January 19, 1990 | Cross a 1950s-style monster rally with a redneck comedy of bad manners, then add a generous dose of campy cleverness, and you get Tremors, the first great slam-bang B-movie of the ‘90s. This is a rollicking, rip-roaring funhouse ride, with enough rude shocks to keep you anxiously on-guard, and enough self-mocking sass to be immensely, exhilaratingly funny.
Directed with a zesty, tongue-in-cheek flair by Ron Underwood, the film is nothing if not eclectic, drawing on such diverse influences as Them! (1954), the classic sci-fi shocker about giant ants on the march toward Los Angeles, and The Killer Shrews (1959), a far less reputable cheapie-creepie about dog-sized rodents with extremely bad attitudes. Underwood and his scriptwriters, Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson, are democratic in their affectionate pilfering: They borrow cliches from any source, no matter how lowly, that strikes their fancy.
The human stars of the piece are Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, much better actors than one normally finds in this type of film. (And much, much better actors than the journeymen who populated the ‘50s B-movies that inspired Tremors in the first place.) To their credit, they never give the impression they are slumming — they are too busy having a great time for that.
Bacon and Ward develop a suitably hearty, richly amusing give-and-take as two downwardly mobile handymen who clean cesspools, string barbed wire, and drink a great deal of beer in and around the secluded canyon town of Perfection, Nev. (pop. 14).
Val (Bacon) and Earl (Ward) are no smarter than they have to be, but they are shrewd enough to realize that career opportunities are limited in Perfection. But, hey, wouldn’t you know it, just when they decide to load up their pickup and head for greener pastures, the town is inexplicably invaded by a herd of enormous serpentine creatures with growling stomachs, teething tentacles and insatiable appetites.
The monsters, which resemble the marauding earthworms from Dune, burrow rapidly through the ground, jostling the surface much like Bugs Bunny did in all those cartoons where he made wrong turns on his way to the Carrot Festival in the Coachella Valley. When they get hungry, they simply grab anything that happens to be overhead — cattle, sheep, human beings, station wagons — and drag it down below. And if all that weren’t unpleasant enough, the critters smell just plain dad-gum awful.
The nifty special effects are presented with a sly humor, indicating the designers and operators wanted to kid the work that some of them did in dead earnest for Aliens and The Terminator. But the funniest moments in Tremors are provided by Bacon and Ward, who respond to the predatory monsters with equal measure of bug-eyed terror, short-fused rage and dumbstruck confusion.
At one point, the boys debate whether the creatures are biological freaks or alien invaders. “I vote for outer space!” Earl says with a down-home twang. “No way these are local boys!” Val doesn’t argue.
The filmmakers have some great fun with conventions of the monster-movie genre. A pretty seismologist (Finn Carter) is conveniently on hand to be frightened by the monsters and enchanted by Val. But she’s not exactly the blond-bombshell stereotype that Val, or the audience, would expect.
Two gung-ho survivalists (TV star Michael Gross and country-music star Reba McIntire) have a basement rec-room conveniently stocked with enough firepower to destroy one of the creatures. In a more conventional monster movie, these two characters would be treated as buffoons, and killed off quickly. Here, they are quite heroic, in their own demented fashion.
And better still, much like Tremors itself, they are a genuine hoot.
