Tremors

Ron Underwood, USA, 1990, 96 minutes

This cheerfully tongue-in cheek low budget homage to 50s sci-fi horror classics is a welcome respite from some of the more charmless CGI dominated behemoths of recent years. Hard-working grifters Earl Basset (Fred Ward - Southern Comfort, Cast a Deadly Spell) and Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon - The Woodsman, Murder in the First) are finally coming close to realising their dream of gaining enough cash to leave the nowhere desert town of Perfection forever. Unfortunately their fantasies of escaping the hum-drum everyday existence of back-breaking toil miles away from the outskirts of anywhere are brought crashing down when comely seismologist Rhonda LeBeck (Finn Carter - Sweet Justice, How I Got Into College) brings earth-shattering news (CRAP! I made it halfway down the paragraph without resorting to that!), recent seismic disturbances are being caused by gigantic subterranean worms with mouths full of tentacles that crave the sweet, sweet taste of warm human flesh. Before the Simpson's Fat Comic-Book Guy can shout "BEST BACON MOVIE EVER!" and indulge in a quick game of the six degrees of, the town is besieged by the (Alien? Pre-historic? Who gives a damn?) creatures, who sense their prey via the ground-disturbance of foot falls and then erupt from the earth to munch on anything that even smells slightly of B-list actor.

Ron Underwood (City Slickers) directs the chaos with humorous affection and the story even has time to craft a warm romantic subplot between Bacon and Carter's characters (no "I'm only beautiful because you love me" "No, because you love me!" bollocks here thank-you). Michael Gross and Reba McEntire provide hilarious support as the gun-obsessed husband and wife team of Burt and Heather Gummer, and the whole experience is accentuated by tour-de-force creature effects work from Stan Winston alumni Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis, who would later ply their trade on the Alien sequels. The result is a fantastically entertaining movie that mixes laugh-out loud comedy with effectively scary jumps; the only thing left to say is that they just don't make movies that pay homage to movies they just didn't make back then anymore. Which if you can get your head around it, is a shame.

Review by Ben "Cheap Hack" Wilkinson
Written for EUFS Programme Autumn 2005