AN ABOVE AVERAGE CREATURE FEATURE WHICH LEADS TO... A WHOLE BUNCH MORE CREATURES AKA ATTACK OF THE SUBTERRANEAN B-MOVIES... AGAIN








Tremors 2: Aftershocks (1996)

I've said it before: I really don't like creature features, although I will watch one or two if it's supposed to be really good. The Tremors movies are a definite exception. I think they're well made, if silly, and entertaining with just enough jokes to make the scares not so intense. And again I rely on my friend Tim Forston, for his perspective on this movie (He loves all the Tremors movies) but there will be a LOT of teasing on my part. It's what I do. Thankfully he has the sense of humor and has not bombed my house - yet. And he starts:

Tim: The worms have turned - and headed to a country that no doubt is much cheaper as far as taxes on the movie makers go. The sequel opens in Mexico...

Me: HA! Got you! I thought everything looked a little too... green to be Mexico so I checked and it was actually filmed in Valencia, CA (big raspberry).

Tim: Whatever. Anyway, the movie says we're in Mexico - we see an oil worker sitting atop a raised oil pipe, sliding along, fearing for his life. If you saw the first movie or even just read the review, you already have a pretty good idea of what he's running from...

Me: Don't you mean sliding from?

Tim: <sigh> Whatever. Anyway, you'd be proven correct pretty quickly when he looks back and sees a mound of dirt following along behind him.

Me: Yeah, you gotta watch out for that killer dirt.

Tim: Are you going to be serious?


Me: Am I ever?

Tim: He gets to the end of the convenient pipe and sees the equally convenient row of barrels to hop across leading him to the convenient again van with the door standing open to take him to safety.

Me: Good thing you know how to spell convenient, huh?

Tim: Shush. It should be pretty obvious that this is not going to end well. After hopping about three barrels you get a nice full shot of a Graboid out of the ground eating said oil worker. We go straight to the good stuff in this sequel, no waiting half the movie to get a good view of the monster. Now the premise for this movie is pretty simple. An oil field (Petromaya) in Sonora Mexico has been infested with Graboids, 28 of them as a matter of fact.

Me: How the hell did you count them? They're under ground - you got a sonar system on you?

Tim: They have killed several workers and forced the company to shut down production. So they come up with a plan: Find the two heroes from the first Graboid incursion and try to get them to take care of their problem. For a fee of course. They offer $50,000 per exterminated Graboid. And they are told the Mexican Army will give them any supplies they ask for. Why the Mexican Army doesn't want the job we may never know.

Me: Probably because the movie's in California.

Tim: Val (Kevin Bacon) turns them down, as we are told he is happily married now (he married Rhonda the graduate student) so why would he want to die?

Me: Great confidence there.

Tim: So they go to Earl (Fred Ward).

Me: In the time that has passed since the first movie, both Earl and Val appeared in a lot of magazines and a Graboid video game was even made, although neither saw any profit from it so they took the money they made and split - Val with the new wife, and Earl running an Ostrich ranch for whatever reason - comedic value?

Tim: Earl's dead set against it, but is convinced by a new character, Grady Hoover (Christopher Gartin) that this is his big second chance at fame and fortune. Since his Ostrich farm isn't doing that well, he agrees. They travel to Mexico...

Me: Valencia.

Tim: All right already! They travel to pseudo Mexico and we find out ole' Earl isn't as dumb as an Ostrich farm might suggest. With a combo of RC cars and dynamite what could go wrong?

Me: Well for one thing...

Tim: I wasn't asking you. They meet Kate (Helen Shaver), a biologist, and are successful in killing several Graboids, having it down to a science - even having the whole place hooked up with seismometers so they know where all the Graboids are every second. How could this possibly go wrong?

Me: Well for one thing...

Tim: Suddenly they get surrounded by a few Graboids at once and instead of trying to kill them one at a time since they are parked and safe on a rock, they say 'screw it' and decide to call in backup. Who you might ask?

Me: I didn't.

Tim: Stop it. They call everyone's favorite survivalist...

Me: Realist.

Tim: What. Ever. They call in Burt Gummer (Michael Gross). He is now divorced (his wife couldn't deal with him since the Cold War ended) and spends his time eating TV dinners and watching old war movies. He could really use an adventure and this one comes just in time. When he arrives, he reveals he has a Mexican Army deuce and a half truck laden down with all kinds of Graboid killing toys and over 2 1/2 tons of high explosives. He also brings 150 lbs. of MRE's (meals ready to eat)...

Me: Also explosive. Ooh, I get to tell a story now... I live in Oregon and we're famous for... very little. But when Earl and Grady hide beneath their umbrellas to keep from being covered in Graboid guts, I remember (way back in my itty bitty childhood) when a whale washed ashore in Florence in 1970, where some of my hubby's family lived. Now they thought of burying the poor thing but that was not going to happen. So they thought hey, what better way to make smaller chunks to bury than blow it up first? 

Let's use, oh, a half a ton of dynamite should do it. What followed was one of the funniest videos you'll see, um, today. It. Is. Hilarious. A simple local news broadcast of this explosion quickly turned into a mad scramble for cover as whale blubber covered not only the whole beach but part of the town - we're talking broken windows, cars, whatever it happened to hit. 

Tim: Well that was... totally not relevant to our movie. Anyway, Burt is ready for war. What could go wrong?

Me: Well for one thing...

Tim: I'm not talking to you.

Me: Then stop asking that.

Tim: He gets about a day of standard Graboid killing in before, as the preview states, the worms turn.

Me: So did Walt Disney in 1937 - great cartoon too...

Tim: These huge, blind, subterranean killing machines suddenly turn into something much, much worse. They are now bipedal, heat seeking killing machines that can reproduce exponentially just by eating enough food.

Me: Wasn't that the raptors in Jurassic Park?

Tim: Not even close.

Me: After killing a particularly large Graboid they discover that it has been hollowed out by... something. Apparently that's where the first bipeds had come from and they just multiplied from there. They also find out from the biologist that these creatures are Precambrian. If I hadn't traveled to Montana with the hubby for our anniversary last year I wouldn't have a clue what that meant. Precambrian, according to the theory, spans from the formation of the Earth to about the appearance of the first hard-shelled animals. 

We went to East Glacier Park, which has the Triple Divide Peak - the point where two of the divides in North America converge. What is pretty cool about this is that the peaks ABOVE the divide are Precambrian, meaning that the TOP of the divide is actually much older than the land beneath it. Pretty cool, huh? Okay back to the worms, um I mean raptors, um, I mean...

Tim: They communicate by screaming at each other, hence they are given the name 'Shriekers'. Of course our heroes quickly run out of ammo and have to improvise to kill them all. And to find out how you must watch the movie.

Me: Um, no, we watch 'em so they don't have to, remember?

Tim: Trust me, you will love the usual Tremors overkill. With an awesome closing line from Burt. "Some people say I am over-prepared, paranoid, maybe even a little crazy. But they never met any Precambrian lifeforms did they?" I think this sequel was really good and right up there with the first one. You do miss finding out what happened to Perfection Valley (the location of the first movie) and its residents, but it's okay - we get to find out in Tremors III.

Me: Oh goody.

Tim: All in all I give it two thumbs up - no matter what Shoy says.

Me: Hey wait a minute...

Tim: Plus it is also my daughter's favorite so it has to be good.

Me: It was good - especially since sequels seem to diminish in a lot of movie franchises and this doesn't. What Tim is not telling you is that they figure out that since the 'Shriekers' can only see heat signatures, they trick 'em by hiding behind CO2 in order to set them up with explosives (a la Burt) and the results... are quite impressive. All 'Shriekers' are destroyed... that is, until Tremors III. Which I'm sure we will be reviewing...

Oh and in case you think I'm a little hard on Tim, he's so fun to tease and so easy going about it that I just can't resist. That doesn't mean that Tremors isn't a good movie worth viewing, it means I have almost as much fun giving Tim a hard time about it as I do watching the movie. Tune in 'cause part three is soon to come and yes, I will be there for some good natured ribbing - it's what I do.

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AN ABOVE AVERAGE CREATURE FEATURE WHICH LEAD TO... A WHOLE BUNCH MORE CREATURE FEATURES AKA ATTACK OF THE SUBTERRANEAN B-MOVIES

Tremors (1990)

Well today (July 22) is a day of import I guess. A new heir to the English throne has been born (YAWN) and unfortunately we have lost a very talented actor who will be sorely missed - Dennis Farina. He was 69. Oh, and if you like FB rumors, Eddie Murphy died - again. Woof I am massively tired of rumors. It's gotten so bad that even though I found out about Mr. Farina on Joe Mantegna's site, I STILL looked it up just in case. Some celebrities 'die' on a regular basis and I wanted to make sure. Mr. Farina was 69.

I really don't like creature features, although I will watch one or two if it's supposed to be really good. I suppose you could call the Men In Black trilogy a kind of creature feature, a certain Japanese movie with worms I just reviewed and this one. It's described as a western monster movie. With worms. When Tim Forston, a guy of great wit and insight wanted to do this series I kind of went 'meh'. But then I watched the movie again. I had seen it when it first came out but apparently I forgot most of it because I really enjoyed this. So here we go and I'm going to let Tim start this one:

Tim: If you think of a movie starring Kevin Bacon and Reba McEntire among others the first thing you think might not be a 60's-esque creature feature, with a miserly (in movie amounts) 11 million dollar budget. That would be TOTAL budget friends and neighbors and not just for Kevin Bacon and Reba's talent. But the movie Tremors would be right up there in the list of things I think of.

Me: Truthfully it was BECAUSE of who starred in it that I really didn't want to see it. And since I'm always looking at the inflation index, that budget in today's dollars would be $31,171,650.00. And what the hell is with Kevin Bacon's hair? That gave me giggles through the whole movie - kept wanting to call him 'Chucky'. Child's Play HAD been out for two years when this movie was released soooo...

Tim: Written by Brent Maddock, Ron Underwood and S. S. Wilson (he also wrote Short Circuit and Batteries Not Included among his other credits) the movie has a very basic premise: What if there was something under the ground, and you couldn't walk on the dirt without being hunted?

Me: I'd think I was in a dirt version of Dune but that's just me...

Tim: The place? Perfection, NV, a small (population around 12 and falling) town in the middle of the desert.

Me: HA! There IS sand around there somewhere! And a movie factoid said there were 14 people although 17 people could be seen during the movie....

Tim: Shut up. A haven  from civilization surrounded by mountains and cliffs. First you meet the odd couple of Perfection, Val and Earl (Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward), two handymen whose motto is 'We plan ahead so we don't have to do anything right now.'

Me: So Chucky and Remo Williams hang out together for really no discernible reason.

Tim: Are you going to let me do this?

Me: By all means, please continue.

Tim: They finally decide that they have had enough working for money that's just enough to get by from meal to meal and plan to move to the 'big city' (compared to Perfection) of Bixby, oft spoken of but never seen (in this movie). In town we meet most of the populace. There's Walter, the proprietor of Chang's Market which is the only hangout and business. Also Nancy, the town hippie and single mother of Mindy (Ariana Richards, most popularly known as Lex from Jurassic Park).

Me: Except she's all grown up now and living in Salem Oregon, concentrating on her painting in between acting gigs.

Tim: There's Burt and Heather Gummer, the valley's survivalist para-military paranoids. 

Me: Today we call them realists.

Tim: The main characters and stars of the film are the oft hidden graboids.

Me: The best choice of the names they (the characters) considered giving them I think. The other choices were snakeoids and suckoids.

Tim: You don't even see the creatures for the first half of the movie but it just adds to the mystery. The storyline is a little jaded. Guys trying to leave town find a dead body, go back, and conveniently get trapped in the valley by a 'graboid' induced rock slide. But there is just something about it.

Me: Yeah, it's called the land of incredible coincidences.

Tim: Hush. I'm driving. The cast couldn't be better. There are nice explosions and a good shoot out in the basement of the aforementioned survivalist. Even a little bit of falling in love. One of the best things they did in my humble opinion is cut the cliche' scene of 'finding the spaceship' and leaving the origins of the graboids open. It really worked out better if you look at the big picture. All in all I give Tremors a 10 out of 10, but I am a bit biased as it has been my favorite movie since I was five years old.

Me: FIVE? Way to make me feel incredibly old, Tim.

Tim: You're welcome. All in all it is a cult classic (and I am in the cult) that spawned three sequels and one season of a television series (13 episodes in all, one of which guest starred none other than the talented Michael Rooker, or as you may know him, Merle from The Walking Dead). A fifth Tremors movie is supposed to be in process (for the last six years, so there you go). Now I will turn it over to Shoy for her two cents - I give this two big thumbs up!

Me: Whew, I'm glad it'll only be two cents, I'm broke. Thanks Tim - it's fun to hear about a movie from someone who loves it like that, it makes teasing you about it fun! I looked up the possibility of a new Tremors movie - for a while they advertised that the same writers would have Tremors 5: The Thunder From Down Under (gee I wonder where this one films <insert sarcasm>) starring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward and Michael Gross again - with Paul Hogan. The latest information I could get on that was from 2008. Here's the movie poster but, sadly, either this was total wishful thinking or the project just fell apart. The last time the question was asked (over a year ago) unfortunately had the same answer - nope.

As for THIS movie, like I said I must have forgotten most of it, because I actually liked watching Chucky and Remo... sorry, Val and Earl's back-and-forth dialogue, the relationship between Burt and Heather (the survivalist couple), and the fact that the romance between Val and Rhonda (the only single female in the movie, duh) wasn't pushed throughout the movie. Instead the romance was saved for the end and just added to the movie instead of being distracting.

Another thing I liked about this movie is that it is not about ONE person saving a whole town. It's the survivors of the initial attack of the graboids getting together and working as a team - that is much better than, say, have the movie be 'The Kevin Bacon Show'. And the movie duh stuff is mostly left to the young.

If you haven't seen the movie - the graboids come out of nowhere, kill a couple of the townsfolk (who were not being dumb, just being victims) and so Val and Earl stay to save the rest. Among them is Rhonda, the one single girl in the movie - that was a LITTLE convenient that a a graduate student conducting seismology tests would show up JUST NOW. But eh, it's a small point in a pretty good movie. And the explosions - courtesy of the Gummers - were pretty cool. The way the whole thing came together without, as Tim said, trying to explain why all of a sudden the Graboids were there or where they came from was pretty original.

Thanks Tim and I hope you don't mind a little good natured ribbing in the process. Hey, it's what I do.

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