Tremors

(1990) ****

I love this movie. I was walking out of my dorm to go see this in 1990, when I ran into Crunchy Bug Nancy and convinced her to come with me. (There were two Nancys, see, and to distinguish them we called them Mod Nancy and Crunchy Bug Nancy. Mod Nancy dressed mod and obviously got the better deal, because one day some friends and I ran into CBNance and she described an encounter in her room with a "really big crunchy bug." She cracked us up, and the name stuck.) Crunchy Bug Nancy turned out to be the perfect person to see this movie with, because she jumped and screamed a lot.

And this is such a wonderful PG-13 monster movie. Light on the blood, but gooily heavy on the monster gore, it sports scares that are more thrilling than terrifying. But it has this terrific pace, which sneaks up on you as the movie opens on the drawling meanderings of the two likable boobs who will be our heroes. Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward are two guys who do the odd jobs for a Nevada town where 14 people live. And as their normal, goofy days moves on that number gets smaller and smaller. Because giant frikkin' worms are burrowing under the ground and sucking things down. And so we get to the essential part of the monster movie, le monstre.

Oy! What a monster. Here are the jaws of these big honkin' worms.

And then they open their jaws and their tongues emerge, which are like eyeless snakes with sharp teeth and horns to hook you.

Admittedly, the rest of the worms' bodies is a bit boring, but I love the crazy jaw design, and they manage to convey the idea that these things are big and heavy. Worst of all, they own the ground just like a huge shark would own your ass if you were neck deep in its waters. It's the giddy thrill of "the floor's hot lava!"

Their actual origins are never bothered with. One discussion covers the bases: mutations, government experiments, aliens. But it's just our boys drawling out hick speculation with the resident egghead, the cute grad student geologist. She's actually the reason I'm doing Tremors this year, because it's part of a select subcategory I'm showcasing this year.

Gratuitous Stripping Down To Underwear
This list is ever-expandable, but for now I'm reserving it for movies that don't sport any official nudity, just "plot elements" that result in a character doffing pants or more articles. (There's only two movies in the list right now, so this is defined fairly narrowly.) Someone gets her clothes torn off by a monster in Leprechaun 4: In Space, but I'm not yet ready to count that as "clothes ripped off by monster" is a little obvious.

Nobody in Tremors has their clothes torn off, but the heroine does trip on some barbed wire, which sets a chain of events in play. Before she can untangle from the wire, a worm-thing heaves up out of the ground beneath her, so she rolls off. Now her legs are all tangled up, and -- oops! -- the monster's snake-tongues have wrapped around the barbed wire's fence post. Kevin Bacon comes to the rescue, working off her boots and yelling "Get out of your pants!" Which she does.


"Man, that is the second-fastest I've ever gotten a girl's pants off!"
Mixing comedy and horror is hard to do right -- and when it is done right, I kind of hate labelling it as comedy at all. It's because the marketing will say "it's horror...and it's a comedy!" I just don't think that playing those elements against each other is the clever move. Used deftly, worked into the story instead of taking you out of it, the lighter stuff can let you get to know the characters in a quicker, better way than the same measure of heavy, moody dialogue. (I said practically the exact same thing about Slither last year.)

The characters in Tremors, none of them deep, are nevertheless easy to like. The best supporting characters are played by the dad from Family Ties and Reba McEntire, as a gun-toting, survivalist husband-wife team. This scene here has one of the best reveals in any monster movie. I had some screenshots but I couldn't post them in all good conscience.


Tremors comes highly recommended. Take Crunchy Bug Nancy with you if you can.