Day 12

Tremors (1990)

Directed by Ron Underwood

When a pair of handymen get fed up with their lives in the city of Perfection, Nevada (Population 14), they decide to strike out and achieve greatness, unaware of the giant monsters lurking nearby that will soon complicate their lives. Tremors is a wonderful schlocky monster movie that plays perfectly well as either a straightforward story of a town under siege by monsters or as a campy tongue-in-cheek parody of/tribute to the goofy monster movies of yesteryear. In terms of a straightforward movie, the monster design is awesome and I don’t want to reveal too much about it but it is so simple and clean and sensible and scary and goofy all at once. The people we meet are similarly enjoyable; a collection of mildly quirky folk you’d expect to find living in the desert in the middle of nowhere who are all sympathetic enough so that we care when they start getting eaten.

There’re only two issues that really come to mind when discussing Tremors, the first one is a minor flaw that is the first act of the film is a bit slow. There is a ton of establishing our two heroes and while they are a likeable duo there could have perhaps been a bit trimmed so we could get to the monsters a little quicker. Another issue that may or may not come up for viewers is related to the comedy. The jokes may not connect with everyone’s sense of humor. I thought it was hysterical but my wife did not, so your mileage may vary as far as that goes. Overall though this is a great example of a horror-comedy done right and I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a campy monster movie.