Tremors (1990)

One glance at the poster told me to expect something pretty trashy. It looked like a Jaws knockoff minus the water. The movie even had Land Sharks as a working title. Nevertheless, it gets occasional mention to this day, including as an inspiration for part of Stranger Things. It seemed as good a choice as any to round out my October viewings.

Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) are on the verge of leaving the fictitious ghost town of Perfection, Nevada, to look for less lowly job opportunities. They meet a visiting grad student, Rhonda (Finn Carter), who wonders about some irregular seismograph readings. Then they discover some extraordinary deaths outside town. The cause: rapidly burrowing worm-like giants, which the citizens eventually dub "graboids." Between rock slides and downed power lines, it's too late to leave the area or get outside help before the graboids reach the rest.

The poster is worse than I thought, because it doesn't accurately depict the size or even the shape of a graboid. The "real" ones have multiple mouths (as befits one of the producers having made Aliens) with no large teeth and can devour only one adult human at a time. Of course, that's nasty enough. There are four known graboids in this picture, and their appetites never get sated.

I've encountered sandworms in other fiction, giving me some idea of what to anticipate. The graboids aren't exactly sapient, and they rely entirely on vibrations to sense anything. On the other hand, they do learn, and it's not easy to deal with an enemy that can come up through flooring and drag you down in a second. The humans are safe only on rocks or high places, and that's no long-term solution.

Tremors stands out from most horrors I've seen in that most of the attacks happen by day (again like Jaws). Is it scary in spite of the light? Kind of. I'm sure I'd be terrified if I were there. The use of puppetry rather than CGI helps sell it a bit. But mainly I just felt excited.

And fairly amused, as the makers wanted. Val and Earl are hicks, their intellects regularly left in the dust by Rhonda's. They have no special skills. They regularly play rock-paper-scissors to determine who does what, with Val seeming cursed. (Speaking of which, curses have been drastically cut for a PG-13 rating, and what remains is often followed by "Pardon my French.") Val is initially disappointed that Rhonda doesn't fit his physical ideal, and while Earl is more open-minded about that, it's pretty obvious that Val and Rhonda will come together in spite of that.

It's also pretty obvious which characters will and will not make it, an example of the latter being the exhausted but relaxed guy whose first line is "I'm dead." Oh, don't get the impression that the not-so-bright characters are the type all too common to horror. For the most part, they don't make mistakes so blatant that you almost feel like they deserve to die. They're basically ordinary, and the resolutions don't take a whole lot of brains to devise.

Other characters played for laughs include a teen (Bobby Jacoby) who cries wolf until he gets scared straight, two paranoid weapon fanatics (Reba McEntire and Michael Gross), and a slick merchant (Victor Wong). Yeah, I'm afraid Hollywood hadn't outgrown insults to East Asians yet. It's worth noting that the fanatics come in handy; between them and the main heroes, I suspect that this movie has an unusually large percentage of conservatives in its fanbase.

Tremors may have only a half-serious air, paying tribute to '50s fare, but I can tell someone worked hard on it. It's well structured and never loses sight of what it's supposed to be. I'd recommend it to some people who don't mind a touch of grossness.