Tremors (1990)

There exists in me a great appreciation for horror comedies.  It’s a tricky balancing act in two genre that should easily equal one another but too often can’t find a harmony.  Ghostbusters is the king of course, a movie in which the filmmakers thought to create a movie that looked and felt like a horror show with Bill Murray’s schtick grafted onto it.  Good ones are rare, like Evil Dead 2 and Return of the Living Dead, and now added to that strange brew is Tremors a fun-loving blue-collar monster movie about worms that burrow under the ground in a small town of Perfection, Nevada and swallow up the townsfolk when they walk outside.

This is a clever premise.  If you live in a small blue-collar town, how in the world do you keep from walking outside without getting eaten.  Luckily the movie pulls it off, and wisely casts Fred Ward and Keven Bacon as handymen Val and Earl, who discover the worms have killed several people and eventually gather several survivors, including a survivalist couple played by Michael Gross and Reba McEntire who, in one hilarious moment, end up using every gun in their vast collection to take out the subterranean beasts.

I mentioned Ghostbusters which is the king of this horror comedy genre and is funnier, but I think Tremors might actually be scarier.  It’s funny but it also contains some really great moments of tension as the people run to get to higher ground to keep from getting eaten.  It’s thrilling stuff.  Is it the most important movie of our time?  No, certainly not.  But it’s a lot of fun and you appreciate the effort.