truck brings home a four-foot orange worm in a tire. Suffice to say, yeah, these things aren't four feet long. It's when the handymen head out on horseback to get help from the nearby town of Bixby that the movie really kicks into high gear, as the killers are revealed to be 30-foot worms who shoot tentacles out of their mouths and hunt via sound vibrations. Val and Earl meet back up with Rhonda, and we get the early goings of romantic tension between her and Val as they use some clever ruses to make their way back to Perfection.
And that's when shit really starts to go down.
I remember thinking as a kid that the final hour or so of Tremors was the most well-sustained sequence of tension I'd seen since Aliens, and that statement still kind of rings true today. Eventually, all of our townspeople are trapped up on the rooftops away from the creatures, and the writers manage to get all kinds of cool situations of out this. Particularly when Burt shows up with his massive collection of weapons. I think it goes without saying that Gummer was the most popular character in this movie - after all, they decided to bring him back for all of the sequels and it's easy to see why. Gross was just boss in this role, creating the rare badass who doesn't rely on brute strength but rather all-powerful paranoia and even more powerful guns. He's coolness personified. But hell, everything in this movie is cool. You've got fantastic hand-made creature effects (the worms look amazing, both static and moving), shocking deaths, a hot quirky heroine in Rhonda LaBeck (and Finn Carter's underwear scene was one of the things that introduced me to puberty), and infinitely relatable heroes in Val and Earl.
The final showdown is also pretty damn terrific, striking just the right balance between the cleverness of the human heroes and the relentless pursuit of the worms. Take my word for it, it's awesome stuff.
What? It's judgment time? Tremors is just one of the most fun movies of all time, bar none. It's all about entertainment. There's no social message, no diving into characters' hidden emotional facilities, no extraneous bullshit to get in the way of its intended goal to have you glued to your television screen. And that's just the way I like it. It's a flick that deserves every bit of its cult following and the franchise status that followed, and I can't recommend it enough. So ends one of the most gushy reviews I've done in a long time.
**** out of ****. It's right up there with Shawn Michaels vs. Undertaker at Bad Blood '97, King!
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