Saturday, June 6, 2020

Tremors [Media Notes 35]

I saw the film on TV years ago and have been looking for it ever since. It’s now on Netflix. It’s as (weirdly) good as I remember. Not GREAT I suppose, but definitely worth watching.

The opening two paragraphs of the Wikipedia entry give you the basic idea:
Tremors is a 1990 American monster comedy film directed by Ron Underwood, produced by Gale Anne Hurd, Brent Maddock, and S. S. Wilson, and written by Maddock, Wilson, and Underwood. Tremors was released by Universal Pictures and stars Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, and Reba McEntire.
In the film, tired of their dull lives in the small desert town of Perfection, Nevada, repairmen Val McKee (Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Ward) try to skip town. However, they happen upon a series of mysterious deaths and a concerned seismologist Rhonda (Carter) studying unnatural readings below the ground. With the help of an eccentric survivalist couple Burt and Heather Gummer (Gross and McEntire), the group fights for survival against giant, worm-like monsters hungry for human flesh.

Yes, it’s a monster comedy. Not ha ha! funny much less ROTFLMAO! More like a chuckle and a smile here and there. The film has not so much scary but definitely surprising and shocking moments as well, as befits a proper monster film. The action is set in and about a two-bit dust-trap in the middle of nowhere called Perfection – a general store, maybe two or three houses, a couple of shacks, a trailer or two, an outhouse, and a water tower. The place is surrounded by patches of boulders here and there. They’re very important. Those eccentric survivalists have one hell of a private arsenal. They’re important as well, and give us more chuckles than those boulders.

The boy gets the girl at the end. I suppose that qualifies as a spoiler, but it’s not much of one.

Tremors has spawned a number of sequels, none of which I’ve seen.

No comments:

Post a Comment