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Hollywood had an array of monsters portraying from humanoid Frankenstein in 1931 to natural predators of Jaws in 1975. All of them had one thing in common, opposing humans.
In 1990, Ron Underwood directed a film introducing a unique monster that burrows underground and devours humans- Graboids. Thirty-two years ago, Tremors made an entrance for the giant man-eating worms and an already rich list of Hollywood monsters.
Graboids are different from other movie monsters like Godzilla, King Kong, etc. They live underground, use vibrations for hunting prey, and have grotesque tentacles to grab their food, human flesh.
Can humans survive from them? The movie doesn’t answer but tells a story of a remote desert town in America where a bunch of people uses their wit to defeat the earth crawlers.
Val (played by Kevin Bacon) and Earl, two protagonists of the film, are manual workers-for-hire who decide to move to a nearby town, dissatisfied with their jobs.
But on their way, they find people being murdered oddly. Delving deep into the mystery, they discover graboids that want to hunt them. From there, the battle of wits ensues between humans and monsters.
The protagonist duo tries to warn the nearby residents of the menace, but the creepy crawlers manage to cut off communication in every way possible.
In the ensuing chaos, the duo enlists seismologist Rhonda who helps them detect the monsters.
After a long struggle and killing most of the demons, the trio enters a climactic fight to decide the fate of the last monster, who also cornered them with its wit. Val clenches the win for humans with his quick thinking, making the lone Graboid meet its impending doom.
Tremors show the man vs monster battles that Hollywood generally portrays. Using animatronics, Ron Underwood's portrayal of the monsters paid homage to the 50s monster movies.
The massive cult following of Tremors prompted it to be a franchise with several sequels, a prequel and a TV series but didn’t succeed like the original.
Tremors made an impression on the monster horror genre, which inspired many successful monster films in later decades.