Tremors

Remember a time when Tremors was on Channel 4 at least once a year. It was the same time that heathers, Mystic Pizza and Raising Arizona shared the same status. But those heady days are gone, and the modern take on the cheesy 50's B-movie has all but dried up in favour of some guy with a brain disease playing deadly versions of Kerplunk with his victims, or something like that.

Tremors is one of those films that may be perfect! Yup I said it. The guys behind it just get cheesy, creature feature horror. From the quick build up of the opening scenes, with some disturbing little scenes, through the brilliantly tense action set-pieces that make up the rest of the movie it just oozes class. The ideas on show are fantastic. And I'm not just talking about whole Jaws on dry land thing, or the scenes where the characters are trapped on rocks or on roofs and have to think of a way off without touching the ground. No I'm talking about the visual flair. This is a low budget film and so the idea of popping your monster underground is a great one. It's a terrifying idea, but it also covers the monster up, making it more scary. The unseen is better, or worse to be specific, than a crappy rubber monster, just ask Speilberg. The problem is is what that leaves you with is a bunch of people running about bolting from nothing. So queue some ingenious little effects that show where the monsters are, such as the scene where Val and Earl run alongside a fence and the posts fall as the creature passes under them. Cheap as chips. it also means copious amounts of Sam Raimi's finest achievement, outside of beating up Bruce Cambell with gay abandon, the cheapo glider cam thing. Want to show the creature's point of view but need the camera to move quickly and glide unnaturally but don't have the money for a steadicam? Pop your camera on a plank of wood and run. Of course I'm guessing this was used on Tremors but i wouldn't be shocked.

But all that would be for nothing if you didn't have the characters. You care about this lot. They're funny, and just like the creatures, a bit dumb, but learning as they go. There are some wonderfully over-the-top performances, none more so than Mr. 84 degrees of himself; Kevin Bacon. then there's the ever-brilliant Fred Ward, who really should have had a more prominent career, seriously the guy's great. The interplay between the two is great fun.

What makes Tremors so great is that it fully understands how ludicrous movies like Them! are, that their central concepts are really dumb and that the movie is as much about enjoying the experience as being terrified by it. So the treatment gently pokes at the conventions, and the stupidity without ever tearing the stuff down. It's actually a very intelligently constructed and tightly scripted movie passing itself off as a B-feature.

Tremors; the cleverest dumb movie ever made.