TOMB OF NOSTALGIA: TREMORS (1990)

TREMORS (1990)

(Remember, clicking the highlighted links brings you to other reviews and articles here at The Movie Madhouse!)

Flick takes place in the small desert town of Perfection, Neveda where local handymen Valentine McKee (Kevin Bacon) and Earl Bassett (Fred Ward) are contemplating leaving for bigger and better things. What they get is bigger, but certainly not better, as the remote town becomes surrounded by a pack of enormous, hungry, subterranean worm-like creatures, that the besieged locals dub “Graboids.” As they get pulled under and devoured one by one, prospects for escape dwindle as fast as Perfection’s citizenship.

Delightfully entertaining flick is directed by Ron Underwood (City Slickers) from a script and story by he, Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson. It’s light-hearted and fun, but smartly plays it just serious enough, to give the Graboids some serious threat. This way, their attacks are intense and suspenseful and we fear for this likable bunch of stranded characters. There is very little bloodshed, but there is enough death and carnage, so we take these monsters very seriously. Mixing horror and comedy isn’t always easy, but Tremors mixes the intensity and scares with the jokes and humor in just the right increments. It’s a blast of fun and the budget is large enough that the effects portraying the creatures and their activity are very realistic and it helps suspend our disbelief as to such beasts’ existence. The origin of the creatures is kept mostly ambiguous and here it works, as does letting us know exactly how many there are and thus need to be dealt with. There are hints of intelligence, too, though we never know just how smart they are, until it’s too late. The California locations are utilized perfectly to portray the fictional Nevada town and the film is fast paced with only small lulls between the action. The score by Ernest Troost adds to the suspense and the cast is as close to perfect as you can get for a big budget B-movie like this…and at heart, a B-movie this certainly is.

As for that cast…Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward have great chemistry as buds and business partners Val and Earl. They work really well together and their bickering only adds to the fun. Some very well written dialog between them, makes these two memorable and reluctantly heroic characters. Too bad they were never brought back together again in any of the sequels. Finn Carter makes for a cute and spunky heroine as geology grad student Rhonda LeBeck, who catches Valentine’s eye. She provides what little scientific exposition we get and proves she can hold her own with the boys. Reba McEntire and Michael Gross are absolutely hilarious as heavily armed survivalists, Heather and Burt Gummer. Another pair that work really well together here. Victor Wong (Egg Shen from Big Trouble in Little China) is also fun as cantankerous and opportunistic general store owner, Walter Chang and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan’s Bibi Besch has a small role as an ill-fated local. A great cast who all get the material perfectly!

This is a really fun and action packed movie that combines the thrills, chills and humor in exactly the right doses. It has a great cast, really cool and well rendered monsters and comes in at a perfectly economical 96 minutes. Tremors was not a big box office hit, but was successful enough on home video to spawn five more direct to video sequels, with a sixth sequel on the way. They all star Michael Gross, the only actor to appear in all the franchise installments, so far.

PERSONAL TRIVIA: A friend and I saw Tremors at a preview screening before it opened. We didn’t know what we were seeing, save that it was a science fiction movie with Fred Ward and Kevin Bacon. We had a blast with it and gave the film high marks when asked to fill out questionnaires at the end of the movie. Nothing got changed when the film was released, so it must have tested well. Not sure why it wasn’t a bigger box office hit, as it had all the ingredients of a great popcorn movie!

-MonsterZero NJ

Rated 3 and 1/2 (out of 4) Graboids.

 

 

 

 

**************************************************

TOMB OF NOSTALGIA: STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)

STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN (1982)

Star Trek II: The Wrath Of Khan is one of my all time favorites and I have to say I enjoy it just as much now as I did in a theater in 1982… maybe more with the added nostalgia and that it retains it’s status as the best of the Star Trek movies even with the addition of J.J. Abrams’ fun reboot series. The film is a direct sequel to a first season episode entitled Space Seed where Kirk and crew find a 20th century Earth genetic superman in suspended animation with his crew on an unregistered space vessel. He’s thawed out and identified as Khan Noonien Singh a genetically engineered tyrant who, with his followers, nearly conquered Earth in the 1990s. He tried to take command of the Enterprise and kill Kirk but, was thwarted and he and his followers were sent into exile on a deserted planet. The film picks up 15 years later with a ship, The Reliant, accidentally happening upon Khan (Richardo Montalban reprising his classic role), and the remaining members of his crew, while searching for a lifeless planet to test a planetary terraforming device on called Genesis. Khan, who is now mad with vengeance as the explosion of his world’s sister planet has ravaged his home and killed his wife, takes the ship and plans to use Genesis as a weapon of revenge against now ‘Admiral’ James T. Kirk (William Shatner). Lured into a confrontation and badly damaged, The Enterprise and it’s valiant crew must somehow find a way to stop Khan from using the Genesis Device to commit ‘universal armageddon’… and caught in the middle are the creators of the device, a former lover of Kirk’s (Bibi Besch) and a son, David (Merritt Butrick) he’s never met. Khan, as directed and co-written by Nicholas Meyer, corrects basically all of Star Trek: The Motion Picture’s mistakes by returning Star Trek’s sense of adventure and action and making it’s character’s 3 dimensional again. Where ST:TMP ignored the fact that the characters where now over a decade older, STII:TWOK makes their aging part of the story. Kirk is celebrating his 50th birthday and dealing with issues of his new earthbound rank when his heart still belongs in the captain’s chair. Spock (Leonard Nimoy) is training a new crew to take over the Enterprise with our beloved crew members assisting in shaping their eventual replacements. Khan himself once a vicious but, noble warrior who graciously accepted Kirk’s decision to let him have his own world to build instead of imprisonment, is now a madman who seeks revenge at any cost. Meyer takes our beloved characters and gives them legendary status working in themes from classic literature like Moby Dick, Horatio Hornblower and Tale Of Two Cities… and gives the Enterprise a charming Naval feel as opposed to the antiseptic and cold feeling the previous film imbued it with. And added to the richness of story and character are some thrilling and suspenseful space battles that evoke some of the classic submarine movies like Run Silent, Run Deep. Assisting Meyer is a cast that brings their famous characters vibrantly to life once more. Shatner may get flak for his over the top performances but, here he is at the top of his game and gives one of his best performances as an aging warrior forced once more to battle against the odds and possibly face mortality for the first time. Nimoy plays an older, wiser Spock who is happy to be molding the next generation and has mellowed a bit allowing him to show a slightly warmer side… or dare I say more human. Deforest Kelley is as cranky as ever as Bones but, this is one character we don’t want to change a bit and he hasn’t. Montalban takes Khan and turns him into a vengeful madman who is still fiercely intelligent and ruthless but, now on the brink of madness with revenge, a foe even more dangerous now that he would destroy James T. Kirk at all costs including that of his own people. A classic character is now made larger then life by a veteran actor knowing when to show the cunning villain and when to unleash the madman. And Meyer gives him some great dialog to chew on. The rest of the classic Trek cast all do well in reviving their beloved characters though I will admit Walter Koenig’s Chekov has a few moments that spill into camp but, the character always was very emotional. Bibi Besch is fine and sexy as Dr. Marcus, Kirk’s old flame. Butrick doesn’t quite cut a figure we’d expect of Kirk’s son but, we can forgive this as it’s part of the story that his mother didn’t want him to grow up like dear old dad. Kirstie Alley made her acting debut as Spock’s protegee’ Lt. Saavik a vulcan officer following in his footsteps and her characterization made her instantly beloved by fans who were equally disappointed when she didn’t return in Star Trek III. Rounding out the main cast is Paul Winfield as The Reliant’s Captain Terrell who makes the best of giving some character to a limited role. I won’t pretend the film doesn’t have faults, it does. There are obvious flaws in it’s science and their are inconstancies, one being that the Chekov character didn’t join the show till season 2 so, Khan should not have known him. The film was made on a low budget so, the sets are cheap looking and a lot are borrowed and redressed from ST:TMP and while the ILM FX are fine, a lot of FX early in the film are also borrowed from ST:TMP and it’s a little obvious. But, the biggest flaw is that Kirk and Khan never meet face to face, all their confrontations are done by radio or on view screen and these two actors at their best, never get to be in the same room together and that’s a shame. But, all it’s flaws can be forgiven as this is just a real fun flick and is classic Star Trek at it’s best… both in spirit and in the portrayal of it’s characters. It’s a film that elevated the characters from heroes to legends and has an old fashioned swashbuckling tone that seems to be gone from films today. It’s a classic flick now made even more fun by the nostalgia it has picked up and is a movie that has charm to spare. An all time favorite and a great movie even with it’s flaws. Also stars regulars James Doohan as Engineer Scott, George Takei as Helmsman Sulu and Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura with Ike Eisenmann playing Scotty’s nephew Ensign Preston, a new character. STII also features a great score by James Horner and is pretty much the movie that put him on the path to becoming one of the best film score composers out there today. A classic!

4 Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnssssssss!