Hello Posse,
I hope you had a good weekend and are having a great start to your week. My blog is going out a little late today because P.R. had to leave on a business trip so I spent the morning with P.R. then Spent the afternoon running errands. By the time I got home I was exhausted. I am just now getting around to finishing up work stuff.
All that aside, I thought I would do something a little different today. I am going to talk about the Tremors monster movie franchise. I am sure you are wondering, what does this have to do with westerns or historical fiction? Just hold on, because I'm going to tell you.
The Tremors franchise began in 1990 with the monster movie/comedy staring Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Michael Gross, Reba McEntire, and Finn Carter. It was released by Universal Pictures, a studio with a long history of successful monster movies.
The story takes place in the desert of Nevada in the small out of the way town of Perfection. Two local handymen, played by Bacon and Ward, are tired of their boring lives and decide to finally move out of Perfection forever. Unfortunately, they chose to leave just one day too late and on their way out of town they begin discovering many of their fellow towns folk dead or missing under mysterious circumstances.
Bacon and Ward decide they need to leave before the maniac attacking their friends gets them only to find the only road out of town is blocked and forces them to return to Perfection. The townsfolk discover a strange creature attached to the truck Bacon and Ward were driving. With the help of seismologist, played by Carter, the group begins to piece together the mystery just as they are set upon by strange giant worm-like creatures they name "Graboids" and a fight for their lives begins.
Tremors was a financial success though it did gross less than the studio expected. The interest in this movie spawned five movie sequels and a TV Series.
Tremors (1990)
Tremors 2: Aftershocks (1996)
Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004) "Prequel"
Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015)
TV: Tremors: The Series (2003)
The entire original cast did not return for the sequels. However, Ward did appeared in Tremors 2: Aftershocks with Michael Gross. Gross is the only original cast member to have appeared in all the Tremor movies and the TV series.
While most of the movies in the Tremors franchise are set in the current time, the prequel goes back in time to the presumed discovery of the Graboids, when the town of Perfection was first established in 1889.
In the beginning, the town was named Rejection and was financed by a local silver mine. The miners had no idea that strange eggs are about to be hatched by a local hot spring. When creatures hatch, miners die, and the town has to band together to fight them. In the end, the good guys prevail with the help of teamwork and a Colt 1865 Gatling gun.
I will admit, this franchise is a guilty pleasure for me. I have seen all but the last one and will probably rectify that sometime this week. I hope you will at the very least give the first movie in this franchise a try. They are not your typical blood and guts kind of scary movie. The gore factor is more just people getting dragged away out of sight and the carnage being assumed on the part of the viewer. And gore that happens on screen if move on the level people getting slimed on by the monster when it grabs them or it explodes. Even the faint of heart should be fine with this film.
So grab our popcorn and M&Ms and join me getting Tremors this week! Be sure to let me know what you think of it if you do.
Enjoy!
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