Tremors 6: A Cold Day in Hell (2018)

As promised in my franchise review for the earlier Tremors movies I purchased this one the day it came out and watched it. Sure, it has been more than a week before posting this review, but I had to watch it again before writing the review. Spoilers I love this movie!

Burt Gummer and his son Travis are back to do battle with the Graboids. This time things are very different when they get a call from a Canadian Arctic research station. Seems that the scientists there disturbed some Graboids while drilling core samples and now they are in a heap of trouble. The boys immediately head out to take a look and along the way their airplane gets “shot down” by an Ass Blaster. If you’ve got Graboids you’ve got Ass Blasters!

The rest of the movie is your typical Graboid hunt with the added complication that Burt has been poisoned by one and is dying. So, they can’t just blow the last one up. Nope they need to harvest the gland sack of a live one to make the cure and save Gummer’s life. Just in case you were wondering that is as gross as it sounds. But as one of the characters mentions, “at least it wasn’t an anal gland!”. Along the way we also get to meet Valarie, the daughter of Val and Rhonda from the first Tremors. This is only one of the excellent call backs to the earlier movies in the series.

The first thing that came to my mind when watching A Cold Day in Hell is that whomever wrote the script knows the franchise and loves it. In this day of remakes and re-imaginings it seems like most filmmakers run away from the established lore of the franchises they are continuing. I already mentioned the callback to Val and Rhonda thru the character of their daughter. There is even a snide and funny line about Kevin Bacon that I appreciated. But that isn’t the only one that put a smile on my face.

Burt Gummer rules!

There is another funny bit with a female character getting tied up in something and being told to take her pants off to get loose. This is clearly referencing Rhonda from the original Tremors. But here the character refuses. If you were thinking it was a blow for feminism or something like that don’t. She almost immediately lets them know that she isn’t wearing underwear! Funny line no? We even get Burt Gummer yelling, “You broke into the wrong God Damn Hanger…” As a fan of this franchise and characters I loved that they were referencing the other movies in this one. It makes me love these movies even more.

All of the creatures in Tremors 6 are CGI. I miss the old latex monsters from earlier in the series but will admit that this allows them to move around much faster and probably are a bit meaner looking. They get a decent body count and we get some bits and pieces (head, leg, torso) laying round for our characters to find. And of course, you get some Graboid guts splattered on the cast. Here we get it not once, but three times. Can’t have a Tremors movie unless someone gets gooey!

I like monster movies, and this is a great monster movie. Fast paced, funny dialogue, great characters, and cool monsters. The fact that it also is the sixth entry into a franchise I love is just icing on the cake. I highly recommend that you check it out.

© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer

Tremors V: Bloodlines (2015)

So here we are at the last Tremors movie in my franchise review, at least until we get the next installment this summer! The previous entry was a prequel to the original movie, but here we move back to the present and are again watching Burt Gummer deal with some Graboids. Don’t worry though, as with the previous entries they mix it up again.

Things kick off with Burt filming his survivalist reality show. This is apparently how he makes his money and cashes in on his battles with the Graboids. The latest show is interrupted by a new cameraman, Travis, showing up unexpectedly. Just as Burt is adjusting to this new person another shows up and asks for them to travel to South Africa. It seems they have a situation of the Graboid variety. Which also means they have a Shrieker and Ass Blaster issue! Burt and Travis catch a plane and head off to investigate.

The pair arrive and meet the locals. Burt is also dismayed to discover that his weapons have been stopped by customs. That means making due with what they give him, which isn’t enough of course. Things are also further complicated when he discovers that the African variety of Graboid has a different lifecycle and is a lot larger than what he is used to! Many people are killed, Burt is betrayed and goes a bit nuts, and a big secret that Travis has been keeping is revealed. And of course, the cast gets splattered with rubber guts. Not a Tremors movie without that.

As much as I enjoyed Tremors 4 I was happy to see Burt Gummer back in action. There isn’t anything better than seeing Michael Gross chewing up the scenery as my favorite survivalist monster hunter. He does a great job again with the character including being given a chance to have some fun playing crazy. There is a sequence where Burt is locked in a cage and has to deal with the heat. He has no shade you see, and there are a couple different pee jokes in there. Really it is very funny. Jamie Kennedy is also a nice addition as Travis. Trust me I’m as surprised to write that line as you are to read it. Kennedy is best taken in small doses… very small doses. Here he is funny, delivers some funny one-liners, and has some great chemistry with Gross. I’m very excited to see that he is back in Tremors 6, which is again something that I’m surprised to be writting.

Travis and Burt make a good team!

Every Tremors movie tweaks the creatures a bit to keep things fresh. Here they completely reinvent them using the justification that the African Graboids are different from the North American ones. I don’t need to go into the details other than to say that as a fan I was fine with this. Sadly, they changed the creatures enough that this is the first movie where the creatures are all CGI without some of the recycled props. That was disappointing to see. I like my rubber monsters in these movies and not having them hurt this entry. To be fair the CGI was decent, and I don’t have any complaints about how they look. I just have expectations with a Tremors movie and this one didn’t meet them.

One more thing that I did want to mention about the creatures. While I didn’t dig the CGI, it did have one interesting side effect. I love this series but will admit that I haven’t found the creatures scary since the first movie. They are kind of played more for laughs and are silly. That is until this movie. The creatures are scary and seem dangerous for the first time in many years. The new design is much meaner looking and I liked that. I’m recommending this one.

© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer

Tremors IV: The Legend Begins (2004)

The thing that I love about the Tremors franchise is how they keep switching things up so that the movies always seem fresh and interesting. In the previous sequels they did this by adding different monsters to the Graboid’s lifecycle. But after establishing that loop from Egg to Graboid to Shreiker to Ass Blaster back to Egg I wasn’t sure what they would do next. Well they decided on a prequel!

There is a silver mine and a nearby down called Rejection where the miners live and spend their money. The movie opens with the mine shutting down after the men working it get killed by some mysterious creatures. Of course, we know that these are Graboids and that some poop is about to hit the fan. Into town comes the owner of the mine, a “dandy” from Philadelphia named Hiram Gummer. We get to meet an ancestor of Burt in this one! There are also some other familiar names like the Chang family that runs the local store.

The twist with Hiram is that he doesn’t own a gun or even know how to fire one. After his first encounter with the creatures he decides to hire a professional gunfighter, which is how we meet Billy Drago’s character Black Hand Kelly. Might I just take a moment here to say that Drago is awesome, and it was cool to see him in a Tremor’s flick. Thanks. Some people die and some live before the town of Rejection has a final showdown with the Graboids and obviously changes its name to Perfection. See same town as the first Tremors…

I like this movie. I don’t love it as much as I have the first three, but as the fourth sequel in the series it isn’t too bad. I guess my biggest issue is that in their effort to do something different they sort of missed the point as to what makes these movies fun to watch. This is clearly Michael Gross’ vehicle now and making him Hiram instead of Burt hurts the story. I like Burt Gummer as a character and seeing him blow stuff up is one of the reasons that I continue to watch and re-watch the series. While he does a wonderful job creating the character of Hiram it just isn’t the same. Heck the flick really didn’t get entertaining until the end when Gross starts to play Hiram more like Burt. Let me just say the punt gun/cannon in the big finale is crazy fun.

It isn't Tremors unless a Gummer has a giant gun!

The special effects work is quite good for a low budget monster movie. We get a lot of rubber critter on screen and the actors get to do battle with them. The CGI is limited and executed very well. The baby Graboids flying out of the ground are a neat trick and a nice addition to the series. There isn’t much gore, but I did love the throwback to a gag from the first movie. The head under a hat appears again with a twist to surprise the audience. I loved it. And of course, we get the required "gut toss" where the actors have latex monster bits and goo thrown at them. Here it is much more satisfying in quantity than it was in Tremors 3.

Of the movies so far, this is the weakest of them. That doesn’t mean it isn’t good as I consider Tremors 4 to still be superior to most of the creature features of the last twenty years. It just has a lot to live up to being that it’s a Tremors movie. Still worth a viewing if for no other reason than to be a franchise completest. Thankfully part 5 gets us back to Burt Gummer.

© Copyright 2018 John Shatzer