Featured Creature Special: The one that didn't have Kevin Bacon

 

 

Title: Tremors 2: Aftershocks

What Year?: 1996

Classification: Weird Sequel/ Mashup

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/4)

 

As I write this, I’ve been working on bringing more of my features either to an end or in the direction I have planned. For this feature in particular, that has meant doing more to organize my reviews by subject and theme rather than pure random. In the midst of this, however, something came up that sent me back to some material I had already had under consideration for a long time, and I knew it was time to do something with it. Following my more usual form, I decided that the one to cover was a sequel within the franchise, especially as it did the most with a particular actor and character. I present Tremors 2, the first sequel in a long and frequently convoluted franchise, and the one that truly made a star of the late Fred Ward.

Our story begins with a reintroduction to our hero Earl, living with a series of failed business schemes and possible PTSD after triumphing over the whale-sized subterranean graboids in the previous adventure. He gets a chance for one more comeback from an oil company whose Mexican refinery is threatened by dozens of the monsters. He quickly reduces the infestation using remote control cars with explosives as graboid bait, with a little help from the survivalist Burt Gummer, and gets the attention of an attractive lady geologist. But their best plans don’t prepare them for a new phase of the graboid lifecycle, a swarm of little dinosaur-analogs that multiply as they eat. They’re soon besieged by a horde of the pint-sized monsters in the oil company shanty town- and Burt is completely out of ammo!

Tremors 2 was a direct-to-video film from Universal/ MCA, the first sequel to the1990 cult hit Tremors. The film was directed by S.S. Wilson, the screenwriter of the original film, with its director Ron Underwood as producer. The film starred Fred Ward and Michael Gross, reprising their roles as Earl and Burt Gummer respectively, with Helen Shaver as the geologist Kate Reilly and Christopher Garth as Grady Hoover.  The graboid creatures were created with practical effects by Amalgamated Dynamics, returning from the first film, and CGI by Phil Tippett Studios (all hail Phil). The film was reportedly finished in 1994, but not released until 1996 in part because of delayed decisions on whether it would receive a US theatrical release. While it was released directly to VHS, the film was shown in a limited number of theaters. It received generally favorable reviews, and became the first of several sequels in the franchise. The film remains available on disc and digital platforms. Fred Ward died on May 8^th, 2022.

For my experiences, this film was nothing less than my introduction to the Tremors franchise, thanks to a botched recording from 1990s network television. By then, I had already had the original recommended to me a number of times, and I was familiar with certain works that I suspect may have influenced it, such as the Gernsback-era tale “The Worm” by David Keller. I probably finally got to the original a few months after that, and it became an immediate favorite. I continued to watch the movie and everything that came from its rather motley franchise (including the damn cable TV show) well into the 2000s. At some point, however, it started to slip without me noticing. I went longer and longer without watching the original movie, I politely passed on several of the sequels, and once I started doing movie reviews, I found myself dealing with other, usually older material. It was when I heard of Mr. Ward’s passing that I found my way back, and for me, it was only fitting that I went to this movie first. Once I watched it, I still thought this over long enough that I’m doing this a day later after an extra viewing.

Moving forward, what I find striking about this movie is that I never felt like I had missed anything by not seeing the original. The graboids and their abilities and weaknesses are laid out with only a few references to the first film. (My favorite is the mention of Chang the shopkeeper: “He named them… they ate him.”) The old and new characters have similarly self-evident relationships and chemistry, with an introspective running theme of missed opportunities and “happy endings” gone awry. The more obvious problems lie in the conceptual developments. In the original, we didn’t know or need to know where the graboids came from and what they were doing before the events of the movie. (I'm partial to the scenario that they were dormant for a few centuries, on the vein of Keller's tale.) The sequel seems to second-guess this, and in the process introduces certain questionable conventions, especially the improbably accelerated lifecycle and convenient weaknesses of the shriekers. What’s most problematic is that there’s no explanation of the biggest differences, the much larger number of graboids and the lack of any of the problem-solving behavior shown previously. My own fan theory, notwithstanding the further sequels, is that the shriekers aren’t really baby graboids at all, but a presumably related parasitoid that has altered its host’s behavior, which doesn’t really change the actual story.

That leaves the story to consider on its own merits. Once the shriekers appear, the story gets in gear and sustains it’s momentum well. The overall feel is like a more upbeat version of a Romero zombie movie (why not see my Zombi/ Dawn of the Dead review?). The good guys can make mistakes, and sometimes do more harm than good; the monsters repeatedly outsmart them, though they aren’t that smart themselves; and the final outcome makes the original quest moot. Along the way, however, we get smart humor, well-paced action that never quite defies common sense, and characters we really care about, including one or two whose arcs remain off-screen. If anything brings it down, it’s the finale, which follows the get-them-all-with-one-boom formula (albeit before several of the more egregious examples) without the monsters really putting up a fight. That’s still made up for by the race for safety, which surely sends up the action-movie formula (still ahead of certain obvious offenders) as the guy who actually knows explosives remains in a panic.

That leaves the “one scene”, and I have to give honorable mentions go to the sick graboid and to Gross recounting his character’s Pyrrhic victory over the shrieker horde. What I’m going with is the first appearance of the little monsters. As we approach the hour mark, Earl and Grady find evidence of the new creatures’ rampage, including a destroyed radio transmitter. While they try to figure out this seemingly calculated behavior, they make their way to a vehicle that’s still intact. Before they can start the car, there is an eerie cry. Then they hear loud footsteps from behind a building, which shake a pile of pipes or rebar that is in view. There’s real tension as the pair raise their weapons, and then aim higher. It becomes a comical anticlimax as the shrieker comes into view… until the thing charges.

In closing, what I come back to is Ward’s contribution to the franchise. I freely admit I still haven’t seen him outside of the Tremors movies, but I like to think it gives a good sample of his talents. He was a very big part of what made the original movie great. He was among the best actors in the original film, with a real sense of maturity and emotional depth to his character that didn’t stop him from getting in some of the movie’s best jokes in the bargain. Making him the focus of the sequel was a fine idea that turned out good enough in execution, and a major reason it still stands above the generally entertaining and sometimes clever Burt-centered installments that followed. To me, once Ward left, the series simply and perhaps literally wasn’t the same. That should be tribute enough to his talent, and the right note to end another meandering recollection. Rest in peace.