After too many rough days on the soul colliding with some hand pain, I decided I needed some days off to zone out and watch movies. Exit real life, live in someone else’s world for a while. The intention was for new movies, but then I read something about Tremors… and my brain said “when’s the last time you saw Tremors?” and I didn’t have an answer.
Soon I was preparing for a rewatch.
Tremors came out in January 1990. I saw it once or twice (maybe ten times, who knows) in the following couple of years and absolutely loved it. I figured it was just one of those things that I alone liked for a while until my teens when the sequels started happening and I got clued in that maybe it wasn’t just me, and maybe it was a decent movie not limited to a kid’s perception of quality. Even then, maybe it was a limited audience thing. Fast forward 30 years later and I’m now aware that it’s one of the more well-regarded horror movies if not franchises. The people who love it *love* it, much like I have.
Rewatching a favorite movie years later can temper that favoritism. Things that seemed awesome or fun or interesting don’t strike the same way, and it’s harder to be engaged when you know what’s coming. Horror thrives off of suspense and surprises from not knowing what’s coming next. So, I wasn’t expecting much out of this, especially with my recent low mood. But I took the chance, and what the hell.
One thing I was looking for on rewatch is something I learned in the last couple of years about the movie. It was filmed very close to where I grew up. I didn’t know because I lived on the other side of the mountains in the movie, in a flatter area with proper human development, so the landscape didn’t come across as familiar even though I could have easily guessed – with age, anyway – that it was at least filmed in the Southwest. It’s likely I took the Nevada label at face value, and kid me thought Nevada was on a separate planet for all it mattered. When I learned about how close I was at the time of the movie being filmed, I wondered how I missed it. Is it that different?
I tried to write notes as I watched it, but in the effort to avoid spoilers to the very small amount of people who haven’t seen it who still might, I may have been too brief and distracted by irrelevance. Also it seems it’s still engaging. But here’s those words.
remastered: and yet the title screen is grainy as fuck. cool.
i totally missed as a kid that they were trying to leave Perfection. and i forgot on rewatch later. nuts how that is. i haven’t seen it that often as an adult but you’d think that’d be vital to remembering the plot. i did remember them driving away and finding that they couldn’t, though. i guess i thought it just had to do with driving in general.
a quick thought: i haven’t seen any gas stations. they’re driving an old truck back and forth between town and out in the boonies, which doesn’t seem likely to occur without stops for gas (though they do have a gas can with them, which solves the mystery of why they haven’t stopped yet). where does this place get gas from?
well now, just there i saw a valvoline sign. that’s oil but maybe walter has gas.
i also totally forgot the [doctor] couple was building a house. it’s fucking right there, and they talk about it, but nope, kid brain noped it out. they’ve got a gas canister, too, though!
at least 76 miles to ride and all walter has is swiss cheese and bullets? and in the desert, too. because we all like sun-hot cheese full of crunchy dust.
i see it’s just a valvoline display in the end. mystery not solved.
and i also missed the conversation when they decide they might get checked on, followed by the next shot of a phone worker’s dead remains. kid me must have thought it was the road worker’s truck, but it clearly says otherwise.
“value!! ammo” lol.
man this grocery store is fun to look at 30-some years later. some products have barely changed, like the rubbing alcohol. the hairspray can went out of vogue pretty soon after that because of CFCs. i bet that shelf with the suntan lotion smells good. hey look, they have calamine lotion. and aspirin. and tampons/pads. and charcoal. loads of gatorade. they clearly had a sponsor or two here. i wonder what this looks like to the eyes of someone who grew up after the 2000s. would they compute it all as indecipherable old people shit, akin to how i see photos of pre-electricity grocers? and there’s bags of plastic straws for the young children to get confused over. mommy, what’s a plastic straw? “shut up and eat your kale.”
i found the gas station! it’s just a tank in front of walters. you can see it in the pogo stick scene.
poor walter.
i see red cups in what i think might be exactly the same packaging as the cups i bought last. one of those things that triggers foreigners as uniquely american is actually a real thing.
how did she have enough time to put on pants AND roll up the cuffs, anyway?
i think those same tomatoes were recycled back into the food chain because i swear they ended up in my cupboards a few years ago.
here comes the fun part with the guns.
another thought: they’re in a cemented basement without hearing protection. ouch.
okay that’s some tight direction with the lighter appearing out of thin air. or, it could have been, had it not been established in scene one that they smoke.
in effort to avoid potential spoilers even though this movie is old, i’m going to stop typing about what happens.
and it’s over.
weird as hell watching this so far into the future.
i’ll say that kid me might have recognized some elements of familiarity in the landscape, but because of the mountains, i wouldn’t have put two-and-two together. that said, if this came out yesterday, i’d probably easily guess it was filmed close to where i grew up if not specifically in the same state because of the types of plants and the color of the dirt. it’s not “oh i’ve been there” level of familiar but it’s clearly not australia or texas so my next thought would be my young backyard.
fast forward into the future, though, and i get the sense that stephen king was inspired by this movie to write the essence of the mist – you know, the last older movie i checked in on, featuring people trapped at a grocery store in a small town with monsters outside. that was more cthulhu-esque than this, though.
So where am I at with this, 33 years later?
After so many years of film, especially with recent big movies being so long and detailed, a movie like this one feels almost quaint. It’s simple, straightforward, and easy to follow. I can’t speak for kid me anymore, but adult me seeing this with fresh eyes probably would have enjoyed it just fine. Recently seeing Nope – another monsters in the desert movie that I directly compared to Tremors – tells me I would have found it nothing less than charming if it came out this decade.
And today it was a nice way to escape the gloom.
For anyone who doesn’t regularly follow the horror groupthink or me on a personal level, you may have missed that folks involved with this movie have posted old videos of it being made. If you’re into the behind-the-scenes of movies or you’re just curious about how they made the pole vault scene, et al, absolutely definitely give those a look. It’s crazy to watch them and then see how clean the movie actually comes across. How did all that not really happen in real life? Obvious hand puppet aside, the Tremors monster remains plenty compelling.
