Last couple of times we looked at some classy flicks with social commentary, excellent composition and cinematography, and intricate scripts. Now, let's shift over to some monster-fightin', gun-totin', Jaws-apin' good quality schlock! It's Kevin Bacon saving everyone's bacon--it's Tremors!
This was Bacon's slightly awkward period between Footlose, and when he really took off in the nineties with the likes of A Few Good Men and Apollo 13. But, even though he flat out refused to talk about this film for a long while...I can't say I didn't have fun with him in it. Here, he plays Val, a handyman in the tiny Nevadan town of Perfection, who spends most of his time doing crummy jobs with his pal Earl (Fred Ward).
Val, besides being a bit of a loser relegated to tying up wire fences in the desert, is also remarkably perfectionist when it comes to his quest to find a woman, apparently taking his standards from Playboy centerfolds. These days there'd be all sorts of slightly uncomfortable connotations to certain trends on the internet, but here, it's thankfully part of his role in lightening up and growing out of his rut. All helped, of course, by the sudden arrival of tunnelling worm-monsters with tentacle tongues soon to be called Graboids!
It's all very much in the style of those 1950s 'giant critters from the desert' B-flicks like Them!, just with a sprinkling of nineties postmodernism. There's no slick-haired scientist to save the day, just a bunch of slightly desperate Nevada hicks, who can only guess at were the things come from. What the movie gets right is that the situation is constantly changing and new things about the monsters are continually revealed--many other crummier monster flicks can't even get that right. Where others just show the monster early on, and leave it at that, here, the creatures are changing their tactics, and as are the humans--making it a more interesting and fun experience than many another forgettable monster mediocrity-fest.
The supporting cast is pretty decent as well--most notably Burt (Michael Gross), the survivalist of the town, and the character who ended up being the lead of the series after this. Burt ends up being the one that answers the question that often crops up in these sorts of films of 'why don't people just shoot the damn things'? And he does. Quite a lot, in one very memorable and cool scene, where he and his wife unload enough ammunition to declare war on China with into the gob of one rather ornery wormy thing!
Tremors ends up falling into a couple of cliches despite its attempts to subvert things--like Val's romantic subplot that conjures a lot of deja vu, with him as the simple country boy and his sojourn with scientist lady Rhonda (Finn Carter). But there's some fun performances, there's Graboid guts spilled, there's some chuckles--for what it is, it's a fun enough watch even thirty years later. And, of course, it proved enjoyable enough to spawn an absolute buttload of spinoffs and sequels.
I haven't seen all of them, but I have seen enough to see that the comedy aspect was played up a lot more, and they carried on the tradition of adding something about the monsters with increasingly wild takes on the Graboid life cycle. If you thought the Alien had a convoluted cycle, you ain't seen nothing. Still, Gross got his recurring role as Burt, who would travel the world hunting down creatures limbless and not, and there was even a TV show. And then yet another one, that never got to air--following on from just the original film, bringing back Bacon as Burt, as a despondent has-been once the Graboids went away. I don't think the tone clicked with fans of the other films, but the fact that it almost got even two shows proves that Tremors wasn't just a tiny little shudder.
So yeah. If you want a killer worm-tentacle-monster movie, Tremors is the one you want. And for me, if I want me some Bacon, I think I'll be taking it over Footlose. Of course, if you want to really get to our friend Kevin's roots, there's one other horror biggie we'll soon be covering...
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