Tremors (1990 film)

Tremors is a 1990 American monster horror film directed by Ron Underwood, produced by Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson, written by Maddock, Wilson, and Underwood and starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, and Reba McEntire.

In the film, handymen Val McKee (Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Ward) wish to leave the small desert town of Perfection, Nevada, as they are tired of their dull lives.

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 eccentric survivalist couple Burt and Heather Gummer (Gross and McEntire), the group fights for survival against giant, prehistoric, worm-like monsters hungry for human flesh.

Out of sight, a snake-like creature wraps itself around their truck's rear axle, but is torn apart when Val stomps on the accelerator and drives away, and is discovered when they return to town.

As they press on, an enormous burrowing worm-like monster suddenly erupts out of the ground, revealing the snake-like creature to be one of the worm's many tentacled "tongues".

Rhonda, Val, and Earl become trapped overnight atop a cluster of boulders near one of the worms, and surmise that the creatures hunt their prey by detecting seismic vibrations.

Meanwhile, survivalist couple Burt and Heather Gummer manage to kill one of the creatures after unwittingly luring it to their basement armory.

In town, the two remaining worms attack the building foundations, knocking over a trailer belonging to Nestor before dragging him under and devouring him.

Realizing they cannot stay in the town any longer, Earl, Rhonda, and Miguel distract the monsters while Val commandeers a track loader and chains a semi-trailer to the rear; the survivors use it to try to escape to a nearby mountain range.

En route, both worms create a sinkhole trap that disables the track loader, and the survivors flee to some nearby boulders for safety.

The group returns to town, where they call in the authorities to begin an investigation while Earl encourages Val to pursue a romantic relationship with Rhonda.

The concept of Tremors was originally conceived in the early 1980s, when writer S. S. Wilson was serving as an editor at a base for the United States Navy as a filmmaker.

When hiking one time over large boulders that involved pole vaulting, he suddenly had the thought, “What if something was under the ground and I couldn’t get off this rock?”[8] He tucked away the idea on a piece of paper and eventually came back to it after the success of selling the script of Short Circuit with his writing partner Brent Maddock.

Wilson and Maddock shared their idea to their friend Ron Underwood, who was working with National Geographic as a documentary director, and used his knowledge of zoology to better develop the "land sharks" into creatures that could realistically exist.

[citation needed] After their script for Short Circuit spawned a major box office hit, Wilson and Maddock quickly began shopping around their idea for Tremors.

The critics consensus reads: "An affectionate throwback to 1950s creature features, Tremors reinvigorates its genre tropes with a finely balanced combination of horror and humor.

[26] Richard Harrington of The Washington Post called the film "a delightful throwback" that "evokes the populist spirit of '50s B-movies".

[citation needed] The film was released on Blu-ray on November 9, 2010,[34] and again on September 17, 2013, as part of the Tremors: Attack Pack for region 1 (U.S. and Canada).

An illustration of a Graboid's anatomy by artist Matt Frank