Far off, in a harsh desert landscape isolated from the centers of civilization, a small pocket of humanity struggles to claw out a meager existence from the unforgiving environment. As if not difficult enough on its own, that challenge is made nearly impossible by sudden attacks from monstrous sandworms burrowing beneath the ground right under their feet. No, this story doesn’t take place on an alien world or in a distant future year, but right here on good ol’ planet Earth in the (more-or-less) contemporary day. Released in early 1990, the rollicking horror comedy Tremors pokes a little bit of fun at the iconic creatures of Dune, and still pairs really well with any adaptation of that novel.
To be clear, Tremors has no specific connections to Dune beyond the concept of giant monster worms living beneath the desert sands. The film is more a riff on old-fashioned B-movie creature features of the 1950s, benefiting from a few decades of improvements in animatronic monster effects and lots of scrappy filmmaking ingenuity. However, perhaps now more than ever, as modern takes on that Frank Herbert novel grow increasingly dreary and morose and self-important, the goofier comedy of Tremors serves as a worthwhile companion piece.
| Title: | Tremors |
| Year of Release: | 1990 |
| Director: | Ron Underwood |
| Watched On: | 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray |
| Also Available On: | Blu-ray Various VOD rental and purchase platforms |
The nowheresville of Perfection, Nevada boasts a population of 14 and would be lucky to qualify as a backwater, if it weren’t in the middle of the desert and if it actually had much water. Residents Val and Earl (Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward) barely scrape by doing odd jobs as handymen, hoping to put together enough money to get out of this dump and head for the bright lights of slightly larger nearby town Bixby. Sadly, even those modest dreams are dashed when the main road through the mountain pass is blocked by a landslide and, disturbingly, other locals turn up dead, killed in very peculiar circumstances, as if attacked by something from underground.
With the help of a pretty geology grad student (Finn Carter) studying seismological disturbances in the area, the boys soon discover that the desert sands around and underneath Perfection are home to a heretofore unknown species of giant carnivorous worm they coin with the name “graboids.” Are these monsters prehistoric relics awakened from hibernation, radiological mutants, or science experiments gone wrong? Nobody can say, but the ugly sons-of-bitches are drawn toward noise and vibrations and sure do move fast. They also seem to have developed a taste for human flesh. However much they may not care for the place, it falls to Earl and Val to rally everyone in Perfection and make a stand to save the town.
With a budget of just $10 million, Tremors was a modest production even by 1990 standards, but director Ron Underwood (making his feature directing debut) stretches those dollars with some inventive creature effects work and deft balance of action, thrills, and comedy. If not at the peak of his youthful charisma (Footloose had been six years earlier), Kevin Bacon wasn’t far from it. Pairing him up with the older Fred Ward, an actor known mostly for serious dramatic work in films like The Right Stuff and Silkwood, turned out to be an inspired choice. The two have great chemistry bouncing off one another. For additional comic relief, Family Ties sitcom dad Michael Gross and country music legend Reba McEntire steal the movie from under them as a pair of survivalist gun nuts.
Despite a ton of elements working in its favor and generally just being a lot of fun to watch, Tremors suffered from a weak advertising campaign and drew very little attention at the box office during its January theatrical run. Fortunately, the film found an appreciative audience on home video later that year and grew to be an unexpected sleeper hit in the aftermarket – enough so to later spawn a host of DTV sequels (mostly centered on the Michael Gross character) and a spinoff TV series that ran on the Syfy cable network for a season. Director Underwood would go on to much greater success with the blockbuster smash City Slickers the following year, only to bottom out with the mega-flop The Adventures of Pluto Nash in 2002 before settling in to a stable career in television afterward.
The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray
Universal Studios Home Video released Tremors on HD DVD in 2007 and on Blu-ray in 2010. Both were sourced from a very dated high-definition video master plagued by ugly edge enhancement artifacts. In 2020, Arrow Video licensed and remastered the film for release on both the Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray formats. but for some reason has only sold them separately, never bundled together in the same package. Unfortunately, that means I’m not able to take any screenshots because I’m not yet equipped to do that from an Ultra HD disc.
Although Arrow offered a pricey Limited Edition with a booklet and slipcover, I opted for the less expensive Special Edition. That means I missed out on the booklet essays and a second disc of additional bonus features.
The remastered transfer is credited as a “New 4K restoration from the original negative by Arrow Films, approved by director Ron Underwood and director of photography Alexander Grusynski.” Without question, it’s a huge improvement over the older Universal effort. Once you get past the opening credits footage, which is a bit blurry due to the optical composites, the majority of the movie is at least decently sharp, sometimes quite impressively so, without any noticeable edge enhancement or other artificial sharpening artifacts.
On the other hand, grain texture is often very coarse and distracting, especially in shots against the sky (the movie has plenty of those) and dark scenes. The HDR grading of the 1.85:1 image is quite bright, which seems appropriate enough for a story that takes place mostly in daytime in a hot desert environment, but has very flat contrast. To be fair, Tremors was a fairly low-budget production and that may just be a factor of the film stocks used.
Arrow provides the movie’s soundtrack in three flavors: the original theatrical 2.0 stereo, 4.0 surround, or remixed 5.1 surround. All are encoded in lossless DTS-HD Master Audio format. I flipped around a bit between them and honestly didn’t hear a lot of audible difference. Eventually, I settled on the 2.0 track, which (despite the “stereo” label) is actually a matrixed surround track that expands well with Dolby Surround Upmixer decoding. The music has nice fidelity and breadth across the front soundstage. Gunshots are loud and deliver a satisfying crack, though the monster attacks and other sound effects are often limited by the film’s budget and age.
Even without the second disc, supplements on the main disc are plentiful enough. Items new to Arrow include two audio commentaries, a half-hour making-of documentary, three interviews totaling about 45 minutes, featurettes on the visual effects (21 min.) and music (14 min.), and about 16 minutes of before-and-after clips from the TV overdubs for censored profanity.
After that are the archival features: a 44-minute making-of doc from Laurent Bouzereau, 10 minutes of behind-the-scenes creature effects footage, 5 minutes of deleted scenes, a bunch of brief Electronic Press Kit featurettes and actor profiles, trailers, TV spots, radio spots, and image galleries.
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