Starring: Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter

Director: Ron Underwood
Released: 1990

Mood: If you’ve had the kind of week at work where you can’t decide between laughter and violence.

The first time I saw Tremors I was nine years old, watching movies unsupervised in my cousins’ basement while our parents had a party upstairs. Unfortunately, I remembered nothing about Tremors afterwards because we also watched Pet Semetary and THAT movie still haunts me to this day.

Kids today are missing out on so many great life experiences.

Anyway, when I found a Tremors movie 4-pack at the thrift store I just had to have it. Kevin Bacon! Giant worms!

Is it a Western? The internet seems to think so, and that’s a good enough reason for me to review it. I’m so f*cking excited, pardon my French, to kick off another season of horror Westerns with this movie!

• Fun Fact #1: Tremors had an R rating until they removed over 20 f-bombs from the dialogue, and made a few other last-minute edits to earn it a more wholesome PG-13.

Tremors opens in the desert town of Perfection, Nevada. Val (Kevin Bacon) and Earl (Fred Ward) are handymen who do a lot of shitty local jobs. Pun intended. After an incident with some particularly nasty sewage, the two decide to pack up and head to another town. But on their way out they discover a dead body high up on an electrical tower, and have no choice but to return.

Meanwhile, grad student Rhonda (Finn Carter) is running seismology tests in the area, and suspects that something major is going on.

Then three quarters of the movie is focused on attacks by seemingly unstoppable giant worms – dubbed ‘graboids’ – that have more worms coming out of their mouths. It’s so great.

Tremors is pretty much a perfect ‘90s monster movie, which is partly why it has such a massive cult following to this day.

It smoothly builds tension through horror movie plot staples – the phone lines are dead, the road is blocked, a little girl is alone in the street, a scientist warns of a much bigger danger, the only doctor gets eaten. These twists are predictable but wholly enjoyable.

You can also spot the classic Western tropes: the hunky heroic cowboy, a desert town, harsh landscape, a general store, and no shortage of shooting.

• Fun Fact #2: The guns n’ ammo used kill the second graboid are a Stey-Mannlicher SSG-PII, a Winchester model 70, a Winchester Model 1200 Defender, an HK91A2, a Colt AR-15 Sporter II, a Remington 870, a Sig Sauer P226, a Ruger Redhawk, an M8 flare gun, and, finally, a William Moore & Co. 8 gauge shotgun that was rented from a private collector for the movie.

Despite its ample $6M budget, the plot and production of Tremors radiate all of the best aspects of b-movie vibes, like repeated physical gags, one-liners shouted at monsters, and overly dramatic action music. It nods and winks at ’50s creature features, and references Jaws. But the other main reason for this movie’s staying power, 35 years later, is its fine blend of comedy and plausibility.

• Fun Fact #3: Ron Underwood directed National Geographic documentaries before making Tremors, and that experience lent extremely well to making the graboids feel more realistic.

Each actor among the cast brings something memorable to their roles, heightening the drama while embracing the camp.

Kevin Bacon has a perfect early ‘90s bad-boy shag going on. Everything about his performance is full of physicality and energy, and you just know that he has to be pushed to his limits to learn an important lesson.

Fred Ward delivers a slightly-straight-guy balance to Bacon’s wilder edge, while Finn Carter is charmingly earnest as the smart girl who turns pretty as soon as she washes the zinc off her nose.

Then you have REBA. She looks so different, but that voice is immediately identifiable as hers. And something about Reba packing heavy artillery just feels so right.

Also highly noteworthy is beloved Big Trouble in Little China character actor Victor Wong as the scheming general store owner Walter Chang.

Apparently Kevin Bacon distanced himself from Tremors for a long time, even going so far as to call it the “worst thing” he ever did. It took him almost 20 years to get over it, and now he’s seen it more than any other movie he’s made and calls it one of his favourite movies of all time. And it damn well should be.

Having a small cast and delaying the reveal of the monsters allows Tremors to focus closely on everything happening to the humans in what feels like real time. This gets you heavily invested in the characters, which is exactly what you want from any movie.

I find it particularly delightful that the moral of the story seems to be that the people who are most likely to survive an invasion of giant sand worms are those who work in trades or STEM.

And those with elephant rifles.