Striking The Right Scare-To-Laugh Ratio Was Key To Making Tremors
In the words of Kevin Bacon, "Funny-scary is a very difficult thing." The star of Ron Underwood's horror-comedy "Tremors" has spoken at length about the 1990 creature feature and his role as stubborn handyman Val McKee who, alongside Fred Ward's Earl Bassett, tries to escape the doldrums of Perfection, Nevada when giant prehistoric underground monsters interrupt their flight.
In the documentary "Tremors: Making Perfection," Bacon, Underwood, and the rest of the film's cast and crew go long on its journey from page to screen. It began as a simple concept from writers S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, who were collecting footage for a Navy safety video when they thought about what it would be like if something had them marooned on a rock. The story, then dubbed "Land Sharks," would be retitled "Beneath Perfection" before finally landing on "Tremors."
It would feature a colorful cast of small-town characters, including an obnoxious teenager, an opportunistic convenience store owner, and a gun-obsessed prepper couple. It would also be a movie that takes itself seriously enough to make its death scenes impactful and frightening, but have enough self-awareness to call its monsters "graboids." Those graboids were eventually designed by the FX maestros at Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. (ADI), with Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff, Jr. at the helm. Despite being a box-office bomb in its time, the end product is a thrilling, fun slice of entertainment and one of the coolest monster movies of the decade.
In the documentary, director Ron Underwood shares that for him, the film's power lies in its even-handed approach to synthesizing two genres.
'Broke into the wrong god**** rec room'
The screenplay for "Beneath Perfection" didn't hook everyone at first. Kevin Bacon, who first appeared in "National Lampoon's Animal House" and "Friday the 13th," knew the ins and outs of both comedy and horror before skyrocketing to fame in "Diner" and then Herbert Ross' "Footloose." By the time "Tremors" came along, Bacon was broke, recalling to Entertainment Weekly, "I felt like I didn't have a choice" in signing on. But the "They/Them" star has high praise for the practical effects and for his character Val, whom he's keen to revisit.
Underwood, however, was attracted to the story from the jump:
"Brent and Steve really nailed the characters, and they just came alive off the page. The tone was unusual; there aren't many films that combine horror and comedy, and to have scares and laughs and go back and forth between them, and I really loved that. I love the fact that the script had all of that very evident. All I had to do was pull off the script."
The tone was indeed unusual; one particular scene encapsulates the playful oscillation between terror and absurdity. Burt and Heather Gummer (Michael Gross and Reba McEntire) are seemingly done for, as the Graboids turn out to be extensions of something much bigger and nastier which gobbles down some of the local townspeople. The couple make their way to the rec room of the Gummer household where they exhaust their ammunition on the giant worm still thrashing in their basement. All seems lost until the camera pans back to reveal enough firepower to wage war with an army.
These mid-action tonal shifts might not have wowed moviegoers in 1990, but they've given "Tremors" staying power — alongside its highly unconventional monster, of course.