Monster of the Day #458

Updated on April 13, 2012 By Ken Begg 16 Comments

Has there been a monster movie that’s been a patch on this one in the last 22 years? I don’t think so. The three sequels are all pretty entertaining as well, a rarity. Never saw the TV show.

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  • The Rev.

    I haven’t seen the last two sequels, although the first one was all right.  I enjoyed the couple of episodes of the series I caught.  The original’s a classic, and honestly, the only monster movies I can think of off-hand that are in its class in the last couple of decades would be the ’90s Gamera trilogy and The Host.

    They’re a different kind of monster movie, so they’re not as comparable, but I’d also stack The Descent and 28 Days Later against it (I haven’t seen the sequel to 28; I want the girls to see the original and then we can all watch it.  I need to get to that.)

  • The Rev.

    Got off on a tangent there, but anyway, I should clarify:  I love Tremors; it’s one of those rare movies I watch whenever I catch it flipping around the channels.

    Also, I have no idea what I did to my tags up there.

  • Gamera977

    Pretty good movie but haven’t seen it in ages. I’ll have to pick it up on DVD one day. Fred Ward plus Michael Gross and Reba McEntire as the paranoid gun-happy survivalists- what more can I say?  

  • Ken_Begg

    Yeah, it was the first movie I can think of to acknowledge that those are *exactly* the sort of people you’d want to be around in an emergency.

  • Gamera977

    Exactly!!!

  • sandra

    Best line : “I guess we don’t get to laugh at their chosen lifestyle any more”.  Something like that, anyway. I’m quoting from memory.  Wasn’t there also a Tremors tv series ?

  • Beckoning Chasm

    This week Jabootu has been offering some good choices for workout videos (I take a portable player to the gym).

    And this movie, unlike Deep Rising, has a big reveal that isn’t even slightly disappointing.

  • The teleseries was, like the movies, unusually well-written and acted, and had some good stories to tell. Unfortunately, it was edited like some over-eager garage band’s first music video. The show was downright difficult to watch, which is a shame, because it was a pretty good series.

    Yeah, talk about your rarities, all four films were pretty good! The sharp writing on the franchise is what has helped it endure, I believe. Like any good series, though, the first film still stands on its own. Although pitched as comedy, it remains one of the best straight monster movies of the last, what, 30 years?

  • John Bohlke

    The Tremors series is on hulu for those in the USA and without an aversion to watching commercials

  • Fisheyenomiko

    Yeah!  I lean pretty far to the left, but one of the reasons I don’t consider myself an outright liberal is because I’m pro-gun.  And seeing characters that could have just been typical idiot “gun nuts” actually show WHY people have guns–to protect themselves–was great.  Yeah, they were shown as being kinda goofy; but. really, so was pretty much everyone else in the film. at least before the shit hits the fan…

  • Terrahawk

    That was the thing for the entire movie.  People made mistakes but they weren’t aggressively stupid.  And yes it was refreshing to see people who like guns potrayed as being effective.

  • God I love this movie.  Like a good old fashion 50’s Sci Fi flick, only with excellent effects.

  • Petoht

    Prepare to be disappointed.  28 Weeks Later (or whatever it was called) was pretty much crap.  Idiot Plot, Idiot World, and wanting to Make A Point About Authority all contrived to make a really stupid movie that could have had all the horrible things avoided if the stupid people had thought for 10 seconds.

  • Petoht

    One of my best DVD purchases ever was a four pack of the Tremors movies for about $20.  I viewed it as paying $20 for the first and getting the rest for free.

    This movie just worked.  It was wonderfully done, and you could tell the people were enjoying themselves.  The sequels were also pretty good, which is surprising.  Even the fourth “prequel” one was better than I ever imagined it would be.

  • Flangepart

    Grabboids away!
    Man, I love the TREMORS flicks and series. Of COURSE Sci-Fi had to cancel it, the idiots!
    I liked the fact that the movie was on the humans side. They were given a fair chance to survive, and you wanted them to. Not like more ‘edgie’ flicks which make a bunch of jerks and nimrods mere ‘monster fodder.’ Those are a form of ‘death porn’ to me.
    Yeah, I loved this stuff.

  • Flakey

     What I also loved about it was one brief scene in where he gives one of the teenagers an empty revolver as a moral booster. A small touch but one I absolutely loved was when he took it back he opened up the gun to check on any ammo it might have, even though he knew he handed an empty gun to him in the first place. Maybe a gun nut, but he a responsible gun nut. A small touch that lasted about 2 seconds screen time, but something that showed how much thought went into the entire film.