Tremors 2: Aftershocks

"We're stuck on a goddamn roof with a bunch of whatsits trying to eat us. I may have done this before, but I did not like it!" -Earl Bassett

Tremors 2: Aftershocks is the 1996 sequel to the 1990 creature feature, Tremors, directed by S.S. Wilson and distributed by Universal Studios.

I saw the first Tremors movie in the early 2000s. I don't recall exactly what year it was. It was a movie that one of my brothers brought home after borrowing it from one of his friends. Of course I enjoyed it, but I wasn't aware that it had any sequels (or prequels or TV series for that matter). It wasn't until several years later that I learned of the two sequels and one prequel when I came across the Tremors Action Pack at a store. It contained all of the movies in the franchise.

My first thought was that the sequels were unneccessary, especially in this era of endless sequels and remakes. I felt that the first movie had tied up all the loose ends very well. The monsters were gone, the remaining Perfection residents were safe and Val had found his own personal happy ending.

Despite my initial thoughts, I decided to give the other Tremors movies a chance, so I popped Aftershocks into my DVD player and went from there.

The movie has two returning stars, Fred Ward as Earl Bassett and Michael Gross as Burt Gummer, along with some new faces, Helen Shaver as Kate (White) Reilly and Christopher Gartin as Grady Hoover. In supporting roles are Marcelo Tubert as Ortega, Marco Hernandez as Julio and Jose Rosario as Pedro.

If there is one thing that irritates me is huge blaring mistakes that are 100 percent avoidible, such as this one:


Those are not graboids. Those look more like Langoliers. You know, from that movie based on the Stephen King novel? Take a look.

Not a perfect match, but close. There's really no excuse for this. They had pictures of the main cast on the title screen, why didn't they get the monsters right? And not only did they get the monsters wrong, they look horrible. But anyways, what really matters is the movie itself and not the abysmal job done by the title screen developers.

Our movie begins with a title card telling us we are in the Petromaya Oil Field in Chiapas, Mexico. Chiapas is the southern most state in Mexico and shares a border with Guatemala. At first all we see is the side of a lush, green moutain range. We see more of the scenery throughout the movie which shows a similar setting as the first movie, a valley hemmed in by moutains. While most of the camera shots don't show the surrounding country side as much as was in the first movie, what you do see is beautiful. Too bad it was filmed in California and not in the real Chiapas. Despite it being in a similar setting, I didn't feel the isolation that I did in the first movie. I don't know why exactly, but to me it just isn't there.

After the title card, we focus on the mountain range, slowly a pair of feet and legs come onto the screen. Turns out there is a Mexican man scooting along an above ground pipe. It is clear by the expression on his face that he is scared of something. He makes it to the end of the pipe and turns to see the ground moving. A graboid. To get to a nearby van the man jumps from oil barrel to oil barrel, all the while the barrels behind him are being knocked over by a still unseen graboid. The man is knocked to the ground and quickly gobbled up by the monster. I thought this was a decent scene. The knocking over of the barrels and moving dirt are both well executed as is the swallowing whole of the man, but these are nothing new. We saw all this in the first movie. Good thing we got the old stuff out of the way...sort of.

In the next scene we are told that we are back in Perfection and we run into a familiar face, Earl Bassett. Earl is threatening his herd of ostriches with barbeque sauce. Yum, ostrich burgers. Anyway, Earl has not had it easy since the last movie. While his pal Val McKee has gone onto marry Rhonda and has prospered, Earl made some poor investment decisions and had to return to Perfection. He is not happy about this.

A Las Vegas taxi pulls up at his door and Ortega and the cab driver (Grady Hoover) step out. Ortega wants Earl to come down to the oil field in Chiapas and get rid of the graboids that had been killing his workers. He is willing to pay him $50,000 for each graboid he kills and the Mexican army will supply him with any equipment he needs. Grady is a huge fan of Earl and Val and so had offered to help Ortega track Earl down. Earl rejects Ortega's offer.


Ortega: "We have already contacted your partner, Senor McKee, but he was unwilling to help us."
Earl: "Sure. Val married a good woman. Why would he want to die?"

Grady follows Earl into his trailer and tries to convince him to agree to the deal. Earl is not easily persuaded. He feels he has already missed his chance, that opportunities to make something of your life only come around once in a lifetime. He directs Grady's attention to a poster on his wall. It is a Playboy centerfold from October 1974. Earl tells Grady that the reason he keeps the poster on the wall is to remind him to not chase after things he's never going to get.

This gets us to the core of this film. This is Earl's movie. You can't really say the first movie belonged to any one character, but you can say that for this movie and the third in this series. This movie is about second chances for the two returning characters, Earl and Burt, but for the most part, it is for Earl. Later on in the movie we learn that Kate Reilly is in fact October 1974. Earl is finally going to get the things he deserves (if he can make it out of his situation alive of course). If there is a moral to this story it is that if you don't take risks in life you will never really live. You will be stuck in the same place for eternity. Some risks are bigger than others of course...graboids.

Or maybe I'm reading to far into it.

Anyways, Grady tells Earl that now he has another chance and convinces him to go to Mexico. Grady asks to accompany him and Earl agrees.

Earl: "Well, maybe you will come in handy. When they're eating you, it'll give me a chance to get away."

Earl and Grady arrive in the oil fields and are introduced to Kate (a geologist working for the oil company) and her assistant Julio and the mechanic Pedro. Julio and Pedro...sounds like graboid chow to me, anyways...

Earl and Grady get to work killing graboids using themselves as bait. I had initially wondered why the army wasn't brought into deal with the monsters. Grady is asked the same question by Julio. Grady explains that since the graboids find prey by sound, they only want one source of sound to lure them in. A large group of people would cause the graboids to spread out and attack.

Earl uses his expertise on killing graboids and they spend the next day or two blowing up monsters with remote control cars and dynamite. Eventually they find that there are dozens of the creatures under the ground so they hurry back to the oil's main headquarters so that Earl can phone in reinforcements. Reinforcements by the name of Burt Gummer.

We find Burt sitting watching War movies in his basement. He tells Earl that he has been really busy lately, but we get the feeling that he was in the same situation as Earl before Earl went to Mexico to kill graboids. Even Burt's wife Heather had left him. Her reason was that Burt had become too hard to live with after the Soviet Union fell. Without the threat of global war, Burt couldn't find much meaning in life. As they talk, the camera pans out to reveal a graboid head mounted on Burt's wall. Very appropriate.

Safe to say Burt was ecstatic at the chance to relive past glories and he does love guns. He rushes down to join Earl and Grady.

Burt arrives in a massive, six-wheel military truck that has an arsonal of weapons and 120 pounds of ready to eat military rations. The next scene is of Earl, Grady and Bert killing more graboids, Burt loving every minute of it.

But, that night everything changes. We are introduced to our new monster. Turns out that each graboid carries three smaller versions of itself with legs inside it. Earl and Grady have a run in with three of them, but kill one and manage to escape, noticing that they are attacking anything warm. They hear other graboids letting loose the new monsters inside them. Earl and Grady hightail it back to the main compound. This scene is well done and pretty tense. It is night time. You can't see anything. At the beginning of the scene, you don't really know what is going on.

Next we find Burt driving along, talking into his tape recorder where he had been documenting his graboid killing expedition. He stops to look at a map and is attacked by several of the new monsters and we cut to black.

The next day Earl and Grady arrive back at the compound in time to save Kate from the new monsters. Burt joins them soon after, looking shocked and covered in monster guts. His truck has only suffered minor damage. This is one of the best scenes in the entire movie.

Burt: "I feel I was denied critical, need to know in-for-mation."
Grady: "We're sorry Bert. I mean they just changed all of a sudden."
Kate: Common Bert, what happened?"
Burt: "Well, when the radios went out I decided to return to the refinery, but enroute I find I'm in an AMBUSH situtation. Must've been a couple a dozen of these things. Well, I dropped the first wave with semi auto fire, but they just kept coming. Sheer luck most of them were in front of the truck, so I popped it into six wheel and rammed 'em down. The ones that got on board I handled with a combination of small arms fire and hand to hand techniques...I am COMPLETELY out of ammo...That's never happened to me before."

I can't decide whether or not it would have been better to actually watch the event Burt is describing. Gross' performance here is spot on. Burt is a total badass and his description of the previous night's events cements that fact in our minds, even though we didn't get to see it. Hmm, I guess I would like to have seen it, but I do like the descrition of it. Oh well. Actually, thinking of my next point, it is probably better that we didn't see it and get to picture him taking a platoon of those things out on his own in our head.

The puppet effects in this movie are amazing. When the new monsters (they are not named in this movie) are shown as puppets, they look great. They do indeed look like they have come from the graboids. They are suited for walking above ground, but they still posses graboid features, such as the beak. But, for the most part, the monsters look bad as CGI. There are a few instances where they're far enough away that you can't see the poor CGI effect. It's not the worst CGI I have ever seen and since this movie was made in 1996 I can forgive them fully. I care more about the story, acting and characters than CGI. It does appear that the people that did the CGI put a lot of effort into it as far as they could. I'm sure there were money constraints involved.

Over the course of the remaining movie they discover that the new monster can replicate itself by eating. This is where Burt's 120 pounds of rations comes into play. A monster had hitched a ride under his truck. They also figure out that the animal sees through infrared, or through sensing body heat, much like a rattle snake does.

Of course, Earl, Grady, Kate and Burt defeat the new monsters and go off into the sunset, so to speak. As they wait for someone to come looking for them, Grady tries to get Earl on board with his graboid themed theme park idea.

Over all, this was a great movie. I would give it an 9/10. Not bad for an unnecessay sequel. This movie manages to combine comedy, action and dangerous critters into something just as enjoyable as its predecessor. I wasn't bored with this movie for even a moment. It was true to the first movie and true to its genre as a whole.

One thing I really like about this series is that they make the monsters somewhat believable. In the first movie we saw that they moved about with spikes and sensed movement through vibrations in the ground, which are abilities that exist in real animals, such as worms and moles. They do the same thing with the new monsters. They see through body heat given off by other living things. That is exactly how rattle snakes see.

Something I look forward to when viewing these Tremors movies is seeing what small things in the movie will end up having an impact on the plot and events as they unfold, such as the 120 pounds of food and Playboy centerfold in this movie and the cliff and stampede story in the first movie. Many horror and monster movies have foreshadowing in them and the same is true with these movies, but they aren't initially obvious.

I highly recommend this movie. Despite the fact that it is a sequel, I don't feel you have to watch the first movie to be able to understand this one. It's a fairly simple premise. People go out to kill a monster and it changes into a new monster.

Tremors Review

“We decided to leave this place just one damn day too late,” –Valentine McKee.

Tremors, released in 1990 by Universal Studios, is a science fiction horror/comedy film directed by Ron Underwood and written by Brent Maddock and S.S. Wilson. Underwood is also known for directing 1991’s City Slickers with Billy Crystal and Jack Palance and for 2002’s horrid Adventures of Pluto Nash. Yah buddy, live that down. Maddock and Wilson wrote all four of the Tremors movies and are also known for writing 1986’s Short Circuit and 1999’s Wild Wild West.

The movie features a large cast (including some surprising faces), including Kevin Bacon (Footloose, Apollo 13) as Valentine McKee, Michael Gross (Family Ties) as Bert Gummer, Reba McEntire (country music singer) as Heather Gummer, Fred Ward (The Right Stuff) as Earl Basset and Finn Carter as Rhonda LeBeck. I will introduce supporting cast as they appear in the following review.

Tremors is set in the fictional near ghost town of Perfection, Nevada. Perfection has a population of 14 people and all appear to some extent in the movie, but one just as a dead body and three more as little more than part of an all-you-can-eat buffet. Yum, human. The one-time mining town is located in the middle of a large valley, hemmed in on all sides by mountains composed of rock. Get that everybody? They are made of rock. The valley floor is sandy and dotted by rounded rock formations. These are very important, so keep those in mind as well. There also seems to be a creek and salt flats in different areas of the valley. The valley’s main economic activity is small time ranching and agriculture. The two non-agricultural businesses are the main store which consists of the post office, movie rental place, bar and general store, and Val and Earl’s handyman service (V&E’s Odd Jobs), which does most everything in town. There is also a doctor in town, but he’s not seen much because he dies early on.

The movie begins with a shot of handyman Val McKee standing at the edge of a cliff. Behind him one can see the expanse of sagebrush dotted valley and the mountains beyond. We are quickly introduced to the other handyman, Earl Basset and the relationship the two share.

Val: “Good morning Mr. Basset, this is your wake up call. Please move your ass.” Val: “There’s a stampede, Earl! Get outta the way!”

Earl: “Val, you dumb shit.”

Don’t forget about that scene.

It becomes important later. We are not told much about their history, but the two have obviously known each other for a long time and have developed a chummy, but at the same time competitive relationship. They behave much like brothers. Much of the humor in this movie comes from the interaction between these two.

They leave the cows and head back to town. On the way they discuss and bemoan their situation. They both have dreams of becoming something bigger than what they are at that time, but they keep finding things standing in their way of achieving their dreams, or so they say. On their way, they remember that the new seismology graduate student from Mesa University had arrived. Earl had heard that it was a girl. They speed off to meet her, Val talking about what he wants the woman to look like. Well, he is disappointed. Rhonda Lebeck is the new student and she has blue eyes and brown curly hair. She’s set to monitor the multiple seismographs that had been set up around the valley for the past three years. She asks them if they had seen anything strange going on because she had been recording some strange readings, or tremors, on her equipment. Val and Earl say no. I will discuss Rhonda more later on.

The two men continue onto town. On the way, we see just how isolated this place is. The nearest town is 38 miles away and there is only one two lane road to the west and a steep jeep trail over the mountains to the east as ways in and out of the valley. Radio signals are also trapped within the valley and there is only a single phone line. If the phone and roads went out, it would be days before anyone would notice. The town residents would be on their own. Once they enter town they meet the rest of what will be the main cast. First is Melvin Plug (Bobby Jacoby) a teenage boy whose reason being in town is never explained. His last name does not match any of the other character’s names. There’s never any clue as to who he is with which while not a major problem still bothers me. Melvin is rather obnoxious to Val, Earl and Bert Gummer. Earl is often the brunt of Melvin’s pranks.

Next we meet Bert and Heather Gummer a husband and wife survivalist team. They are gun nuts who have taken up residence in Perfection to stay away from the government. They are talking with the general store’s owner, Walter Chang (Victor Wong). Walter is always looking for a way to make a buck.

Quickly we cut to a dirt bank somewhere in the valley. It starts shaking and dirt slides down the bank. Then it cuts to Rhonda going about her duties monitoring the seismograph equipment. While she works, she is followed around by a point-of-view monster and the dirt swells up as if there is an animal digging through it. These are our first hints that there is something under the ground and that the tremors that Rhonda had recorded before weren’t caused by the natural shifting of the earth’s crust. I'm assuming that the area has a number of fault lines beneath it, but this is never discussed so the reasons for the seismology study are not entirely clear. I would think it would be more likely to have studies going say in California, an area that is well known for earthquakes than for one to go on in Nevada, but what do I know.

We then return to town and find that Val and Earl are continuing on with their daily tasks and we meet two more members of our cast Nancy Sterngood (Charlotte Stewart) and her preteen daughter Mindy (Ariana Richards). Nancy appears to be some sort of artist. She does mention a kiln, so we do know that creates pottery, her character, along with her daughter’s are never totally fleshed out, but this is not necessary since they are just townspeople. Val and Earl are once again discussing their lot in life. They finally decide to leave town after one “shitty” job too many.

Val-“Now there’s nothing,’ I mean nothin’ between us and Bixby, but nothin.’”

Ah, poor Val. On their way out of town they come across a man sitting on top of an electrical tower. They recognize him as a town resident named Edgar and Val (who loses at a game of rock-paper-scissors, a repeating theme throughout the movie) has to climb up to him since he doesn’t respond to their calls. Val finds that he is dead. They return him to town and the local doctor Jim Wallace (Conrad Bachmann) says he died of dehydration, which would have taken about three days to occur. Val and Earl try leaving town again, perplexed by Edgar’s death. Why had he sat up on the tower for three days? He had a rifle with him. They suggest that maybe an animal had chased him up there, but he had a rifle, so what was the problem?

We cut to an old man who we learn is named Fred working in his garden. His sheep are freaking out and then his scarecrow is knocked out of place. He is dragged down by something. Back to Val and Earl who are once again, trying to leave Perfection. They pass a pair of road workers before passing Fred’s place. They notice that there are a bunch of horribly mutilated dead sheep in Fred’s corral. They eventually find Fred’s head, the rest his body not being seen as it had been pulled underground. It had been eaten, but this is not shown. They once again return to town, they try warning the road workers, but this doesn’t work as one is dragged off after his jackhammer is stuck into something that bleeds underground and killed. The other is killed off screen.

In the following scenes we are introduced to a rancher, Miguel (Tony Genaro), Nestor (Richard Marcus), whom I am assuming is also a rancher and the doctor’s wife, Megan (Bibi Besch). We meet Miguel and Nestor in the general store. Miguel is telling Walter about the mysterious disappearance of some of his cattle. Val and Earl tell them about the death of Fred, but no one really believes their whole story and they find that the phone lines are down. Walter and the others not believing them is not unbelievable, if you were told that a bunch of sheep were killed in that way and a man dragged under the ground would you believe them?

Val and Earl decide to drive to Bixby to bring help. They believe that it is all the work of a person or “psycho killer” as they told the two road workers. They are thwarted in their efforts again when they find the road has been blocked by a landslide. They also find that at least one of the road workers is dead. They turn around and attempt to head back to town, but are hung up by something. They discover what it was once they return to the general store, a snake-like creature is wrapped around their rear axle.

This is our first actual glimpse of the monster and we and the residents now know that we are dealing with something strange, but we don’t know exactly what yet. We as the audience have known that something strange was roaming the valley for most of the movie, but we are finding out what it is at the same time as the characters and I like that. It is being handled much like the shark on the movie Jaws (1975). We don’t see the monster until part way into the movie. We see this monster earlier than we saw the shark in Jaws. The main reason for this was the technical aspects of the movie. The reason why we didn’t see the shark until most of the way into the movie was because it was so difficult to handle, according to Jaws creators, the mechanical shark was just so hard to handle they had to keep their use if it down to a minimum which actually was a major plus for the movie. It let the audience’s minds provide the shark. We as the audience are allowed to wonder what this thing was that was under the ground and it is gradually shown to us. The first time I saw the monster, I really was not expecting it and remember thinking it was the ugliest thing I had ever seen.

After finding the snake creature the movie cuts to night at the doctor’s house. He and his wife are quickly sucked underground and the next day Val and Earl, who are fulfilling their roles as the movie’s “Dirty Harry’s” (they seem to be assigned all the dirty jobs), head out on horseback to Bixby since the road it out. On the way there they discover the doctor and his wife’s disappearance and have a run in with the monster, which is fatal for one of their horses and the monster. And finally, we get to see our creature.

They meet up with Rhonda who figures out that there has to be three more of the creatures. They return to town after out running a second monster and spending the night on a rock formation. From here the movie picks up and doesn’t slow down for the rest of the length of the movie. Two more characters die and the rest of the residents are forced to make a run for the mountains as the monsters are unable to travel through rock. Throughout these scenes, the humans discover that monsters, who see through vibrations in the ground, are not only tough to kill, the Gummers manage to kill one that smashes into their basement, but it takes the use of their entire arsenal of weapons, they are smart and can learn. Bert-“Broke into the wrong god damn rec room didn’t you, ya bastard!”

The Gummers also discover that while under the ground they are basically invincible. The humans in tow are forced onto their roofs as the remaining two monsters systematically destroy the foundations. This forces the humans to be able to think and plan ahead. The monsters will know where they are located at all times.

They plan on heading to the mountains on a 30 ton or so bulldozer reasoning that it is too heavy for the monsters to flip over or damage. They had already destroyed all of the vehicles that would have been able to make it up the jeep trail. They load everyone up in a semi trailer and head out. It works until the two remaining monsters, or graboids as they are named by the townspeople, set a trap for them and they flee to a rock formation. They manage to blow a third one up, but this doesn’t work on the final one.

Val, Earl and Rhonda make a final stand with the graboid at the same cliff we saw at the beginning of the movie. The graboid is forced over it and our heroes have saved the day.

Val-“Can you fly, you sucker, can you fly?”

Overall I give this movie a 9/10. While few scenes seemed pushed, such as the sudden switch over to night for the doctor’s death scene, and the road workers being there that day seemed way too convenient, the movie flows very well. It sets up and fleshes out the three main characters, Val, Earl and Rhonda, and sets up the situation very well.

The monster and special effects are absolutely amazing. No boring computer generation. All puppets and practical effects. I know a lot of work goes into well done computer generated effects that are done in today’s day and age, but when you see them, you never wonder how they did it. You know how they did it, on a computer typing code. Nothing special, nothing interesting. With the graboids, they are at the same time, bizarre and somewhat comical looking, but they have traits that you would see on real subterranean animals. They propel themselves forward with spikes, like earthworms, they don’t need eyes because they feel their way around by vibrations, like moles (yes, I know moles have eyes, but that is not their main method finding their way around). I like that the actors get to see the monsters in real time in an actual set and are able to play off of what they are seeing.

The scenery in this movie is also great. You feel the isolation of the characters. You feel the ruin of what you see hints of what was once a more prosperous area. Could the graboids be the cause of the valley’s decline? The presence of seismic studies in the valley is never really explained. They don’t necessarily have to be, but maybe the tremors that have been recorded for the past three years have been caused by the creatures. If so, where have these animals been all this time? Did they originally live deep, deep underground? Since there are three more movies, you know that the writers have also thought of these types of issues.

All of the characters are likable in this movie and the major ones (Val, Earl and Rhonda) are all well fleshed out to the extent they need to be. You aren’t made to dislike any of them to the extent that if they died, you wouldn’t care like many more recent movies in the horror and sci-fi genres i.e. Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies. You don’t give a shit if any of those characters die. All of the characters are regular people who have been thrown into an extraordinary position and react in the way most people would act. They are afraid, but they know they are on their own and have to find a way out of their situation. They come up with plans and when they fail, find new ones. They often become very excited when they have a victory, like anyone would, but continually find out that they have to keep planning. The discussion between Val and Earl from the beginning for the movie about how Val never plans ahead while Earl says that when it is Monday he is already thinking of Wednesday plays right into this. Val and Earl don’t fully learn the planning ahead lesson, but you can tell that they do grow as people throughout the movie.

Rhonda is also a great character. She is not the stereotypical female of many horror movies. She’s smart, level-headed, looks like a normal woman and participates just as much as her male counterparts. She finds herself in the position of leading official on anything scientific, which she is not really qualified for because her expertise is in seismology, not prehistoric life forms or biology or paleontology. The residents can’t be blamed for going to her for answers. They want to know what is going on and have no way to find out themselves and there are things she is able to tell them. Rhonda is just as clueless as they are. While not a contender for a movie award, it’s a great movie that pokes fun and pays homage to 1950’s B movies.