Hasitha Fernando looks at the story behind Tremors as it celebrates its 35th anniversary…
Nothing screams the 90s more than the low-budget horror comedy Tremors. A love letter to 1950s creature features, the film was one of Kevin Bacon’s earliest efforts following his surge in popularity due to Footloose. As the flick celebrates its 35th anniversary we look back at its behind-the-scenes story…
“Land Sharks” was one of the tentative titles of the movie
It’s hard to imagine that the original title of this film was going to be Land Sharks instead of Tremors, but that’s what nearly happened. The basic premise of the movie was originally conceived by writer S.S Wilson in the early 1980s, when he was serving in a United States Navy base as a filmmaker. One day whilst Wilson was out hiking with his a few of his friends, vaulting across large boulders in the middle of the desert, he was suddenly struck by the outlandish idea of a man trapped on a piece of rock due to a malevolent subterranean threat. Wilson jotted down his idea on a piece of paper and put it aside until the right moment presented itself.
The moment Wilson was looking for dawned with the success of the 1986 sci-fi film Short Circuit, which was written by him and his writing partner Brent Maddock. At the suggestion of their agent, Wilson and Maddock started shopping around their idea, which was tentatively titled “Land Sharks”, to interested parties. However, this title was changed owing to the then-popular SNL sketch which featured character of the same name. Wilson and Maddock shared their idea with Ron Underwood, who was working with National Geographic as a documentary director and got his input on how to refine their desert monster and by June 1988 they finished crafting their screenplay which was titled “Beneath Perfection”.
The genesis of the Graboids was intentionally left ambiguous
The story never answers the genesis of “Graboids”, the primary antagonist of the feature, and it was left ambiguous on purpose by both Wilson and Maddock, with the characters in the film only speculating about their origins. However, the writers felt that there were only four possible options regarding the creature’s sudden emergence, which were: they were either the byproducts of illegal genetic experimentation, extraterrestrial entities, worms exposed to radioactive waste or a previously undiscovered, long-dormant prehistorical life form. Wilson and Maddock felt that keeping the Graboids’ origin in the grey left the audience something to think about once the credits roll.
Practical effects were used extensively to bring the Graboids to life
Amalgamated Dynamics Inc. is a visual effects company that specializes in animatronics and prosthetic make-up founded by Stan Winston alumni Tom Woodruff Jr. and Alec Gillis. The establishment have been responsible for crafting the visual effects for cult classics such as Death Becomes Her, Starship Troopers and Mars Attacks! as well as some of Hollywood’s big-budget tentpoles such as Spider-Man, The Incredible Hulk, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and Godzilla vs. Kong. Tremors, it just so happens, was the first feature film on which Woodruff Jr. and Gillis worked prior to their big break into the industry.
The full-scale Graboid, which can be seen after Val digs up a specimen, was built from lightweight foam. One idea of the effects crew for the subterranean monsters was for them to have an outer shell of sorts. When the Graboid comes above ground, this outer shell would retract to reveal a slimier ‘inner worm’. But this notion was discarded due to its ‘phallic’ resemblance and changed to a big worm possessing several smaller worm-like appendages inside its mouth. Originally, the creatures were also supposed to have a shinier, slimier aesthetic and this too was altered since the gloss paint made them seem as if they were covered in cheap nail varnish.
Kevin Bacon resented being in the film at one point
After making his feature film debut in 1978’s National Lampoon’s Animal House, a young Kevin Bacon got his big breakthrough from the toe tappin’ musical-drama Footloose released in 1984. The 1990s saw Bacon earn greater recognition as a character actor with efforts like JFK, A Few Good Men, The River Wild, Murder in the First and Apollo 13. However, in between the aforementioned periods saw Bacon’s prospects dwindling and at first the talented actor thought that agreeing to start in Tremors would essentially kill his career. Because of this, Bacon resented being in the production, only agreeing to be part of it because he needed money for his new marriage and the upcoming birth of his newborn.
When Tremors didn’t become the financial success they thought, Bacon even refused to acknowledge the film’s existence and his involvement in it. However, with his career successes later on and the monster film’s cult status Bacon eventually came around to Tremors, even calling the shoot “the single most fun time I’ve ever had making a movie in my entire career” during a 2012 interview. The role of Val was also offered to Bill Paxton, Matthew Modine and Bruce Campbell before Kevin Bacon was cast.
The studio completely reshot the ending of Tremors
Finn Carter started out her career in the theatre before switching to the small screen, gaining recognition for the roles she played in the CBS soap opera As the World Turns and the anthology horror series Monsters. After leaving daytime TV Carter got her big-screen debut in the 1989 romantic comedy How I Got into College. After playing a supporting role in Rob Reiner’s Ghosts of Mississippi, Carter guest starred in many popular television shows including Law & Order, ER, NYPD Blue, Judging Amy and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Carter who played the sassy geology graduate Rhonda in Tremors didn’t rehearse the scene when she gets out of her jeans to escape the Graboid. The actress did this in order to illicit a more authentic reaction from her co-star Kevin Bacon. The studio reshot the ending of the movie to feature Kevin Bacon’s character Val and Finn Carter’s Rhonda kiss because test audiences who loved the film repeatedly chanted “Kiss her! Kiss her!” at the end of the screening.
The town of Perfection was inspired by a real-life city in California
Co-writer Brent Maddock was inspired to create the township of Perfection, Nevada for the story after visiting real-life, isolated community of Darwin, California during a film shoot for the U.S Navy. Darwin happened to be an ex-mining community located in Inyo county, California with a population of 43 residents, according to the 2010 census data. The town is completely cut off from civilization with its only access being a single dirt road nearly 40 miles away from the nearest township. Similar to fictitious town of Perfection, Darwin too has no police station, hospital or school and lacks internet, cell-phone towers or cable TV. The reshoots of Tremors took place in this location.
The movie was heavily edited from its original R rating
Tremors was all set for a November release in 1989, however, the MPAA giving the film an R rating, owing to its offensive language, delaying its debut by a month. This was because the filmmakers thought that the rating would hurt its chances on reaching a broader audience and by extension impact its commercial viability. So, over 20 odd uses of the word “fuck” were either cut or redubbed with less offensive words. Therefore, the movie was pushed back to allow more time for the editing process and was eventually released in January 1990 with a PG-13 rating. Wilson and Maddock later revealed that they were happy with this decision as it made Tremors more of a family-friendly outing as opposed to something adult-oriented.
A solid critic reception & the unexpected birth of a franchise
Made on a production budget of $6 million, Tremors ended up grossing $16 million by the conclusion of its theatrical run. While the effort was only a modest box-office hit, it went to become massive hit on home video purchases and rentals becoming one of the most popularly rented movies of 1990.
Film critics too applauded what Underwood, Wilson and Maddock had accomplished with their low-budget monster flick and as of writing holding an approval rating of 88% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 51 reviews and featuring an average score of 7.2/10. James Berardinelli showered praise on Tremors by giving it a three out of four rating and writing, “horror/comedies often tread too far to one side or the other of that fine line; Tremors walks it like a tightrope”. Roger Ebert described Tremors as a “goofy, dumb, fun movie” and Ty Burr of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B+ elaborating, “Tremors is the Slacker of monster movies: bemused, improvisatory, willfully low-key.”
The success of the first outing naturally prompted the filmmakers to craft sequels, further expanding the Graboid mythos and exploring the lives of Perfection’s citizenry. The first three sequels – Tremors 2: Aftershocks (1996), Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001) and Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004) – were all made with the involvement of Wilson, Maddock and Underwood with Stampede Entertainment. The next two sequels were not made with the creative inputs of the original creators and all sequels thus far were released direct-to-video without theatrical releases. A television show spin-off was also bankrolled by Syfy in 2003 but sadly got cancelled due to poor viewership.
Regardless of what your thoughts may be about the Tremors franchise as a whole, there’s simply no denying that Wilson, Maddock and Underwood caught lightening in a bottle with this low-budget monster horror and bolstered by Kevin Bacon’s effortlessly charming lead performance, Tremors still continues to be a wildly entertaining ‘90s affair that deserves to be revisited.
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Hasitha Fernando is a part-time medical practitioner and full-time cinephile. Follow him on Twitter via @DoctorCinephile for regular updates on the world of entertainment.
