Why Are You Reading This When You Could Be Watching ‘Tremors’?

There's a lot going on in the world right now. Maybe watching 'Tremors' is the best course of action.

Thirty-five years ago, with all the fanfare usually afforded a studio film released in the January burn-off season, Tremors opened in nearly 1500 North American theaters. Within a few weeks, it had disappeared. Or, if you want to get cute about it, let’s say it was forced to retreat back under the earth. That wasn’t the end of the story, however. Within a few… But, wait, why am I telling you this? You’ve seen Tremors, right? You haven’t? OK, we’re happy you’ve opened this installment of The Reveal and hope you read on. But please understand that the time you spend reading this newsletter could instead be spent watching Tremors. So why watch Tremors? Let’s lay out the reasons.

Tremors Is a Five-Star Three-Star Movie

A star rating is just a framework to provide context for the review it accompanies, not a final judgement onto itself. Ratings are useful, sure, but in some ways it’s better just to ignore them and focus on the text of the review. That said, we unavoidably spend a lot of time obsessing over what different star ratings mean here at The Reveal and if you want to get micro about it, there are ratings even within the ratings themselves. A few weeks ago, I almost gave three stars to Gladiator II but ended up downgrading it to two-and-a-half stars. If I had gone with three, it would have been a one-star three-star movie, an edge case that just barely made the grade. As it stands, it’s a five-star two-and-a-half-star movie. It’s almost pretty good! Instead, it’s disappointingly OK.

Tremors, on the other hand, is a five-star three-star movie. It doesn’t aim as high as, say, Born on the Fourth of July, the 1989 holdover that topped the box office the week of Tremors’ release. (Tremors landed in fourth spot, behind Internal Affairs in its fourth week of release.) Instead, it sizes up a slightly less lofty target—a 1950s monster movie with a modern blockbuster sensibility made on a budget with appealing stars and fun effects—and hits it squarely. In pursuing old reviews of the film, I did not encounter any that rated Tremors higher than three stars. This is absolutely correct, even if it does not fully capture Tremors’ appeal. It’s not a great movie but it’s a perfect good movie.

Tremors Is a Movie About Killer Worms That Live in Rural Nevada

If that basic plot description sounds at all intriguing, well, have I got a film for you. It’s called Tremors. Here it has to be said, films in the Tremors vein rarely live up to their premises. Years ago, I once rented a movie called Skeeter lured by the promise of giant killer mosquitoes. Reader, I was disappointed. Similarly, the entire Sharknado entertainment complex of the ‘10s seemed to be based on viewers forgetting that the whole enterprise kind of sucks between each installment. (Unless I’m wrong. I checked out after one.)

There’s a long tradition of selling B-movies with sizzle that surpasses the steak. But the best B-movies give you both. Directed by Ron Underwood (later to helm films like City Slickers and The Adventures of Pluto Nash before transitioning to television, where he remains busy) and written by S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock (the team behind Short Circuit, *batteries not included and other films not about sentient robots), its roots go back to USC, where the three attended film school together and became friends. That Tremors was called Land Sharks in its earlier drafts tells you two things: 1) They had to change the title once Land Sharks became a Saturday Night Live bit in 1975 and 2) They may have been a little inspired by Jaws.

That’s a good thing, in part because Tremors borrows Jaws’ smarts and heart along with its B-movie brio. Like Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster-defining breakthrough, Tremors builds slowly and takes its time revealing the monsters, which one character, shopkeeper Walter Chang (played by the great character actor Victor Wong; more on the rest of the cast later), colorfully dubs “graboids.” In fact, in the film’s early scenes, we usually just see the ripples created by graboids moving beneath the surface, an effect accomplished by pulling a buoy through a trench beneath a blanket covered in dirt and sand, then later as snake-like tentacles that shoot up to nab victims. Jaws famously held back showing the shark because of a malfunctioning effect. Tremors presumably does the same in part to save its modest (for a big studio production) budget for the finale. In both cases, the build-up pays off.