Look up fun in the dictionary and, in an ideal world, you’d find this 1990 movie mentioned. The impressive feature directorial debut of TV veteran Ron Underwood, TREMORS remains one of the stand-out horror fests of the nineties, and spawned a better-than-expected straight-to-video follow-up in 1996 (and more sequels in 2001, 2004, 2015, 2018 and 2020, and a 2003 TV show).
TREMORS (1990) Trailer
The film was financially unsuccessful, most likely due to a crummy promotional campaign that included unpromising poster art (I myself discovered the film, like most everybody else, on the small screen). The above-the-title star Kevin Bacon was especially hard on TREMORS, calling it the “worst thing I ever did” and sitting out the sequels—yet after the film become a cult phenomenon Bacon changed his tune, proclaiming it “the single most fun time I’ve ever had making a movie.”
TREMORS AFTERSHOCKS (1996) Trailer
The setting is one that typified many late 1980s and early 90s genre films: the California desert, where film permits are cheap (and less likely to be asked for). Situated there is a severely depressed town, ironically named Perfection, which the broke handymen Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward) are attempting to vacate.Their flight is interrupted, first by an acquaintance whose corpse they find clinging to the upper rung of a transmission tower, and then by fallen rocks, dislodged by a maintenance worker menaced by an unseen something.
Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward
Arriving back at the convenience store that forms the hub of Perfection, Valentine and Earl discover a wormy tentacle stuck to the bottom of Earl’s truck. This, it transpires, is one of several tongues sported by a massive slug-like critter that lives underground, and snatches people walking on the surface. Rhonda (Finn Carter), a young geology student on a research expedition, deduces that four of these “mother humpers” are loose in the area.
This means that for the citizens of Perfection, who include a prepper couple (Michael Gross and Reba McEntire), a single mother (Kathy Baker) and a punk (Bobby Jacoby), the race is on to find higher ground, and a way to destroy the creatures—but these folk will all have to be very quiet (as the monsters use sound to gauge what’s happening aboveground) and crafty (as the critters are much smarter than they appear).
Reba McEntire, Michael Gross
When it came to horror cinema, the nineties were a transitional era in which innovation was the name of the game. It may be a bit of a stretch to call this “monster movie that breaks new ground” innovative (its premise is suspiciously similar to that of 1981’s THE BOOGENS), but it offers a much defter balancing of humor and horror than many of the decade’s other attempts (including the same year’s ARACHNOPHOBIA).
Ron Underwood’s attitude toward TREMORS appears to have been similar to that of Bacon, as Underwood went on to make non-horror affiliated comedies like CITY SLICKERS (1991) and SPEECHLESS (1994). That unaffected touch was evident in TREMORS, which boasts a pitch perfect laugh-scare quotient and performances that likewise strike a good balance between those two poles.
The critters (created by a crew that included big names like Howard Berger and Robert Kurtzman) are pretty silly looking, and move in a jerky and artificial manner. The fact that Underwood managed to craft such an exciting and involving film in spite of those drawbacks is doubly impressive. Also worthy of mention is the screenplay by the prolific writing team S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock (of SHORT CIRCUIT, WILD WILD WEST and the first two TREMORS sequels), who find consistently ingenious ways of keeping their cast alive.
Ultimately, the PG-13 rated TREMORS may be, in the manner of quite a few 1990s mainstream horror films, a mite sanitized and unscary for my tastes (I prefer my new wave monster mashes packed to the gills with gore and slime a la THE THING and STARSHIP TROOPERS), but it’s impossible not to enjoy.
Vital Statistics
TREMORS
Universal Pictures
Director: Ron Underwood
Producers: Brent Maddock, S.S. Wilson
Screenplay: S.S. Wilson, Brent Maddock
Cinematography: Alexander Gruszynaski
Editing: O. Nicholas Brown
Cast: Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, Reba McEntire, Bobby Jacoby, Charlotte Stewart, Tony Genaro, Ariana Richards, Richard Marcus, Victor Wong, Sunshine Parker, Michael Dan Wagner, Conrad Bachmann, Bibi Besch, John Goodwin, John Pappas