Ponty has been promising me a review of a monster film for a little over a week now, and I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I should have guessed it would be this absolute gem of a film.
Tremors (1990) came out when I was five. No, I did not see it at that tender age; I think I first saw it when I was about ten-years old at a friend’s house. Every Nineties kid had that friend whose parents didn’t care what their kids did, or even actively encouraged them to be edgy. I had one such heathen friend, and we watched Tremors one day when I was over there playing.
Man, what a flick! The Wild West setting, the salt-of-the-earth characters, and the dread-of-the-earth worms! I had never seen anything like it. I still remember the scene where one of the creatures busts into Reba McIntyre’s basement, and she and her on-screen husband unloaded dozens of rounds into the beast.
It was also scary, but not in the way horror films typically are. It was scary because these were just normal people living in the desert and trying to get by, and suddenly they have to band together to defeat this creature that, while fantastical, could actually exist. There was a plausibility to it—at least to a ten-year old—that made it scary in a visceral way.
I think Ponty captures the film’s charm better than I can. I’ll turn it over to him.
With that, here is Ponty’s glowing review of a timeless classic:
The Portly Politico 