Well, we don’t really know. But it’s definitely many miles long, say 30-50 miles, and several miles wide. Some more hints about the size will appear in Tremors 4.

Some of you have noticed that certain things about Burt’s basement bunker changed between Tremors 3 and the TV series. You are correct and, as usual, very observant. Let’s back up to the beginning.

Tremors 1 – Basement has no safe room or shooting range. Entrance stairs briefly glimpsed on wall adjacent to the wall the Graboid comes through.

Tremors 2. Our production designer Ivo Cristante, duplicated the T-1 basement – with some deliberate differences. For example, he put a repaired section of wall to indicate where the Graboid came through in Tremors 1, although, if you analyze it, you realize it appears to be the wrong wall. In Tremors 1 the Graboid came through the wall opposite the gun wall. Here, the patched area is in the wall next to the gun wall. Okay, we’ll say Burt decided to move his gun wall during the repairs. He also moved his reloading equipment and added wood paneling to the wall behind his easy chair, perhaps to make room for mounting his stuffed Graboid trophy head. He also put up all his other hunting trophies.

We didn’t see the stairs, shooting range, or safe room, but we can assume they were on the unseen fourth wall.

Tremors 3. We see the wall we didn’t see in Tremors 2, revealing the safe room, stairs, and shooting range for the first time. The gun wall, repaired wall, and wood-paneled wall are oriented the same as in Tremors 2, but Burt seems to have become more PC and removed all his hunting trophies.

Tremors – The Series. As fans have noted, the entrance stairs are not in the same position. They’re now across from, instead of next to, the safe room. The reasons had mostly to do with differences in building sets for television versus for movies. But one fan has proposed that when Burt rebuilt his bunker after it was blown up in T-3, he moved the stairs to the opposite wall from the safe room. Hey, we buy that! Seems like something Burt would do. He situated the stairs to give himself a better field of fire toward the compound entrance. You know how Burt likes a good field of fire.

Also he replaced the Tremors 3 “drawbridge style” safe room door with the sliding door because it was simpler, more reliable, and took up less room. Finally, it’s been suggested that his firing range is in a different position in the series than in Tremors 3. But we think it’s in the same place, relative to the safe room. Are we wrong? Heaven knows we’ve been wrong before.

Now, a question for you observant fans, have any of you noticed what’s different about Chang’s market in the series?

Well, our idea way back in T-1 was that, before moving to Perfection, Burt and Heather worked hard, both made good money, and were shrewd investors. Their fear of impending World War III caused them to retire early and move to the valley for it’s desirable “geographic isolation” as Burt says in T-1. The capital outlay for firearms, fuel and water storage, etc, was large, but upkeep, taxes, and expenses would thereafter be low way out in the boonies. Since then, of course, in T-2, Burt made a lot of money killing graboids, and even more killing shriekers in T-3, so he’s pretty well set financially.  In T-4, we lay groundwork for the possibility that he also inherited money from Hiram Gummer’s silver mine.

Guess they have to ride the school bus to Bixby. We should’ve put a school bus full of endangered kids in T-1 or T-3!

Graboids are neither girls nor boys. They are hermaphroditic. That means they have characteristics of both sexes and don’t reproduce in the normal male-female way of most creatures on earth.

Okay, some of you say it’s north-south, and some of you say it’s east-west. We think it’s north-south. Here’s why. First of all, that’s the way the original town was built in the Lone Pine area. Chang’s Market was on the west side of the street. North was toward Nestor’s trailer (Nestor was the guy pulled through the spare tire.)

That having been said, what does reality have to do with anything? Burt points out in Tremors 1 that there are cliffs to the north (the ones through which Val stampedes the last Graboid) and mountains to the east and west. What we meant was the north end of the valley ended in cliffs and the other got narrower and narrower as the road wound toward Bixby. S.S. Wilson proposes that the obviously non-standardized map to which Val refers is not oriented east-west, but oriented to make the long valley easier to display on a wall, with Perfection at the South (right-hand) side. In movie-reality, Chang’s then ends up on the East side of the main street.

The clincher in our argument comes in Tremors 3. Burt refers to geologic survey maps in discussing the path of the current crop of Graboids. Using his laser pointer, he says, “They’re moving down from the north, just like last time. Jasmer quadrangle straight down to Calypso quadrangle. So clearly, Perfection Valley runs north-south. Also on the map for those into topographic symbols, slopes are indicated on the east and west sides.

We have adhered to this north-south orientation in Tremors 4.

Michael’s TV show, Family Ties, was very big at the time. The studio heads said we should read him because he was such a well known star. We were doubtful, since his character on the show couldn’t have been more different from Burt, nor is Michael at all like Burt in person! Little did we realize what a chameleon-like actor Michael is. Well, he blew us away when he came in to read, and we’ve benefited from the association ever since. BTW, any of you nitpickers notice Burt’s name is misspelled in the T-3 trailer?

We get a lot of fans asking why they can’t buy rubber Graboids and Val and Earl action figures or video games.  Some of you have even offered to help design or even manufacture them.  Others have helpfully suggested lower-budget ways they could be produced.  Still another asked if we just had a small leftover graboid in “hardened clay” he could buy.  (Sorry, the graboids were constructed full size; the clay versions are gone, and the casting molds are huge.  Even the ¼ scale graboids are pretty big.)

In answer:  we wish we could get Universal to think like our fans!  You have to believe us when we say we’re just as frustrated as you are.  We don’t control the Tremors “franchise.”  Universal Pictures has the final say over all marketing and merchandising.  I hear from sources inside Universal that the various marketing departments are expressing increased interest in our “franchise.”  In English, that means they’re recognizing that there are a lot of Tremors fans out there. Nothing is definite, but here are some of the things that are being considered at Universal: Toys, action figures, collectibles and video games.  The Tremors series is being considered for promotion in these areas, and deals may be discussed with toy companies, game designers, etc.

Universal is also planning some fun stuff for the official Universal Tremors 3 website, which should be up soon.  They might give away props or other collectibles from Tremors 3.  So be sure to watch for that site.  And feel free to e-mail Universal directly with your thoughts and wishes. Show’em you care!  Tell’em what you want!

May 2010 update: Obviously this did not happen.  We understand that some Tremors 4 props were sold on e-bay, notably Hiram’s bicycle, but have no more information than that.

From time to time fans point out similarities between the Tremors monsters and other monsters they’ve seen in the fantasy-SF universe. Such coincidences are inevitable, but we did not work from any pre-existing ideas or artwork in creating the monsters. For Tremors, the Graboids were roughly described in the script. Brent Maddock and I felt that anything moving through the ground would have to have a streamlined shape. I had a desire that the mouth be really unusual and “open like a flower.” Since earthworms move in part by bracing themselves with stiff backward-facing hairs, we added the concept of the spikes on the sides of the creatures. From those sketchy descriptions, Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis created the initial concepts which became the Graboids. Woodruff and Gillis have an extensive knowledge of the animal world and incorporated many real-world details into the final wonderful design they executed.

I came up with the idea of graboids turning into smaller monsters (instead of bigger) while driving in the desert on a trip.  For the Shriekers, we knew that we wanted bi-peds, the heat-seeker organ, and the same fantastic mouth design. Here again, Woodruff and Gillis brought us many sketches and concepts. The whole production team — including Maddock, Wilson, Chris DeFaria, and Nancy Roberts had input on the final look. After the movie came out, one fan wrote to say the Shriekers looked very much like a bi-pedal creature drawn by a well-known SF artist, but here again, this was just a coincidence.

For a more in-depth look at the world of monster design enter the world of  Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis by visiting The Monster Makers web site!

I had a job working as an editor at a navy base in the middle of the Mojave Desert. On weekends, when they weren’t shooting at the gunnery ranges, I was allowed to go hiking out there. One day when climbing over large boulders exactly like those in Tremors, off of which the people pole vault, I had a thought. “What if something was under the ground and I couldn’t get off this rock?”  I wrote that thought down on a scrap of note paper and filed it away.  That scrap of paper sat in a file folder for a number of years and was resurrected after Brent and I sold Short Circuit. Nancy Roberts, then our agent, told us “Now for the fun part. Get out all those old ideas”, So we did. And one of the ones she liked the best was this note that eventually became Tremors.

Tremors was filmed in Lone Pine, CA. The snowcapped mountains behind Perfection are the Seirras. The large dry lake visible in a few shots in the climax is Owens Dry Lake. Tremors 2 and 3 were shot on several locations near Valencia, California, just north of Los Angeles.  We could not afford to go back to Lone Pine where we shot Tremors 1.  One location on Tremors 3 is the same one we used in Tremors 2.  Can you spot it?  It looks very different because we were shooting in fall instead of spring.

Only sagebrush and Josuha trees. The original town was torn down soon after production. The local people contributed labor in return for getting to use the lumber, etc. Even the fake rocks we built (for the pole vaulting scene and climax) are gone. However, Lone Pine is a beautiful place to visit and a zillion other famous movies have been shot there. As for the other films: the Tremors 2 oil field office location was torn down. We thought the Chang’s Market built for Tremors 3 was going to survive. It was bought by a movie ranch and rebuilt on their land, but we’ve since been told it was later destroyed by fire. Oh well.

The guys at ADI have a whole range of things they use, depending on how close the shot is and what we want the audience to feel or learn from the shot.  The most common items are pieces of foam rubber, nylon stockings (they make good intestines) filled with various things.  Sometimes they use food products like canned pumpkin.  All of these things get mixed with their graboid blood formula developed specially for Tremors.

No one has ever been seriously hurt during a stunt or during a shot.  A stuntwoman sprained her ankle leaping into the bucket of the bulldozer in Tremors 1.  A crew member was in a car accident, but that was not on the set.  We are extremely careful and make sure that everyone on the crew is constantly informed of the dangers.  One thing we’ve always worried about is someone falling into the deep pits we must dig for the graboids.  One the pits are covered they look just like natural ground.  So we keep them roped off with construction cones and police tape until just before we’re ready for a shot.

Partly by tradition, most directors don’t do sequels to their own movies. Sequels usually have lower budgets (as was the case with Tremors 2 and 3) and if the first film was a hit, the director has many offers to do bigger movies (as Ron Underwood did after Tremors). All three directors of the Tremors films are part of Stampede Entertainment. It’s run by Nancy Roberts and her plan was to have all three of the original Tremors creators directing. That’s why Steve Wilson directed Tremors 2 and co-writer Brent Maddock directed Tremors 3.  The execption is that Steve Wilson came back to direct Tremors 4.

In movie reality graboids are about thirty feet long and about five feet in diameter at their widest point.  Amalgamated Dynamics has constructed only two of them full length (the one Val digs up in Tremors 1, which was only the top half lying on the dirt; and the split-open graboid in Tremors 2).  The other times you see them full length, they are 1/4 scale miniature models made to look large.  However, in the upcoming Tremors 3, we have an all new computer- generated graboid and he looks pretty darn cool in the tests we’ve seen so far!

Shriekers are about 3½ feet high and five feet long.

This is kind of a long answer, but hopefully some of you will find it interesting.

We had the longest time and the biggest budget (about 11 million) on Tremors 1.  On Tremors 2 and Tremors 3, we’ve had much lower budgets and much less time, but we’ve also had the ability to do computer graphics which didn’t even exist when we did T-1!  (Big expensive movies of course take much longer to make than ours do).

There are four main phases to making a movie:

First we have to write the script.  It takes about three or four months to get it right.  We always do many drafts, re-writing the script at least six or seven times, trying out different scenes, ideas, lines of dialogue, etc.

Next comes what’s called PRE-PRODUCTION – around three to five months.  Pre-production is all the work we do to plan the actual filming of the movie.  In pre-production we work with a growing staff of people designing costumes, designing and building monsters, designing and building sets, finding and buying props, cars and all the other things we’ll need.  We cast the actors and hire the crew.

Next comes PRODUCTION, when the cameras start rolling.  It’s the most expensive part of the process, because we have around a hundred people working 12 hour days.  On Tremors 1 we shot for about 50 days.  On Tremors 2 we had to shoot the same amount of action in only 28 days!  On Tremors 3 we had only 24 days!  We had to do it in less time to save money.  It was hard, but we got it done.

Finally comes POST-PRODUCTION.  On Tremors 3 we have about three and a half months.  The director and film editor take all the film we shot and edit it together, picking the best takes of the action, trying different ways of cutting shots together.  Then all the sounds effects are created.   The music is written and recorded.  Finally all the sounds and music are mixed together into one sound track and we’re ready to make prints videos, or DVD.

Okay, this answer may be longer than even die-hard Tremors fans want, but here goes.

In all honesty, there really is no answer. We’ve built Burt’s house four times, and never where it really is supposed to be relative to Perfection. So, instead of an answer, here’s another Burt bunker history.

Tremors 1. The exterior of Burt and Heather’s house was built many miles from the town location, because we did not have enough land at the town site. In reality the front door faced East. In reality, Heather looks off to the North when she trains her binoculars on the town. We used camera tricks to make it seem like you could see the town from Burt’s and vice versa.

When Val and Earl look off toward Burt’s from Chang’s roof, we did the same camera tricks. In reality they are looking East, so those point-of-view shots of Burt’s make it look like the front door faces North (movie reality), unless you assume the sun behind Chang’s is rising, not setting, in which case Burt’s front door would face South. See what a can of worms you’ve opened with this question?

The interior of the basement was built on a sound stage. We have no idea which direction anything faced in the basement, because we never saw the upstairs entrance to it.

Tremors 2. We built only the interior of Burt’s basement, not the exterior, and we didn’t see the stairs, so, again, we have no idea which way the building is oriented in movie reality.

Tremors 3. Again, Burt’s exterior was built many miles from where the town was built. This time, in reality, the front door faced more or less North. The interior was built on stage, but again, we have no idea which direction the entrance stairs face relative to the outside.

Tremors: The Series. This is the only Tremors where the outside of Burt’s is actually connected visually to the inside. In reality, I’m pretty sure the entrance stairs faced generally North or Northwest; i.e., that’d be the direction you face as you go up the stairs.

So, depending on which Tremors you’d use as reference, Burt’s front door could face North, East or South. In the series, it’s pretty definite the entrance and the basement stairs face North. Is that all clear as mud?

BTW, for the series the exterior of Burt’s compound was built on a hill barely a hundred yards from the Mexico location town site. So now we had to use camera tricks to make it appear further away than it really was. Movies are so hard.

Underground, along with the fuel and water storage tanks.

Eight to ten feet.

No, sorry, we just made the name up out of thin air.

Yes they are. S.S. Wilson is a target shooter and weapons history buff. He insists on accuracy. Of course, we never use live ammunition on a movie set. Blanks only!

No, though people refer to Graboids as worms sometimes, they are in fact a totally unique life form unrelated to almost anything else on earth. They do not have the power to regenerate from severed body parts (luckily!). Dawn of the Dead — Graboids?

This is due to the fact that the Graboid’s body is tapered toward the tail. As it echo-locates through the earth, only the hump of its back comes near enough the surface to create a visible mound of dirt.

Well, we’ve never gotten that question before. Certainly budget is always a difficult issue on Tremors movies, but somehow I don’t think we’d feel right charging a fan to be in one. We’ve talked in the past about having some sort of contest in which the winner would get a small part, but we never have time to set it up between the time Universal says “go” and the time they want the movie done.

Well, in the envelope or not, here’s where it stands: Brent Maddock and S.S Wilson are just finishing the script (March 2004). Whether it actually gets made depends, as always, on the success of Tremors 4. It’s hard for movie companies to stop making sequels if people keep buyin’em!

We’ve gotten a lot of very specific questions on the dimensions and color of Graboids, Shriekers, ABs, and now Baby Graboids. Believe it or not, this sort of specific info quickly gets forgotten, even by the people who build the puppets. The creatures are now in storage and someone would have to drag them out to measure them. However, here are some size estimates which should be pretty close:

How big are adult Graboids?
They’re about 30 feet long, six feet in diameter at their widest part (a few feet behind the head). The massive jaws and side mandibles are about three feet long.

How big are baby Graboids?
In T-4 they’re five feet long. But they start out the size of their eggs, about a foot long. The head and beak pieces are each a little over a foot long. Also, the babies have spikes unlike those on adult Graboids. They are longest just behind the beak, six-eight inches, and get shorter toward the tail, down to two or three inches. Then there are two tail spikes about six inches long (kind of like the horns on the rear of a centipede). They grow very rapidly (in about three months) to adult size. Adult Graboids lose the tail and edge spikes, but grow many more small spikes overall, for better locomotion of their  large bodies. They also shed the scale-like plates which protect a Baby G’s back.

How big are Shriekers?
They’re about four feet long and three feet high, with jaws pieces about one and a half feet long.

What are the specs on ABs?
They are just over six feet long, tip to tail, about three feet high, and have head and jaws about two feet long.

How big are the Graboid eggs in T-4? What color are they?
They’re about a foot long; a tad smaller than the ones made for T-3, due to some production issues. The color is pinkish white, but for a better look, check out the egg closeup we’ve added to the photo area.

What are the colors of the Tremors menagerie?
Here we suggest you just peruse the Stampede Photo Gallery for pictures. There are many good shots of the creatures. Many show the wonderful paint jobs by the creature FX artists. There are also people in some shots helps give you an idea of actual creature size. In addition to the main photo area, don’t forget to check Tremors 2 behind the scenes and the Tremors 3 Monster HQ for additional shots.

Well, our opinion is that they do leave trails. But the trails are very subtle. Since Graboids frequent dry sandy soil, it tends to close in behind then after they pass. Most moles live in wetter climates, so the soil stays pushed up after they burrow underneath.

That is going to be revealed in Tremors 5, or here on the webite, sometime in the future if we we’re unable to make Tremors 5.

We never thought that a Graboid’s tentacles take in air. However, it’s possible. One does wonder how a large animal like that could breathe underground.

That’s a really great idea. However, until Tremors 4, we’ve had had very few characters, and no extras. The series would have been a great place to do that kind of casting — but we didn’t think of it!

No, it sometimes seems like they do, but they are controlled by the Graboid, like an octopus controls its tentacles.

No. The tentacles are for grasping, sensing very subtle vibrations and feeling around. However, they do have taste sensors inside the mouth-like jaws. So when a tentacle’s jaws close on something, the Graboid can quickly tell if the something is worth reeling in to eat.

Potentially it is the Shrieker stage. If Shriekers get enough food, they can reproduce so rapidly that even Burt would have a hard time stopping them.

As far as is known, this cannot happen, since the albino form of a Graboid cannot metamorphose into Shriekers. El Blanco, in Perfection Valley, is the only albino Graboid known to exist at present. However, it is unclear how he came into existence! Was it an albino Ass Blaster which laid his egg? We just don’t know at this time.

All the Tremors creatures are custom designed, sculpted, cast and painted by artists with a lot of experience. It’s pretty hard for the average fan to do all that. One way is to study books, articles and websites on special effects. Or go to special effects workshops at fantasy film conventions if you can. Fans have to figure out what materials they can afford and which ones they’re good a working with. For example, you might be able to make a Shrieker head from papier mache – if you’re pretty good at sculpting. I’m not. I need people from places like KNB and Amalgamated Dynamics.

It’s just because we started out writing typical characters of the southwest. But when we began the series we made sure to write a number of black characters into it.

Sorry to report there are no plans for any. The only Tremors Game is our Tremors 4 game DirtDragons.

Budget. I think we wrote a scene where Burt and Heather walked through their house and into their basement, but the scene was cut, and the set never built, because we had to save money everywhere we could.

Well… ask mother nature. That’s just the way these creatures evolved. Shriekers use speed and numbers to hunt, so they don’t need grasping tentacles to hold prey. ABs use flight. Also, their mouths are much smaller and tentacle-tongues couldn’t hold anything very big.

It may look different, but we didn’t change the rules. Honest. El Blanco’s tentacles were cast from the same molds as the original tentacles and are the same length. If you’re referring to the night scene in Tremors 3 when Burt is trapped with Miguel, what makes it look different is that they are on a much lower rock than the ones we had in Tremors 1. Since the rock is lower, El Blanco was able to reach further up.

You guys¸ you know how long ago this was? Well, okay, S.S. Wilson contacted Production Designer Ivo Cristante, who fortunately has an amazing memory for practically every set he’s ever designed and built. Ivo is pretty sure Chang’s store was 60 feet (along the front) by 30 feet deep. The ceiling was 12 feet (because it had to be high enough to do the action where Rhonda climbs on the shelves). There was a two foot tall parapet (“railing”) around the roof (so the top of the parapet is at 14 feet). On the front, the parapet is taller. It goes up in two steps to about 4½ feet (16½ total). You can get a sense of how tall the front parapet is when Val puts the radio on it to talk to Burt.

Yeah, we know. But the answer is always the same: Universal does not seem to be interested in pursuing those ideas.

It’s a habit. Burt feels it “settles” the cartridges in the magazine, lining them up with bases all firmly to the rear, so that he’s less likely to have a feed problem, which would lead to a jam.

Okay, at the end of Tremors 4, the townsfolk went out and made sure all the dead Graboids were buried. They didn’t want anyone to know about them, as Hiram mentions.

At the end of Tremors 1, Rhonda LeBeck oversaw removal of the two least-damaged Graboids (the one that hit the flood channel wall and the one in Burt’s basement). They were taken to the college where she was studying, and preserved as well as possible. One ended up in the Smithsonian, believe it or not. The other was sold to a casino in Laughlin, Nevada (similar to the living AB at the end of Tremors 3) and it is not currently known what happened to it.

In Tremors 2, the government of Mexico had no interest in the historical or natural significance of the dead animals, and they were left to the buzzards. Burt, however, carted a number of pieces back to Jodi Chang in Perfection. She sold them off to the highest bidder.

After Tremors 3, a number of scientific institutions collected and studied the remains of Graboids, Shriekers, and ABs.

Yes. We adjusted their biology to fit the facts duly pointed out by the fans. However, another fan has proposed an explanation. I’d love to take credit for it, but the following is entirely a fan creation:

“So Graboids can produce anywhere from 3-6 Shriekers depending on certain factors physically for the Graboids and environmentally. Shriekers have to eat through the Graboid to get out right? But Shriekers Multiply when they eat. So is there a chance that there is only 3 Shriekers in a Graboid but depending on how much each one eats while escaping determines whether there is 3-6 in the end? So there only may be 3 in the beginning but when they come out there may be up to 6 or maybe they only eat a little each making a small opening to get out thus being only 3 in some cases?”

Very little is known about adult Graboid society. They clearly communicate, at least to signal one another about food sources. And they cooperate (to dig the bulldozer trap in T-1). El Blanco has been recorded making a wide variety of clicking noises, and will rap his beak against rocks to make a hollow drumming sound, but no one knows what this means. Thus far Graboids have not been observed fighting. Since they do not mate, it is unlikely that they have any conflict over mating. But so much of what they do is hidden underground, who is to say at this point?

Great question. Absolutely yes. Graboids are unable to hunt during rain storms. Wish we’d have thought of it! It would have been a cool lucky escape for someone being tracked by a Graboid. BTW, scientists recently learned that rain is one of the loudest sounds underwater in the ocean.

Hmm. Well, they are there. The design of the Graboids did not change. In fact we thought the spikes on the mini-Graboids in T-4 were rather prominent. It may be that in Tremors 1 we made a point of shooting a close up of them. Also, in T-1, Val dug up the whole length of one, so we saw more of its body that we normally do.

A number of design changes were made in the market to accommodate series style filming. Most notably, the front door was moved from the end of the building to the center. Space was also added in back to allow for Jodi’s living quarters. I don’t have any of the series store plans, so I can’t say for sure if these changes also made it more square.

No.  Each time an opportunity came up, we’d talk to Michael about it.  We’d always try to add new dimensions to Burt’s character, so that Michael would have new subtleties to work on.  It also helped that the movies are true continuations, so that Burt’s character always changed based on what happened in earlier films.  Still, truth be told, toward the end Michael was getting a little tired of Burt.  He once joked (we’re paraphrasing a bit from memory), “I’m very flattered that people keeping asking to see more of Burt, but let’s not keep doing this until they stop asking.”  However, the opportunity to play Burt’s grandfather in Tremors 4 was exciting to him, since Hiram was really an entirely new character.  He and SS Wilson had great fun discussing how Michael would bring Hiram to life; and great fun shooting Hiram’s scenes.

Perfection is North West of Las Vegas, toward Carson City, but it’s not very near either one. Present day Perfection is nearest the town of Bixby (not a real place).  In Tremors 4, we mentioned Carson City as the closest large town (but still a long ride), since we felt Bixby wouldn’t have existed yet.

1.  We never knew about that series (we were hard at work on Tremors 1).
2. Very cool idea.
3. See the several other places in the FAQ where we point out that fans are more creative the studio people.
4. Same old same old: probably won’t happen.

I’m not sure it was exactly square in the series, but, yes, the shape of the market was somewhat different.  Also, the front door is in a different place.  So to make a model, you kind of have to pick one or the other and go with that.

When you sell a screenplay (as we sold the original Tremors) you almost always have to sell all the rights with it in order to get a studio to buy it.  Once that has been done, they own all the rights to anything ever done with it ever again, sequels, remakes, spin-off, the whole shootin’ match.

Short answers:  We don’t know.  We don’t know.  No.  No.  They’d ignore it.  And it still wouldn’t help.  However, we are deeply touched that several fans have, in various forms, proposed fan-financed Tremors movies.  The harsh Hollywood reality is that studios almost never sell the rights to any material they own, even if they never do anything with it.

We know what you mean.  Looks weird to us, too, sometimes.  But there’s no cheating on set.  We used the same puppet(s) in all cases.  It’s an illusion due to the fact that when closed, a Graboid’s 4-part beak is actually fairly small.   But because it can open super wide, somehow the whole head looks bigger when upright and swallowing a person.

No, a Graboid can go faster than a human can run, but not much. They max out around 15-20 mph in good loose soil. A Graboid cannot not catch a car, dirtbike, or galloping horse.

A Graboid’s cylindrical shape has great strength to resist pressure (like a submarine does).  Also, moving deep into earth is not quite the same as moving deep into  water.  Various things can mitigate the amount of force the dirt applies.  Under the right soil conditions, a Graboid could theoretically go down several hundred feet.  The real limit to a Graboid’s ability to “dive” is that, like a sea mammal, it has to surface every so often to breathe.  It doesn’t have to actually break the surface because it can slowly pull air through a few inches of sand).  We don’t know how long one can hold its breath.

Any animal learns to sort out the data it can sense from the “noise” of the environment.  For clarity in the movies, we show the heat signature of a human as red against a non-red background.  But what’s really happening is the Shrieker or AB is seeing the difference between the two temperatures.  The creature is actually seeing infrared coming from both sources, but because the human is usually warmer than the desert background, the shape stands out.  It would work on a 105 degree desert day, too, because the human would be cooler (giving off less heat) than the background and would still stand out.  The only time the creature might have trouble would be on a day when it was exactly 96 degrees and humans were neither hotter nor cooler that the surrounding objects.

It does not appear so.  The metamorphoses seen so far don’t seem to be in response to the availability of different prey.  Rather they seem to be normal life-cycle events triggered by unknown circumstances.  However, given that the species is extremely ancient, it is certainly logical to assume each of the various forms serve some valuable purpose toward sustaining the species as a whole.  For example, Rhonda LeBeck has proposed that, since ABs are able to fly, their purpose may be to carry eggs long distances in search of new, fertile hunting grounds for the Graboids which will hatch from their eggs.

Very science-oriented question!  Given Graboids’ size, it is almost certain they can’t get all the liquid they need from prey alone.  Prevailing theory is that they must obtain water below ground by burrowing down to the water table, perhaps excavating a cavity, and sucking up that water that collects in it.

Unfortunately, Tremors 1, 2, 3 and 4 were shot mostly on private land in Southern California. There is no access to the general public for most of the locations.  A small exception is the area of large boulders seen in Tremors 1.  If you drive the paved and dirt roads west of Lone Pine, CA, you will be in the general area where we shot the end of the movie.  If you’re diligent, you’ll discover the narrow spot where the road workers were killed.  Someone at the Lone Pine movie museum may be able to help you find that one.

I’m pretty sure the boulder where Val, Earl and Rhonda spent the night is a real one.  But it’d be pretty difficult to figure out now, all these years later, which one it was.  All I can say is it is probably near one of the dirt roads that go through the area.  Maybe if you drove around with a frame-grab from the movie, and a really good eye for shapes…?

The rocks on which they did their pole vaulting were fake (built by our production designer’s team) and are no longer there).

If you drive the dirt roads east of Lone Pine, you will be in the general area where Val and Earl fell off their horses and where the Graboid crashed into the concrete drainage ditch wall. Nothing remains of the sets, and we have no records of the exact locations, so even we probably couldn’t these exact spots today.

The specific vibration of a Graboid’s movement through the earth is very distinctive and is easily recognized by other Graboids.  Even though blind, they can readily tell friend from foe, or friend from prey.

This is really sort of an Alien vs Predator question.  And we’re filmmakers, not paleontologists.  But how’s this?  If Tyrannosaurus was a fierce predator (as some think), he’d win. If he was a lazy scavenger (as others think), he’d lose.  It’d be an interesting battle, though, since the Graboid could duck under ground when it needed to; and maybe could chomp the T-Rex’s leg and trip him.

No. Graboids are not aquatic. They are adapted to dry, loose soil.

The market in the series is a different shape (yes, I think closer to square), and the entrance is in a different place from the movies’ store.  They insisted we change the lay-out for the series to give directors more options for shooting people coming in and out week after week.

I don’t know the full legal answer to this.  Copyrights can be renewed by the original owners up to some maximum number of years.  I imagine all studios cling to them as long as inhumanly possible.  When you work in Hollywood, you have to assume you will never live long enough to regain control of your movies, since they will lapse into the public domain first.

Yes and no.  We own them in the sense that nobody has paid us for them, but we can’t use them or sell them to anyone else because they are based on characters/material owned by Universal

I like to think they’ve settled into a American small town routine.  El Blanco patrols peacefully.  There’s a steady, but not overwhelming stream of tourists to whom Jodi and Jack cater.  Mindy stops in a few times a year to see her Mom.  Burt still teaches survival skills and worries about the fate of the world.  And even though a movie wasn’t made about it, he did have a hell of an adventure in Australia.

We’ve always tried to treat the Graboids as real animals.  So as such, they are actually quite rare and limited in habitat.  So, contrary to over-running the world, they are more likely to go extinct.  Even a major Shrieker outbreak is not going to be a global disaster, for when Shriekers got into an urban setting, or met up with the National Guard (or Burt), they wouldn’t last long.

No, we saw Burt and Heather as deliberately childless, given their grim view of the world’s future.  I admit we never thought of a child grown up before their survivalist leanings took them to Perfection.  It could lead to the complete reversal of Michael Gross and Michael J. Fox on Family Ties!

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Yes, Universal owns all rights to everything related to Tremors, so it would be them you’d have to talk to about doing a stage version.  Good luck. 🙂

That’s kind of like asking, “Which is your favorite child?” I really do love all the Tremors movies equally for different reasons.  Each time out we did our best to come up with stuff that was hopefully different from the usual sequel.  And each time out we were very invested in making the best movie we could.

Yes, all the Tremors posters are embarrassing.  Here’s what happened.  We convinced Universal’s marketing department that they should not show a Graboid on the poster because the movie had  a really good surprise — the first-time audience really does think the monsters are the tentacles, the “snake things,” so the real Graboids are  shocking when first revealed. Universal was not happy with that, but went along with it.  Much to our horror, then, they came up with what you see, a tentacle made to look gigantic and with goofy shark teeth.  The whole crew, especially the creature effects guys, was disappointed.  But it became history.  And it just kept getting worse with each movie, until you end up with the extra-bizarre critter on the boxed set of Tremors TV series, which even has an eye! And yes, our guess is the original was inspired by Jaws, though nobody ever admitted it.

Were we inspired by Jaws?  Not exactly (even though early story outlines of  Tremors were called “Land Shark”).  We were inspired by 50s monster movies we loved as kids.  Jaws is really a spin on those same movies, so you might say we all had the same inspiration.

Graboids are not fooled by thunder.  It is a natural event and they can easily differentiate it from the sounds that prey make.  However, they are in effect “blinded” by heavy rain.  The steady noise makes it nearly impossible for them to hunt, so they just go idle and wait it out.  As to whether or not they can go deaf, you’ve touched on a point of contention among scientists.  We aren’t really sure how Graboids “hear.”  They do not seem to have ears or ear-drums, so some researchers speculate that they have some other mechanism for sensing vibration in the ground.  My personal guess is that a very loud sound would not permanently impair a Graboid.  In Tremors 1, Burt’s improvised explosives only drove them away, but they kept coming back.

Well, Tremors 1 was in some ways the most fun because we were finally getting to make one of our original ideas just the way we wanted to.  Yeah, we were fighting crazy weather, budget, and the worry that we might screw it up, but we were in creative control!  The later Tremors were fun in a different way, because we were more confident, but also harder because we had so much less money to make them.  Really, because they were all well-planned, none was particularly harder or easier than another.  And they were all fun to work on.

Uh — what?  Okay, Graboids are seriously NOT political.  Like, at all.

All the Tremors scripts were write-to-shoot.  That means, once we worked out the stories, we didn’t do a lot of extra writing or experimentation.  We stuck to the stories and made the scripts as easy to produce as possible, including when we handed off the actual screenplay writing on T-3 and T-4.  Probably the biggest change in any of the scripts is in Tremors 2.  It was written to star Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward, and to include Reba McIntire.  When Kevin Bacon decided not to do the movie and Reba was not available, we had to do a pretty big re-write to invent the character of Grady and figure out the details of Burt’s separation from Heather.

This question gets into areas of legality on which we can’t give advice.  But the harder part would be getting Universal to look at it.  You’d probably have to get a Hollywood agent to make an official submission to them.

Well — NO!  Graboids are an ancient life form.   After all, they existed in the late 1800s, the time of Tremors 4.  So they could not have come from the military lab that wasn’t even built until much later.

Kevin did not feel good about Tremors for many years.  He felt it was a low point in his career.  But you are correct that, recently, he has changed his mind.  We are very glad about that, because we think he is absolutely great in our little movie.

Not at this point.

We’re always trying to sell new ideas for movies and TV shows!

Universal didn’t “buy” the franchise.  It has owned it from the beginning, when the first movie was made.  Universal has always made all decisions on what new versions get made and how the property is marketed.  Starting with Tremors 2, the studio felt the best place to make additional money with it was in direct-to-video.

We tried to hint at the answer in Tremors 2, when Earl says Val “married a good woman.” We don’t feel they had any sort of argument.  Instead, Val went off to start a life with Rhonda.  They could no longer be partners in the way they had been, so Earl took his portion of what money they made and invested in his ostrich ranch.  We’ve always wanted to explore more of what Val and Rhonda did, but have never had the opportunity.

Studios don’t like us to talk in detail about budgets.  But those numbers are pretty close.  Tremors 2, 3, and 4 had almost identical budgets and shooting times.  Don’t know about Tremors 5, as we did not work on it.

There are two parts to this.  In Tremors 1, we don’t think a Graboid ever attacks a vehicle that isn’t making noise.   For example, after saving Mindy, Val jumps on their truck, and that makes noise, so that’s why the Graboid attacks it.  Later, at Burt and Heather’s, the Graboid doesn’t bother their SUV until the creatures bumps it accidentally, causing the car alarm to go off.   In Tremors 2, we tried to make the point that Earl, Grady and Burt have Graboid tracking devices in their vehicles.  They are deliberately making noise to attract the monsters.  So our logic was, any time they saw the signal of a Graobid, they’d stop the truck so it would remain safe, then use their remote control bait-bombs.

We’re not sure why these creatures would do such a thing, since they are all members of the same cooperative species.  But, that said, it doesn’t seem like a Shrieker or and AB would have any chance against a full-sized Graboid.  It would swallow them in one gulp. An AB could probably take out a Shrieker, though.

We get this a lot.  It’s bittersweet, since, yes we know it and, no we do not control the franchise.  We have no say in how Universal studios handles marketing and product licensing.  Fans have had many great ideas for products.  Here’s a couple of the more elaborate ones:

“a table centerpiece, rectangle in shape, featuring the creature shapes in order, one after the other… egg, baby graboid, adult graboid, shrieker, ass blaster & back to egg… in their habitats. For instance, an egg shell in “water” as in T4, a baby graboid on sandy “soil” as it starts to disappear, adult graboid head as it rises up from the dirt, etc.”

“an AB that really blasts fire!”  (Admittedly, there are probably liability issues with that one).

There seems to be a theme in the current batch of fan questions: a desire to see Graboids, Shriekers, ABs and, I guess, even Mini-graboids in some sort of all-out battle.  Frankly, we don’t see why such a battle as being likely, given the rules of the Tremors world.  But perhaps one of you would like to tackle it in fan fiction?  Maybe you could show us how or why it might happen!

Ah, but the eggs in Tremors 4 were laid by AssBlasters, not Graboids. You have to watch ALL the movies to learn the whole complicated life cycle. Most of it happens via metamorphosis – like when a caterpillar turns into a butterfly. Graboids metamorphose into Shriekers. Shriekers make more Shriekers hermaphroditically (there are egg-like sacs inside Shriekers, but they don’t lay them). Later, Shriekers metamorphose into AssBlasters. It is only AssBlasters that lay eggs — one egg each. Those eggs, if kept warm enough, hatch into baby Graboids, and the process starts over. We just didn’t see the AssBlaster in Tremors 4. In fact, we’re not sure how long AssBlaster eggs can lay dormant. It may be a really long time.

We always appreciate these kinds thoughts.  But it would not change the minds of the powers at Universal.  Tremors 5 made enough money that they are already working on Tremors 6.  Without us.

Graboids are individuals with different preferences.  Some are picky eaters.  Some wolf their meals.  Also, if a person’s arm happens to come off while being swallowed, the Graboid might necessarily know it, and would have a hard time finding it after the fact (as it will be making no noise).

The other answer is that in T2 and T3 we had better Graboid moving special effects rigs that could raise them up and down much faster, so it was exciting to for us to get to lift one up with a whole person actually riding with it.

Ummm, we don’t think we’ve ever said that Graboids have acids in their blood or saliva.  They’re not like the Alien, after all.  Fans, are we wrong on this one?

We are embarrassed to admit, no!  It never has.  And it’s a great idea!

“Life form!  Subterranean!  Tracking me acoustically!  Danger!  No disassemble!”

It became something more — all because of the fans.  Tremors 1 was considered a failure until fans made it a huge success in the then-new video market.  It took years for Tremors 2 to develop such a following that the studio wanted Tremors 3.  Even then, they told us Tremors 3 would definitely be the last one.  But the fans kept renting/buying, so the studio decided to go for 4 and the series at almost the same time.  Tremors has a life of its own, thanks to all of you.

Disappointed, frustrated, yes, but not bitter.  You shouldn’t be in screenwriting if you can’t accept that studios own your work outright and are going to do whatever they want with it. Just gotta move on to the next.

If this questions refers to Tremors 1-4 , yes, we noticed.  We hired the composers in each case and directed them to come up with new music!

Okay, this isn’t really a question, but we love hearing from fans from all over the world.  It roughly means: “I really like your site, it keeps doing it better! hi”

Thanks from all at Stampede!

We really do try to answer all questions, but sometimes they don’t give us enough to go on.  In this case, it doesn’t even specify which Tremors movie is being referred to.  In Tremors 1 alone, there is Val and Earl’s trailer, the septic tank pump trailer, Melvin’s trailer, Nestor’s trailer, and the earth-mover trailer pulled by the bulldozer!

Love this question!  We don’t know what movie it’s referring to, but it’s funny, so we’re posting it!

As we’ve said many times in answering these FAQs, we are impressed at the great ideas that come in from Tremors fans.  But, as long-time FAQ readers know, for this idea to happen, someone would have to convince Universal Studios to do it.  We don’t have any control over what they do or don’t do.

When we were doing the original TV series we were certainly considering expanding on the backgrounds of everyone in Perfection.  We hoped to explain that some of Burt’s money came from the silver mine his ancestor owned in Tremors 4.  But as we were prevented from working further on Tremors after that, none of our ideas came to pass.

Okay, I admit it, this is not really a question, but with the arrival of the “new” Tremors movies, we’ve been getting a LOT of comments like this, so I thought I post this one, all the way from the Netherlands!

Many thanks to our world-wide fans.

(Note: We get questions from all over the world, and sometimes the writers use English translation programs that don’t work so well.  In this case, I’ve attempted to re-translate the question from the original much longer version, because I loved that it offered yet ANOTHER fresh point-of-view from a fan.)

Our answer: as indicated in Tremors 2, graboids have actually been around much longer, since pre-history.  However, other animals have NOT adapted significantly to the various graboid stages.  The animals just get eaten, and eaten in large numbers.   That said, Graboids are quite rare.  Yes, they are deadly and voracious, as are the shriekers and ABs that follow, but their whole life cycle plays out in a fairly limited time frame over a fairly limited area, so while the local animal population gets decimated in the short term, graboids do not have the potential of causing any sort of widespread extinction.  Nature always strikes a balance.

Well, as I have to keep explaining, we at Stampede don’t control the rights to Tremors or have any say over what is done with marketing and franchising.   Many years ago we heard they were thinking of putting a Graboid on the Universal Studios Tour, but we don’t think it ever happened.

The graboids did not travel to other continents in our time.  They are an ancient life form and “moved” only as continental drift connected different land masses in the past. South America and Africa were connected millions of years ago, for example, and shared life forms then.  We’re probably stretching the rules of biology a bit, here, but hey, they’re our monsters!  As for why graboids attack certain locations, they are simply predators attracted to noise and vibrations.  If you make noise, they attack. So it’s really a matter of being unlucky enough to be near where they are.

No answer.  But it’s nice to get an occasional thank you!  Wait, I guess that was an answer.  Thanks again!

This keeps coming up — sadly only from fans and not studio people.  But I’ve put it on because it’s a new take.  It’s bittersweet for us to read such a well-thought-out pitch for a game.  As far as we know there are no Tremors games being considered at Universal.

Thanks — we like Burt, too!

Many fans have been asking this sort of question — and we appreciate it.  We work independently trying to get other projects going.  If we ever do, we might put in Easter Egg references or homages, since we love that sort of thing.  Ron Underwood directs many, many TV shows.   Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson keep writing and trying to sell new scripts.  Wilson is about to publish new Fraidy Cats book (called “Fraidy Cats, TOO!”)  But we have shut down Stampede as a company.  This website is now just an archive of info on our past projects — and a place for S. S. Wilson keep answering questions!

When we came up with graboids 30 years ago, you can be sure we never DREAMED we’d be asked questions like this.  But hey, I’m happy you’re all out there still wondering such things.  To be honest, when we did the series we did not have control or input over what the Sci-FI (SyFY) marketing department did.  We were way too busy getting the episodes written and shot.  I don’t think we ever even saw this reference.  However, in reading it now,  it sounds pretty logical!  I will quibble and say that shriekers and ABs look like they have skeletons, so I’m not sure the whole graboid life cycle belongs with mollusks.  But that’s probably already more than most of you want to know. Thanks for a rather science-heavy question!

Our logic is that graboids have a long life span, but also lie dormant for extended periods. So when they appeared in Perfection in 1990, it was the start of a new cycle.  So they began to appear in Mexico, Argentina, and other locations.

We totally agree with you. And, no, they’ve never said why, at least to us.

Thank you. We get asked this a lot in interviews and podcasts and such. We feel great about fans having made Tremors the success it is.  It is true that we didn’t think there’d even be Tremors 2.  But when Tremors 1 was a huge hit in the then-new VHS video rental business, that made T2  and all the rest possible.  We are grateful to all the fans that have stuck with us and supported the franchise, even while we’re sad not to be allowed to work on it any more.  It’s fun to be part of something that has lasted so long.

In our view the tentacles are attached far back  along the muscular walls of the creatures’ very long “throat,” past the circular opening they come out of.  They can fold very compactly, like a chameleon’s tongue, but the unfolding step happens before you see them start to emerge. When folded inside, we imagine they can ripple and flex, helping a graboid swallow very large prey, forcing it back past the tentacles into the stomach.

Uh, we can’t figure this one out.  But we want to answer every question if possible. Can anyone tell us which movie this refers to? Or can the person who submitted it give us more detaiils?

Here’s my (S.S.Wilson’s) theory: they smell like super rotten meat. Once in the army I had to carry out a huge pot of meat that had been forgotten for a long time in the back of the mess hall walk-in refrigerator and rotted. The smell was unforgettably awful. So that’s what I think of.

It’s an interesting question. I suppose one would expect that he wholly supported it. But Burt is also something of an isolationist, so might just as easily have felt it was meddling in world affairs that have nothing to do with the U.S.  So there you have it: a non-answer.

Absolutely!  Can you get them for us?!  And can you convince Universal to let us do it?!   Kidding aside, what a fabulous notion.  It’s great to have fans that dream bigger than we do!

Well… our only defense is that we just like writing strong, smart women.  Also we try to do movies that don’t have the standard cliches.

These are important questions for any survivalist with a mistrust of government.  Our feeling is Burt would like a PO Box, but has to settle for mail delivery (at least to Chang’s market) because Perfection itself is so isolated (he’d have to drive the 38 miles to Bixby just to get mail).  By the time of the TV series he has mellowed a bit and probably has a credit card or two.  But it’s also possible he leans on Jodi to order things through her store; and maybe she goes along with it — for a fee.  Win-win.

Okay, not exactly a question, but we enjoy fans thinking even bigger than we do, especially since we are barred from working on Tremors any more.  Clint Eastwood and Burt Gummer?  Come ON, Universal!

We did work with some developers on a video game.  Seems like it must have been Rock Solid, as I see references online to their plan to reveal a lab where super-graboids were being developed; and I do remember that.  We had several meetings there and saw various early animation and landscape demos.  We tossed in a few ideas, but they already had a solid concept building on things like having to be stealthy to sneak across ground and not “trigger” a graboid.  They were full steam ahead until, suddenly, we got word they’d gone under.  We heard several times that other companies were thinking of buying the assets and continuing the project, but nothing ever happened.

As I often do, I have to just step back and enjoy fan creativity.  We would have loved to attempt a film with all these elements, though  it might be a nightmare keeping all of it believable and logical.  It seems like the human characters would have to be trapped in some remote place, unable to escape, trying to survive while all the graboid forms happen, one after another — but I don’t get to work on Tremors any more, so I’ll stop there.

If I’d gotten that question back when I never dreamed Tremors would still be popular thirty years later, I’d have said no.  He’s too much fun as a character.  Even today, I don’t think we’d do it.  But if we were the ones still trying to come up with new plots and dramatic story ideas,  and if the studio swore up and down it was really, really the last Tremors film,  I guess we MIGHT consider it.  We’d have to have a long conversation with Micheal Gross first, though, to get his input.  So, I guess…. maybe.

The only reason they gave was they felt we didn’t have the experience to do low budget productions. But Tremors 2, 3, 4 and the series were all low budget productions.  We don’t have a theory about the real reasons.

Thanks for the kind comments.  We’ve been told that Tremors is actually used in some screen writing classes.  As to the other scripts, the issue is that a studio buys all rights to them forever, so technically we’re not allowed to release them, publish them, etc.  My hope is that they’ll leak onto the internet at some point (as have some of our other screenplays) , but I guess that hasn’t happened.

We appreciate these comments, though it is bittersweet to read them.  If you look at the answers to similar FAQs on our site, you’ll see that we were fired by Universal.  They do not want us to work on the movies. Not our choice.

When we were creating the sequels and series, we had fans and studio execs ask this question all the time.  But our answer was always the same: we don’t think it works — because an aquatic Graboid is really just a shark!

We hypothesize we’d say no.  We tried very hard to create a consistent, logical set of rules and to establish a carefully balanced tone of comedy vs scares.  Tremors 5, 6, and 7 destroyed those norms, so it would be impossible to construct something we believed in.

Yes, not really a question, but we wanted to post it anyway.  Thanks!

As we keep saying, “Thirty years later and we’re STILL getting new questions!” We never thought about this.  But it’s surely the first thing any American hunter would have asked.  Our theory is, based on the strong smell and extremely powerful musculature, Graboid meat probably doesn’t taste very good and is extremely tough.  Maybe it would be okay made into sausage with lots of added spices.   Shriekers are technically young, so, maybe, a little better.  ABs are clearly very stringy and lean, so likely are not appetizing.  They’ be like eating crow or vulture.

Tremors 2 was shot in the hills just southwest of Magic Mountain.  The refinery set was in a secluded valley in those hills. Also,  I remember that we could see Route 126 from the location of the rock that Earl and Grady crash into.  Sorry, can’t be much more specific.  Long time ago!

I may have answered this elsewhere, but the question comes up a lot from fans bothered by Universal’s handling of Tremors.  In Hollywood, unlike in book publishing or in theater, the studios long ago figured out that they wanted exclusive control over material.  You can ask to withhold or retain some rights, but only the most mega-powerful writers would ever have a chance of getting such a contract. The standard contract,  which we signed when we sold Tremors, states that we are selling all rights for all media that exist (or are invented in the future) for all time. So you just have to hope you aren’t thrown off your own creation, which we eventually were.

She chose not to.  We asked her to come back for Tremors 2 but she declined, so we had to write her out of the script.  Since her character was gone from T2, we left it that way for T3.

You have correctly guessed that Universal is in charge, and to our knowledge has never released those sound tracks.  We imagine you are aware that there are unofficial versions floating around online.

We are glad to hear that it is hard to choose among the ones we worked on.  Tremors 1 does have a special place for all of us because it was first, we had a bigger budget, has our full original cast, and seems to stand the test of time well.  But they are all our “babies” and we don’t want to choose!

Not really.  We thought about each “death” a lot.  And if you think about it, not that many main characters die in the first four Tremors movies and series.  The hardest one was the decision to have Miguel die in Tremors 3.  Amusingly, Tony Genaro, who plays Miguel was totally on board with the idea and loved the emotional quality it would have even though it meant he couldn’t come back!

We experimented with a lot of things during the early days of the Stampede site.  We have to admit we don’t remember what this link was, or if or when it was active.  The idea, of course, would have been to give fans another route to more info about beloved Burt.  But as Stampede scaled back, the link no doubt got left behind, too.  Fortunately, fans themselves have taken up the cause and a search for Burt Gummer gets lots of hits these days!

Well, not funny for the graboid, which would surely lose in that situation, given that  Banner (The Hulk) is a much more powerful, if far more unrealistic, comic book creation.

We seem to be having a run on franchise-blending questions.  While it is true that a graboid might inadvertently swallow a gun, we did not write Men in Black and cannot predict what Agent K might do if faced with that situation.

As we sadly have to keep pointing out, we are interested in anything that takes advantage of Tremors’ notoriety.  But we do not have any say in what Universal studios does with the property.  Over the years they have never followed up on the many ideas like this that have been proposed.

This is a comment/question we’ve been getting a lot since Tremors 5 came out.  We very much appreciate how many fans have been riled up by our being taken off the movies.  But there’s not much anyone can do about it.  It’s standard old school Hollywood legal.  You sell the rights to your screenplay outright forever.  After that the studio can do whatever it wants.

Someday fans will have to explain to us what the fascination is with various creatures battling various other creatures.   There are other permutations of this question all over the faq area.  But we’ll take a stab at this one.  Stumpy, the injured graboid from T-1, would possibly be at a disadvantage in a battle with El Blanco from T-3.  On the other hand, El Blanco from being an atypical graboid, might be fearful of a confrontation with a “normal” one and try to flee.  There.  No answer.

Again, not a question, but an inventive if somewhat outlandish example of how far our supportive fans have gone in trying to figure out ways for us to keep working on Tremors-like-things.

The possibility still seems so unlikely that we’ve not given it much thought. It would be additionally frustrating to have to deal with, or ignore, all problems created and rules broken by the sequels after T4.  Unless and until it really might happen, we will continue to not give it much thought.

Chang’s is around 250-300 miles North of Las Vegas.  As for graboid incursions, the Perfection graboids were hemmed in by rocks and mountains, but theoretically graboids can exist in any sandy desert if ABs can find the right places to lay eggs, so a Primm take-over is not out of the question.  We have implied that graboid eggs need a warm environment, like that provided by hot springs, so they are somewhat limited in where they can hatch.

We did not catch that particular show.  Tremors seems to be referenced a LOT these days, which is gratifying.  Recently saw [Sept. 2021] a claymation ad for Rick and Morty on Adult Swim that had a graboid!

Well… another interesting idea.  It would probably work.  If, say a coyote were very sensitive to graboids moving beneath it and repeatedly avoided being ambushed from below; the graboid might resort to this tactic to lure the coyote closer without tipping off it’s underground location.

We don’t think so.  While we never showed the whole transformation, a shrieker builds a sort of a cocoon around itself, like a caterpillar, and morphs into a AB.  So it’s not a violent process.

Versions of this question has come up remarkably often over the years.  While we appreciate that UK citizens would love their own local graboids, it does seem to us hard to explain how the creatures would have remained hidden in a country so densely populated for so many centuries.  And of course, we don’t control the franchise any longer so it’s a bit moot from that perspective.

This, of course, is a recurring fan question.  We at Stampede appreciate the loyalty, but as far as we know Universal plans to continue making sequels without our input.

Okay, not really a FAQ, but it made us laugh here at Stampede.  Thanks!

Thanks for the thanks!  But to be clear, Stampede did not break up.  We are still all working together trying to get projects off the ground.  Yes, today’s film business is very different from when we started, but we haven’t given up!

All of us at Stampede have done these sorts of events over the years.   But we don’t regularly go to places like Comic Con.  We have no events on our schedules at present. (April 2022)

The Stampede team has a few pieces of memorabilia from the films.  Not actual props.  More just things that were used in advertising, etc.  As far as we know Universal has not kept anything.

Well, an old screenplay adage says characters are best when they are in conflict. But Nancy grew out the hippies and “flower children” we knew in our generation (1960s). We just liked the idea that she’s always a little Pollyanna, is anti-violence, believes in things like pyramid power, etc.  Sorry you don’t like her, but we always felt she’s another sort of person who might end up out in isolated Perfection — a great opposite of Burt!

We always thought of Nancy as a hippie when we created the characater.  Marcia just played that side up a bit more, or in a different way, than Charlotte.

The graboid life cycle is quite unusual. Graboids (the large worm form in Tremors 1) grow from large eggs. They fairly rapidly achieve full size and from that standpoint might be considered the adults of the species. But in fact they are technically more akin to larvae in other creatures.  After a time, and it’s not clear what triggers this event, graboids slow and die and burst open, being eaten from within by several shriekers, much smaller bipedal creatures whose only purpose is to eat as much as possible and multiply as fast as possible (through non-sexual spontaneous hermaphroditic reproduction).  They were featured in Tremors 2.  Any shrieker that survives long enough eventually forms a cocoon from which emerges a winged animal dubbed an Ass Blaster by Jodi Chang of Perfection (Tremors 3). ABs can glide long distances after launching themselves into the air via a blast of reactive chemicals fired from their hind quarters, hence the graphic name. They are “born” with a graboid egg already inside, and as quickly as possible they seek out appropriate places to lay it, primarily areas with  geothermic activity (like hot springs). When graboids hatch from the eggs, the cycle starts anew.

No. We love the fairly family friendly niche we fell into.

We admit we have not watched all the, tributes, clips, first-time-views etc that proliferate on YouTube.  That said, since you mention it, we at Stampede were all quite impressed with Dead Meat’s Kill Count episodes on the first four Tremors.  They cover the movies in extraordinary detail, with much (mostly accurate) trivia and very clever writing/editing.  Fully entertaining in their own right.

We are very proud of the music in Tremors 1-4, and would love for that to happen.  But Universal Studios controls all rights.  As far as we know they have no plans to release sound track versions.

We are aware that this has been accomplished in certain rare circumstances, but it is a long and difficult legal process even to attempt it, so it isn’t something we feel we want to put much effort into.  We’re all busy with other projects.

It may seem like graboids pursue only humans in the movies, but in fact we tried to imply that they do hunt other prey.  Miguel’s cattle.  Old Fred’s sheep. The coyote in Tremors 2.  As to the second point, graboids would avoid cities just due to the sheer noise level.  It would be impossible for them to isolate and attack anything when there’s a steady cacophony of cars, trucks, cycles, pedestrians, etc. coming from all directions.

Technically, there is only one type of graboid, the large worm-like creature.  It starts out as an egg, which must be kept warm in order to hatch.  I grows to its full size of around 30 feet fairly quickly, but is pretty deadly even as a “baby” graboid.   After a time, and for reasons still a bit unclear, graboids then go through a transformation.  They metamorphose into much smaller shriekers (Tremors 2) that literally eat their way out of the parent worm, killing it.  These hermaphroditic critters procreate quite rapidly and can become a dangerous carnivorous herd.  But at some point, shriekers undergo a second metamorphosis, changing into assblasters (Tremors 3), a winged version capable of launching itself and gliding.  Each assblaster carries one egg and seeks out a appropriate spot to lay it, usually in or near naturally warm places like volcanic hot springs.  It is unclear how long the eggs then lay dormant before hatching.

At first we were going to say, no, that didn’t happen.  But when we examined the history we built into Tremors 4, we had to admit: Walter is a descendant of the original store’s owners, and Miguel is probably related to Juan Pedilla, and Burt did in fact inherit money from his grandfather Hiram’s silver mine.  So, while we think Burt definitely lived other places and did other things (before becoming a prepper and returning), it’s possible he did spend time as a kid in Perfection!  You changed our minds!

No.  Audiences have gotten used to that and, we suppose, expect it these days.  But we are of an earlier filmmaker generation and made Tremors just the way we wanted it.  We still like the horror-comedy balance we created.

We are surprised that Universal seems to allow anyone to show any part of the movies for free all the time.  We don’t own the rights, so that’s their call.   But we are huge fans of Kill Count and thought they did an awesome job of both making fun of, and giving tons of off-beat trivia about the movies.

We don’t control the rights to the franchise.  But you may have have seen online (Feb 2023) that Kevin Bacon has publicly stated his interest in doing something new with Tremors.  That’s a change from how he felt about the movie earlier in his career, so we guess one could say anything might happen.

Actually, we feel we’ve shown, or implied, that graboids hunt a wide range of things.  In Tremors Miguel mentions some of his cattle are missing, and they eat Old Fred’s sheep.   In Tremors 2, the graboids eat a howling coyote (off screen) while Earl and Grady listen.    But graboids are pretty rare, and their interactions with humans relatively infrequent, so we feel, no, they haven’t learned, as a species, that humans are potentially dangerous.  Fans often ask about graboids coming to big cities, but they’d be very confused by all the constant noise and would be unable to hunt effectively, so would likely choose to avoid any urban environment.

In our original script for Tremors 5 we had a sequence we liked where Burt has to face the mini graboids (first seen in Tremors 4).  There is a swarm of them, and he guns them down using a 6 barreled super-rapid-fire machine gun, that he fires from the top of a careening Land Rover as he and two other characters try to out run the beasties.

We also had many ideas over the years for how we’d bring back Kevin Bacon as Val if that ever happened.

We wish we could ask Rhonda. We feel graboids is correct. It’s how they are referred to in Tremors 2. But we’d be curious to hear fan opinions!

Well, Blood Beach predates Tremors by nearly 10 years, so I’m afraid we’d have to say it’s the other way around (if there were a Blood Beachverse). We don’t remember seeing it back in the day, but looking at it now, certainly the shots of people getting pulled under the sand are very similar to Tremors.

Graboids prefer to stay in their element: loose dirt. It’s difficult for them to move in the open. So if a graboid did happen to poke its beak into a cave, it would mostly likely back up and go another way. Another consideration: caves tend to form in solid rock, not in alluvial soil, so graboids would rarely encounter them anyway.

We checked the game out after getting this FAQ. Yes, it certainly looks Tremors inspired! But of course there were sand worms and underground critters that predated our movies. There’s even a really old TV show called Outer Limits that had a sand-shark like monster – “Invisible Enemy.”

We tend not to be fans of mash-ups. We liked creating a world where the only super strange thing is the graboids and everything else is played straight. If a whole city were on the run from Godzilla, seems like graboids would be only a minor annoyance.

That’s a tough one. Add lots of sound-proofing to your house?

We hope so, but we are never told anything about Universal’s plans for the franchise. It was Arrow who let us know that Tremors 2 was being done.

The creatures for Tremors 1, 2, and 3 were designed, built and operated by the team at Amalgamated Dynamics.
sudioadi.com

The creatures for Tremors 4 were built and operated by KNB EFX.
knbefx.com

Our bad dreams are about Hollywood rejecting our scripts.

As we’ve said many times in this FAQ, we don’t own or control the rights to Tremors and have no say in what Universal does with the franchise. Over the years we have been approached multiple times by people wanting to produce comics, board games and video games, but always have to tell them to contact Universal and “good luck.” Since S. S. Wilson mostly writes novels now, he might be interested in some sort of expansion of the world in book form.

We wouldn’t agree that the graboids of Tremors 1 have a distinct music cue of their own. Certainly not something like the shark of Jaws. In any case, we strove to give each sequel it’s own definitive music.

Wow, a long but very science-based question! Not having kept up with the literature, we’ll make some educated guesses. ABs are the primary way that the species spreads to other locales, given that the shrieker stage is fairly short. Yes, graboids have the “seeds” of shriekers in them from the start. It isn’t clear what triggers the transformation (age? environmental factors?). We don’t think shriekers carry eggs. They probably pass on some sort of stem cell when they metamorphose into ABs, and those cells then differentiate into eggs. Yes, it does seem all these creatures are clones, so how they maintain genetic diversity is a mystery. However, there are examples in nature of creatures that reproduce asexually yet still maintain that diversity, so graboids must fall into those groups.

The creature puppets for Tremors 1, 2, and 3 were made by the FX company Amalgamated Dynamics. For Tremors 4 they were made by KNB EFX.

Having no control at all over Tremors, we’ve long been dismayed at what we consider lost opportunities for marketing and expanding the franchise. Yes, in that alternate universe we’d be interested in supporting novelizations — but it’s not our call.

Okay, it’s not a question, but it’s such a nice thought we thought we’d share it!

While Burt does tend to lean toward “wipe them out,” he does so because he feels he sees threats more clearly than others. That said, we think he’d guardedly agree with your proposal. In T3 an AB was sent to Las Vegas (where it is hopefully being studied). And he has somewhat reluctantly made his peace with the protection of El Blanco.

Somewhat unexpectedly, no. Comfortable financially (due to inheritance of Hiram Gummer’s silver mine), once he drifted into a prepper mindset, he did all his own research and training in weaponry and survival.

Yes, not a question, but many of you have used the Stampede FAQ over the years to comment about simply enjoying the movies. We’ve seen many about sharing with grandparents, sharing with kids, even weathering hard times or loss of loved ones. So we’d like to take a break from questions to say thanks for all those kind remarks and stories!

Surprisingly (to us) this question comes up a lot. Sorry that we really can’t track down what watches the prop departments got for our actors all those years ago except for the Storm Navigator Michael Gross wears in T3. Unless a prop is important to the story, often times the decision is left up the the prop people and/or actors feelings about what their characters would wear.

Here again, as with the Storm Navigator, we always appreciate input from fans who happen to recognize a given watch!

We made it a point that Hiram swears the townsfolk to secrecy, in order to explain why no one in the Perfection of 1990s knows about graboids. That said, no, it has never occurred to us to figure out a way for Burt to learn the history. Could have made a great series episode!

The answer is simply that we always try to be realistic, even with fantasy creatures. They are just animals, not magical or supernatural. So you can have your characters sometimes get away with things. Even in T1 Val impulsively punches a tentacle and it works. (And was a great ad-lib by Kevin Bacon, btw). Somebody could probably punch or kick a shrieker, but the circumstance would have to be right.

Speaking only for SS Wilson, I’d love to see Reba McEntire and Finn Carter back. What have Heather and Rhonda been doing all this time?

Our feeling is Melvin only later realized how right Walter was about the marketing. Might have been fun to have him claiming he invented the term in T3 or the series. But his aims were real estate oriented, not graboid oriented, so maybe he wouldn’t care.

That’d be the simple version, but not exactly. Ron Underwood, SS Wilson, Brent Maddock and Nancy Roberts had an awful time agreeing on a name when formed the company. We discussed and discarded ideas endlessly until one of our staff, frustrated by all the wrangling, said something like, “You know what? You all like western ideas. There’s a stampede in City Slickers (which Ron had directed) and Val yells Stampede in Tremors. Why not that?” And we finally agreed.

Yes.

Yes, that idea was incorporated in the original script. They were larger and had more coloration, if I remember right. And yes, we think it’s fun to imagine how graboids might change in different environments.

We actually try to think about these things. Here’s the explanation. When moving normally a graboid uses echo-location to identify things around it, like a cliff. In the case of the graboid in Tremors 1, however, it is “stampeding” wildly because it is in pain from the bomb Val throws. As Rhonda says, “They’re so sensitive to sound they gotta run!” In its desperation, it then can’t stop itself in time.

We get quite a few questions asking us to compare Tremors creatures to those in other movies. To be honest, we don’t keep up with every movie monster as assiduously as some of our fans apparently do. So we generally can’t answer or have no significant opinion to offer.

We asked him to star in Tremors 2. But Tremors 1 had not done well when it first came out and he didn’t want to be in a sequel. Many years later, he has come to enjoy that Tremors ultimately became a cult favorite.

Of course! But you’d probably have to be really good at it. Graboids are a lot smaller and probably hear better than the enormous Dune worms.

It’s not ridiculous. But the answer is a mystery that only Universal studios can answer. They simply never pursued these things. A video game was in development around the time we did Tremors 2, but the company making it went under and no other company picked up the game to finish it.

Well, the site posts them newest first, since I guess website designers think that’s how most people would expect it. I’m not tech savvy enough to know if there’s a way to see them another way.

Well, I guess we can’t ignore a question about an article SS Wilson wrote in a nearly 50 year old movie magazine. We did not work on or have any credit on Land of the Lost. Only wrote that article about the show. So would have had no right or calling card to pitching it to anyone.

Here’s a memory of Fred that I don’t think I’ve shared elsewhere. He was a very adventurous world traveler and he seemed to rate exotic places partly by how dangerous they were. He had a funny expression he often used. He’d say, “Marseilles’s pretty good. You can get in real trouble in Marseilles.” Then he’d just smile, leaving you to wonder what sort of trouble he meant. No, I didn’t ask, afraid I’d sound as naive as I actually am.

The festival is very impromptu, has no budget, and basically is put on by volunteers. That said, we very much agree that video of the panels would be a great thing for those who can’t make it. I’m told the organizers are looking into ways to try to make it happen. So fingers crossed.

It is just three: graboid, then shrieker, then AB. The ABs lay eggs (seeking out earth warmed by hot springs) and graboids hatch from the eggs — sometimes a very long time later.

That’s a fun thing to think about. We’d like to say it’s a pretty long time, maybe similar to how long some snakes can go without eating — which can be months. A related question we answered is: do graboids need water? If so, how to they get it? We’re not sure about that!

That’s a lovely thought, but while our fans are very loyal, Tremors doesn’t have the gigantic followings of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings. We doubt it would be feasible to build Perfection and expect it to be as successful as Hobbiton in New Zealand.

As we announced at Tremors Fest Santa Fe in October 2024, we are not interested in remaking Tremors. We are in discussions about what to do with the rights to the original script, but are hope to pursue some sort of sequel, not a remake. That aside we’d always love to do effects practically as much as possible, but there will be pressure to augment with computer graphics, so that’ll be an ongoing discussion if anything happens.

It is not likely. We have only the rights to the original Tremors script, not any of the sequels that were written later.

We think it’s probable that the human activities you suggest could possibly cause a hatch by disturbing the eggs. We admit it’s a little limiting to say it’s ONLY hot springs that cause hatches.

When you sell a screenplay, there is no other option than to sell all rights for all time. Such studio contracts have been set in stone since the beginning of movies. There are super rare exceptions where a writer (like say J.K. Rowling) has huge power and can keep control of some rights — but we were nowhere near that category when we sold Tremors. It was only a little-known part of US copyright law that allowed us to get back our rights (after 30 years) to the original script.

Well, graboids benefit from the fact that the temperature below ground does not vary as much or as fast as surface temperature. In very cold weather a graboid could just “dive” say 20ft down and stay comfortable.

I depends on how “loud” the sound/vibrations are. They heard the intense noise from Burt and Heather’s cartridge case cleaner at what looks like a mile or so in the movie. But we feel they would not hear normal walking at further than a hundred yards or so. So tip toeing would work, especially if you paused between steps even if you were pretty close to one.

No. It’s been an ongoing fun evolution. Originally he was just one member of our quirky community. A lot of credit, of course, has to go to Michael Gross for bringing the lines on the page to life.

Well, that’s certainly a new question. Presumably there is the potential for the strange life form to be a source of unusual proteins or compounds that might have medical value. Perhaps Rhonda is looking into it. And we accept there could be something like a shreiker-skin jacket. But on a practical side, the creatures are so rare that any products would almost have to be one-offs for the super rich — and there would certainly be push-back from environmentalists against any such exploitation!

As of this writing (July 2003), discussions are being had Universal on developing Tremors toys, novelizations, games, comics, trading cards, etc. Whether they will actually go through with these ideas remains to be seen.

Are you sure you want MREs? Actually, they’re not too bad. S.S. Wilson shared one with son, Matt, after Tremors 2. MRE stands for “Meal, Ready to Eat.” Developed for the U.S. military, it’s a complete meal in a foil package. Sometimes you can find them in military surplus stores, survival stores, or as part of earthquake/disaster and lifeboat kits. There are also various “civilian” versions of MREs and high density survival food.

A lot of you have asked about being actors in Tremors.  We have to be discouraging about that. It looks easy, but it actually takes a lot of experience to be a good film actor (I know you’ve heard stories of people who had no experience and got a part in some big movie, but that’s RARE, okay?).  Like most filmmakers we only hire actors through Hollywood casting directors.  When we’re going into production, the casting director sets up auditions with actors found via agents or TV shows, movies, or plays.  We make our decisions based on the people he/she brings in.  Many many actors tried out for the new roles of Jack and Jodi in Tremors 3.  All of them had a lot of experience and skill.  If you think you want to be an actor, start trying out for school plays or local theater plays, find an acting class or school or coach.  Work on getting an agent, etc. etc.  It’s a very tough profession to break into.

This is a tough question, and a tough business. If you’re going to try it, it’s smart to think about what else you might enjoy or be good at if you “don’t” make it. We know people who have quit the business because the hours were too long, the politics too nasty, the work too irregular and uncertain. They’re now happy doing completely different things in places less stressful than L.A.

But for those who are determined to try, we can offer some advice. Over the years we’ve heard all kinds of crazy stories about how people broke in — sneaking on to sets, pretending to be producers, making movies by borrowing on credit cards, auditioning in restaurants. Almost everything has worked at least once, but most of the time most of the wackier things just annoy people.

We’ll try to list a few of the more normal ways in (S.S. Wilson tried everything we mention below). If you want to write, or think you can write, you should try it. It doesn’t cost much, you can do it in your spare time, and you can do it anywhere. (S.S. Wilson dictated one script into a tape-recorder while commuting long hours to an animation job everyday). If you can sell a script, it can be the fastest way in. So, get books on screenplay writing. Learn the correct script format. Look for published screenplays of movies you like (there are also places that sell scripts). Read them. Learn from them. Nancy Roberts (in her days as an agent) is quoted on screenwriting in Syd Fields’ book, “Selling the Screenplay”. Get that book and read it! What she said then still applies. But to be honest, getting anybody to “read” your script will be difficult. Contact the Writers Guild of America (in New York or Los Angeles) to see if they have a current list of movie agents who will read unsolicited scripts (that is, scripts from people they don’t already know). Most agents do not, but some do. Even if they accept your script, they may take a long time to read it, or they may not read it at all (that happens quite a bit), but you have to try everything.

Here at Stampede Entertainment, we DO NOT have a big enough staff to read unsolicited scripts. You’ll find that is the case with most agents and production companies.

If you do write a script be sure to copyright it and register it with the Writer’s Guild before you send it to anyone. Again, contact the Guild for information on how to do this. Basically you send the Guild a copy of the script, which they keep on file for a set amount of time. The Guild charges a fee for this service. But it can help protect you in the unlikely event that an unscrupulous producer takes your idea and tries to make a movie without paying you or giving you credit.

If you don’t feel you’re a writer, maybe you’d enjoy one of many other jobs that contribute to filmmaking (acting, cinematography, set design, wardrobe, etc.) Look for every opportunity to practice and/or demonstrate your craft. You have a big advantage over the days of 8mm movies, since today you can work in video much more cheaply — and have sound! Practice lighting. Work with sound. Work with editing (not as easy in video as film, unless you get some video editing equipment). Script and story board a short movie, then try to make it. Estimate what it’s going to cost and see how far you go over budget.

Enter student and amateur film and video contests. If you win, it’s more reason for people to take time to look at your work.

Try animation (either on film or on a computer).

Try to get work in film or television production. Can you get a job at your local TV station? Will they let you “intern” for free?

Finally, very important, try to make contacts. You may have heard the expression, “It’s who you know.” Well, it’s true. If you know or are related to anyone in the film or TV business, call them. Can they help you get your work seen or read by anyone? Can they get you a job on a movie, working as a production assistant, or “go-fer?” When Brent Maddock and Steve Wilson finally sold *Short Circuit, it happened because they’d been continuing to make contacts and friends. One friend Brent met in a screen-writing workshop. He was the friend of the son of the producer who eventually bought it, and he happened to know that the producer was looking for any script with a robot in it. Four months later they had a major movie in production. The trade papers said they were overnight successes — actually they’d been trying for years, but it made a good story.

But what if you don’t know anybody? Agents don’t want to read your scripts. Producers don’t want see your short films.

Go to film/video schools. There are lots of good ones. They can’t guarantee a job in the movie business, but they’re still good places to learn the basics. These days, some agents check out the students graduating from the better known schools, so sometimes you can get spotted in that way.

But more importantly, at a film school you get to know a lot of other people who are also trying to break in. Some of them will make it and they become the “who you know.” S.S. Wilson’s first paying animation job was for a friend he met at USC. The friend had started making commercials and shorts and remembered Wilson’s student stop-motion animation movies. After selling Short Circuit, Brent Maddock, Wilson, and then-agent Nancy Roberts helped him get his first feature film. He was Ron Underwood, director of Tremors.

No.

Sorry but Stampede cannot accept unsolicited scripts, music, story ideas or artwork except that submitted through talent agencies or bona fide entertainment lawyers.

Stampede cannot accept or be responsible for resumes submitted to the Stampede offices. When a Stampede film is actually in pre-production, you can try calling the production offices and submit resumes through normal channels. But you should be forewarned that line producers and unit production managers rarely hire staff without a recommendation from previous film industry employers.

I’m sure we haven’t seen everything, but over the years he’s commented here and there in interviews.  Unfortunately, one time he said he felt Tremors was a low point in his career.  On the positive side, we heard second hand that when he was at ADI (Tremors FX company) for some work on another film, he saw the Shriekers in their display area and said something like “My kids love those things.”  In any case, he was fantastic to work with and we were very lucky to have him in T1.

Don’t know where they are now.  They were rented, then returned.  If I remember right, one of the Gladiators in the series is the same as the one from Tremors 3.  The story I got is was that it was still sitting in the movie car rental lot where it had been returned.

First of all, thanks so much for the comment!  SS Wilson played Dirt Dragons for hours when it first premiered on the Stampede site.  Sadly, our webmaster informs us that the version of flash that the game was written in is quite old in computer terms.  The game would have to be re-written from the ground up to be compatible new operating systems.  So, no, Dirt Dragons is not getting a facelift or any DLC.  The added issue is that Universal owns all rights to Tremors and they have decided not to work with us on the franchise in the future.

Sadly, Dirt Dragons, the remarkably ahead-of-its-time shooter game developed by Stampede’s webmaster, has been showing its age and yes, will be retired, if it hasn’t been already.  (Feb 2019 – there are major changes ongoing to the website).

Back in the day, in the studio system, an “A” movie had a big production budget, and a “B” movie was low budget. I don’t know that people use the designations much any more, with so many projects being made at so many budget levels by so many different companies.

Unfortunately, not us.  We do not own or control the rights to Tremors. You’d have to try to get to someone at Universal Studios and see if they’ll license the rights to you to make a game.

We would be willing, but we do not own the rights to the Tremors franchise. Such decisions are made exclusively by Universal studios with no input from us whatsoever. We did not even know they were remastering Tremors until Arrow contacted us for additional material.

We have not explored the option of reacquiring the rights.  Having the franchise taken away from us left us less inclined to think about what we might have done had we been allowed to keep creative control.

Some of our early history is posted in various places on the Stampede site.  Short version is we nearly all started making movies as kids, using 8mm film cameras.  Ron Underwood, Brent Maddock, and S. S. Wilson went to film school (USC) and met there.  But it took years of low budget animation and short film work and screenwriting-on-spec before we finally “broke in” to Hollywood (with the script for Short Circuit).

Three?  Well, that’s a lot easier than having to pick one.  For S. S. Wilson it would be the Jeep Gladiator, Burt’s truck in the TV series — and the awesome steam tractor in Tremors 4!

Hey, a question is a question. The info on prehistoric graboids is very sketchy; so, I guess the answer is:  COULD BE!

And thanks for the kind comment!

In Tremors 4 we established that his great grandfather did well with a  silver mine in the area.  We were implying Burt inherited at least some of his money.

This isn’t a Tremors question, but we try to accommodate. Night Crew was a script Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson wrote. We jokingly called in “Tremors in a building” since it was about the night cleaning crew of a high-rise building finding themselves sealed inside with a creature pursuing them upwward, floor after floor. It got shopped around Hollywood for a few years, but never sold.

It’s a can of soda he’s drinking as he walks out of Chang’s (and no, I do NOT know what kind!) When he sees the creepy tentacle under Val and Earl’s truck, he discards the soda without thinking about it.

No, they’re various disgusting things they came up with for innards at Amalgamated Dynamics. We didn’t intend them to be eggs. Graboids don’t lay eggs, they metamorphose.

We didn’t.  We had a hole in the ground that was deep enough for the station wagon to sink into.  In the hole was a specially made machine, sort of like an elevator, that was supposed to lower the car slowly.  But the machine jammed – it got clogged and blocked by the special lightweight potting soil we were using for “dirt.”  The car only sank a couple of feet.  It was our last night of shooting and we could not work past dawn, so director Ron Underwood had to quickly figure out a series of close-ups and insert shots to make it look like the car actually sank.  That very last shot (done later in miniature) was a wide shot where you just see the headlight beams blink off and that’s what makes if feel like the car finally went under.  Later, when Val and Earl dig the car up, we put just the car’s front grille (taken off) under the sand, with a battery to run the head lights.

Here’s one that has partially stumped us. Production designer Ivo Cristante (Tremors 1 and Tremors 2 tells SS Wilson it is probably corn. He remembers thinking about what Old Fred could successfully grow in that dry environment. Do we have any botanist fans who can tell from the Old Fred garden hoe close ups in Tremors 1?

This is actually a question to which we gave considerable thought: “Why is there a lone teenage kid in Perfection?” Here’s Melvin’s Tremors 1 back story: he’s the son of rather irresponsible parents who regularly leave him home alone to go gambling in Vegas. The townsfolk long ago got used to the situation, as people in small towns do. There was a line explaining this in the original Tremors 1 script. It was said by Val or Earl and was something like, “I wish his parents would just take him with them to Vegas.” As a result, Melvin turned out sort of selfish and money-hungry in Tremors 3, but we understand him since he had to fend for himself from a young age.

Just coincidence. There is a lot of seismic activity in the southwest and many public and private entities monitor it all the time. If we had secretive people who knew in advance Graboids were going to hatch, we’d turn into the X Files.

Well, this is equivalent to the great number-of-Shriekers-in-a-Graboid slip up and Old Fred’s disappearing car. In the years between making T-1 and T-3, we overlooked this basic geographic reality. Burt’s line is simply wrong. He was let down by the writers. He should have said, “They’re working their way up from the south.”

But the same fans have provided an excellent explanation for the Graboid movements, if not the T-3 line. The 1989 batch could have hatched south of Perfection (unlike the T-4 batch). They found themselves blocked by the granite ridge which separates the south end of Perfection Valley from Bixby. So, they worked their way north, taking out the victims in the order Val indicates, heading back toward Perfection. I have no idea what this does to the orientation-of-the-valley discussion and I’m too tired to think about it.

Boy, you guys are tough.

In a related T-1 question, some of you feel Rhonda seems to be unexpectedly working in two widely different areas of the Valley (where she first meets Val and Earl, and later at the concrete ditch). On that point I think we’re safe. She clearly says she has placed seismographs all over the valley, so it’s logical that she might be servicing any one of them an any given time.

You’re envisioning the trail as starting right at the base of the mountain. We envisioned the jeep trail as starting way before that, out in the desert. Our intention in the dialogue where the townsfolk discuss it was to imply that the trail was so rough that the little two-wheel-drive vehicle would not make it to the rocks. Earl says “You need major four wheel drive just to get up that jeep trail,” which makes it sound like he might means to get up up the mountain itself — but he didn’t! Honest!

If you are referring to Hiram’s punt gun, which is sort of like a small cannon, no. The punt gun was never found after the Graboid pulled it underground in Tremors 4. If you are referring to the Gatling Gun Christine gives Hiram at the end of Tremors 4, also no. It’s technically not a cannon and it went to a museum in San Francisco after Hiram’s death. The cannon Burt refers to in Tremors 1 is a firing replica of a Civil War mortar (type of cannon). We wrote it into early drafts of Tremors 3, but the scene didn’t make it into the movie. It’s one of the few things which wouldn’t have been totally destroyed in the explosion of Burt’s house, but we’ve still never been able to show it. Maybe someday.

It is actually a shotgun called a Darne, with an unusual sliding breech action. It was huge, an 8 gauge (the smaller the number, the bigger the gun). We had dummy cartridges custom made from solid brass rod stock, with the bullet held on via a screw.

Update:  Mar 2021. I thought I had corrected this answer years ago, but apparently not.  The gun is an 8 gauge shotgun made by William and Moore, not Darne.  The info about our dummy cartridges is correct.

The Internet Movie Firearms Data Base has much more info on the  guns in Tremors.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Tremors_(1990)

Wow, you’re asking us to go way back in time on that one. Boring reality version: the wardrobe department picked out a variety of things which seem to fit the character (in this case Fred’s character, Earl Basset). Then the director picked what he liked best. Also, the legal department has to approve use of the name. So it may be that it just happened to be a company for which we could get permission.

More romantic version: Earl worked odd jobs all over the country before landing in Perfection and teaming up with younger Val. No doubt he did a stint at Alumax, bailing with his hat when he got fed up with the 9:00 to 5:00 grind.

Sorry, we don’t have any record of that and can’t tell for sure from the existing footage which models they are.  Maybe some of our sharp-eyed detail-oriented Burt fans can help here?

Update:  Mar 2021. The Internet Movie Firearms Data Base has more answers than you probably want about guns in Tremors.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Tremors_(1990)

We appreciate it when fans ask and answer a question at the same time.  But I will also add that the Graboid in question was “spitting” out the bomb, so it had no need to roar or scream.

Yes.  The movie ratings system is always changing.  Some lines we thought would be acceptable when we started shooting were not acceptable by the time we finished.  Since then, somewhat to our surprise, we’ve realized that the Tremors films are loved by kids and families.  So we have limited most bad language in the later films, except for the name of the ABs, which some people have objected to.

Truth: we hoped no one would notice or ask.  But our fully plausible after-the-fact explanation is that always-prepared Burt maintained backup tires and rims of several sizes and makes, in case he had to commandeer a vehicle other than his own in an emergency.

FAN SUPPORT UPDATE:  (A fan wrote in to say why the rims would fit!)  Just so you guys are aware, a lot of the old trucks that had 6 lug nuts for the rims used the same mounting pattern.  All full size Chevy trucks, full size Chevy Jeeps, and even the old small Toyota and Nissan trucks could all use the same rims.

Ironically, though one would think so, Burt is not ex-Army.  His deep-seated resistance to authority and his desire to live life exactly as he wishes made him a bad fit for that highly regimented institution.

We had not thought about that.  But Bertram kind of makes sense, since he’s a descendant of Hiram Gummer.  Might reflect a family bias for similar-sounding names.

That is what we call in professional film making circles: a mistake.

We thought of them as being in their mid-to-late 30s.

As you go down the face of those cliffs, you encounter older geologic layers.  Before you reach the bottom, you come to hard sandstone, which the Graboids can’t penetrate.

Here it is from the original script:  they are repairing a section of road already damaged by a rock slide.  Carmine is breaking up asphalt (for eventual replacement).

Nestor Cunningham.  Jim and Megan Wallace.  Old Fred does not have a last name in the script, so apparently that’s up for grabs.

No.

It was returned to the private gun collection from which it was rented.

No, S.S. Wilson came up with the name out of the blue early in the writing process.  There was no connection to anything.  The name just sounded funny and it stuck.  It’s one of the few character names S.S. Wilson has contributed to the many scripts he and Brent Maddock have worked on.  Most names are invented by Maddock and some point.

Sorry, we don’t know and we can’t.  Our weapons prop master did a superb job of putting all those different guns together, but I’m not sure even he could remember how many and what they were all these years later.  So, maybe one of you really dedicated fans, working diligently from frame grabs of the basement sequence, referencing your well-worn copy of the 1990 Shooter’s Bible –??

Update 2021 – a fan encouraged us to point out that someone HAS tried to name all the guns:  The Internet Movie Firearms Database.  It’s an exhaustive list.  BTW, if you wade through the whole Tremors page, you’ll see they say we shot the Burt and Heather’s gun basement in multiple locations. That is not true. It was all shot on the one set.  We did shoot over several days, and the wall had to be “rebuilt” each day, plus partially after each take, so their reasoning for why some guns change position during the scene is half right.

http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Tremors_(1990)

The machine is a shell case polisher.  The device agitates empty brass cases in a  mildly abrasive medium, gently polishing off the burns and powder residue from the previous firing.  Perfectionists like Burt and Heather want their cases sparkling clean before they reload them!

The Graboids were pretty big news.  A new life form!  Photos of them flew round the world.  Plus Rhonda and Val were on a few national talk shows.  Even so, Perfection is very remote, so there wasn’t a flood of tourists right away.  Jodi arrived quickly to oversee her uncle’s store.  Once she got there, she saw opportunity and decided to stay.

It’s not likely Universal will do a better Blu-ray release. Sadly, they don’t view Tremors as a major property and have made many disappointing marketing decisions over the years.  For example, Tremors 4 was released in the United Kingdom with none of the cool extras.  Though we made the movies, they own them and we have no control over what they do with them.

Well, the answer is getting lost in the mists of time, but I don’t have Michael Gross’s thoughts about it.  He says, ” I recall saying I wanted to wear a baseball cap of some sort. Someone (wardrobe?  Ron?) asked it might be a sports team, and I said I thought that would be okay, but specified it should be a team from some southern state.  Next thing you know, these hats from Atlanta show up on the set, and off we went.”

Actually, our version is that the jeep trail, criss-crossing sandy washes and ravines, becomes heavily rutted and impassable well before it reaches solid rock at the base of the mountains, so they’d be goners if they tried it.

Okay, I’ll probably get this wrong since I haven’t re-watched the movie to double-check.  If you read other faq answers you’ll see we got the number of Shriekers-in-a-Graboid wrong in Tremors 3.  But I’ll give it a shot.  I say 10.  Edgar Deems, Old Fred, two road workers, the doctor and his wife, Nestor, Walter Chang; and two telephone repair workers.  Dedicated FAQ Followers feel free to correct me.

I gotta be honest, neither me, Ron Underwood nor Brent Maddock remembered where the song came from.  And I could never have answered this question without help from two Facebook friends who led me to Keith Blackwell, a member of the band Fahrenheit.  They recorded the song as a demo and, since they knew some of our production people, offered it as background music.  Better yet, Mr. Blackwell has put it up online and you can hear it in its entirety, all these years later, at http://soundcloud.com/keith-blackwell/you-are-the-one

OMG, this may be the first Val belt buckle question ever!  It was part of many costumes provided by the Tremors wardrobe department.  The good news is, all these years later, director Ron Underwood remembers choosing it!  Ron writes, “I remember the meeting with Abigail Murray (costume designer) in our production office in the [San Fernando] Valley where she brought in her “find” of the belt buckle.  I think it was in a heart shape around the name “VAL.”  I remember thinking it was great as soon as I saw it.  She found it in a second hand store as I recall.”

So, the bad news is, it was a rare item even back then.  We don’t know who made it or when or how many might have been made.

Finn has continued to do all sorts of things (including have kids).  She has done guest spots on many TV shows over the years since Tremors.  We did not write her character, Rhonda, into Tremors 5 since, in the Tremors universe, she’s gone off to live with Val.  But Finn was a total delight to work with and fearless in going for the quirky Rhonda we had in mind.

Well, we tried to shoot and edit that scene so that you never really see the back of the truck or very far underneath. Hopefully it’s not too much of a cheat

Finn Carter would laugh if she read this question. She had a heck of a time that day. We shot and re-shot the three of them running many times. It was insanely hot and she was super exhausted. That said, remember that she is calling after Val and Earl, “I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” So, clearly, they slowed down and let her catch up.  The way the footage is edited, that might not be clear, but that is totally what happened. In my mind.

Update: here’s an answer from a helpful fan who emailed Stampede.  Thanks!

“Because Rhona runs faster than both of them. At the beginning of the movie, she easily catches up to Val and Earl with her backpack on when they run on the rocks from the worms.”

Answer 1: Earl slept very late.
Answer 2: You shoot low budget movies as fast as you can, from sun-up to sundown.  You usually don’t have a choice where the sun is.  So you just hope people won’t notice and send you questions 25 years later.

Since S. S. Wilson comes from a background in stop motion animation, yes!  We considered anything that would help us get the movie made.  But the fact that the creatures were always seen in dirt and kicking up dust made stop-motion an unsatisfactory choice, since those are hard elements to work with (or add in later) when doing stop motion.

I have to be honest.  No, I did not realize that.  I will look for him the next time I watch the film.

Update:  I checked.  It’s pretty subtle!  Like half a second!  And only half the guy’s head!

Well, the simple answer is, he didn’t have one.  Remember, we first see the gun when Val and Earl’s truck gets stuck at the road work site.  When Earl grabs the Colt from the glove box, it’s just wrapped in paper.

Well, not really.   We didn’t feel Val and Earl should be experts, and a tentacle would be pretty hard to hit with a handgun.

You know, we’ve never though about that.  But we feel that they did.  Their kids were grown and they were building their retirement place near Perfection.

We never wanted it to be rated R!  We like to make fun family movies.  We were upset the first time we submitted it , because it DID get an R — for language.  We had let Kevin and Fred use too many unacceptable words, so we had to go back and make changes to get rid of enough to get our PG-13.

Yeah, Nestor is not Melvin’s dad.  Melvin’s parents just left him alone a lot when they went to gamble in Las Vegas.  But we think Melvin’s reaction is still understandable.  He’s just a teenager, and he’s never seen anybody killed, let alone in such a scary way.  It makes him see how much danger they are in.

We’re not quite sure what this means.  Do the tentacles have guns, or are Val and Earl shooting at them like wild west guys?  If it’s the second version, we think it’d only work for a short time.  The Graboid would pull its wounded tentacles underground and attack from below unless they got to safe ground.  We sort of did that with Black Hand Kelly in Tremors 4.  But the tentacles didn’t have guns.

It is a special effect — a beautiful old-school, perfectly done matte painting.  We couldn’t find a cliff that looked right anywhere in the area where we were shooting.  It had to look like dirt, not rock.  So we finally had to bring in a world-class matte painting team, Illusion Arts.

It was an accident.  Kevin just didn’t hit the nail for a few times.  Director Ron Underwood thought it was a great moment that seemed very real, so he left it in the final film.

That’s funny!  Yeah, nearly all the effects in the original Tremors were done “live” right on the location, so we did end up with things like bouncing dirt.  Under Kevin was a big sheet of plywood covering the large hole in which the Graboid was placed during other parts of the scene. I guess today any young person with an iPhone and a movie app could digitally erase our dirt bounce.  But we’ll leave it as is for posterity.

Believe it or not, the original score was not loved.  In post production, much of it was thrown out and some “action” music hastily written by a new composer.  That said, we love the “Val and Earl” theme, if that’s what you’re referring to; but using it in later productions would have been a tough sell to the studio.

Actually, there is a very clear closeup of him stepping into the loop of hose right before the jack-hammer takes off.

Great question!  That would be totally like Walter, but no, he really didn’t have a gun.  He only sold ammo at his store — mostly to Burt.

This is partly true. Early sketches by the guys at Amalgamated Dynamics did have the retractable head skin, and it did get a laugh in an early meeting, especially from Exec Producer Gale Ann Hurd, as being too phalic.   So the retracting skin was dropped.  However, it is not true that we replaced it with the tentacles.  They were always part of the design and were described in the original script.

Well — because the panties were our idea, that is, the director and writer/producers.  We are not fans of monster/horror movies where women are scantily clad for no reason, but we also really liked the scene in which she has to get out of her pants to escape the barbed wire, so we discussed it with Finn and all agreed on the modest version she wore.

In all the years of answering Tremors questions, this is a first.  I am embarrassed to say we’ve never thought much about Mindy’s father.  We do think that free-spirit Nancy was not married to him and that they drifted apart for some reason.  But that’s about it.

On part two, we’re not sure where that question comes from.  Nancy does not hate Earl.  She pretty much likes everybody, though she gets impatient with Burt at times.

No, but you can be sure Burt never misses an opportunity to point it out.

Uh —- what?  I think this one went over our heads.

Forgive me, there are lots of funny answers to this question.  We are writers, after all.

The entire town of Perfection would have been eaten, and it would have been a very dark, depressing horror movie.

We would have had to add people to the town to get eaten so Val and Earl, and maybe Rhonda, would still survive.

Burt would have had to come up with a mini-nuclear bombs instead of his ordinary ones.

We would have had to come up with four more cool ways to kill a Graboid.

The movie would have been twice as long!  But twice as expensive and we wouldn’t have been able to make it!

But seriously, we are amazed at the new questions fans keep coming up with all these years later.  Thanks!

This is a good question.  Indeed it is true that Earl found an axe earlier when trying to help Rhonda.  But when the motor in the soft drink cooler turned on, we think he left the axe by the table he was sitting at across the room.  He had no time to get off the cooler, over to the table and back before Walter got pulled down.

We think this might be a trick philosophy or political question.  But we don’t deal much in philosophy, or politics, so our answer is that the purpose was to tell a fun, off-beat, exciting story as best we could.

It’s interesting to us that fans like to rank things so much.   But we’ll offer our opinion.  Old Edgar died of thirst up on the tower, but didn’t suffer the horror of being eaten.  The road crew guys seemed to get killed pretty quickly.  The doctor and his wife had it pretty bad, both being slowly pulled underground, so they are definitely up near the top.  We don’t really know what happened to the telephone guys, so it could have been the worst of all, but probably not.  Nestor got pulled under very fast and we think went unconscious fairly quickly.  Our vote would be poor Walter Chang — grabbed, stabbed in the back with tentacle horns, and slowly pulled through the floor with a leg bent backward.  Yeah, now I’ve totally creeped myself out.

Great question.  We hadn’t really noticed it, but it’s quite true.  It’s due to how we thought of Val and Earl as we developed the characters through several drafts of the script– as kind of ranch hands plus small-town handymen.  It’s also due to Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward working with director Ron Underwood, and wanting to play the characters with a strong Southwest feel.  In the later movies, as we moved on to new characters and had to adapt the stories more into the modern world, the cowboy feel kind of got left behind behind.

REAL cameras!  MOVIE cameras!  Shooting big heavy rolls of 35mm motion picture film!  Mostly they were by Arriflex.

Sorry to report that, as of this late date, no one we’re still in contact with remembers.  During production, these decisions get made quickly, often choosing from dozens of options.  It’s possible nobody even paid attention to what brand it was at the time we were shooting.  It just got picked because it looked right to the director, costumer, and Michael Gross.

We don’t think there was ever such a scene even shot, because we hate movies that end like that!  We’ve always felt it’s much more satisfying to end on a definitive note.  You can always make a sequel no matter how “final” your ending.

It says “Company,” and it is indeed intentional, since the whole town of Perfection was built from the ground up just for the movie. Production designer Ivo Cristante put a great deal of thought into what the history of Perfection could have been. Once he decided it was probably a mining town, he thought it would be fun to indicate that the store was originally owned by the mining company. We modified that idea in Tremors 4, when we indicated that Walter Chang’s ancestors founded the store, but they could still have called it the company store at some point in the intervening years.

We defend our physics!  The Graboids lifted only a portion, like one corner, of the buildings at any one time.   A smallish section of lumber and drywall wouldn’t weigh nearly as much as the Cat.

No, although that would have been a cool idea.  They are actually of Harri James, our 2nd unit script supervisor, wearing a freaky blonde wig.

Yes, what happened to the character remained the same.  We changed his race because we felt Victor Wong was the best person to try out for the role — and he was Chinese.

All these years later we can’t say for sure.  It’s not in the script.  It was probably Brent Maddock or SS Wilson (who directed the 2nd unit that filmed that moment).  That sort of thing often got added on the spur of the moment during production.  It made sense because we wanted to emphasize the tentacles were just randomly grabbing things, hunting by sound and feel alone.

I know, right?  Where does all the money go?  Well, yes, you have 150-200 crew members all working 12 hours a day.  If they are union and work longer hours, they can get into triple overtime rates.  You have vehicle rental, fuel costs, office space rental, motel rooms and food every day for all those people.  The cast, especially the “name” stars, gets a BIG chunk.  Before the production you have to pay a crew to build the sets and also pay for all the materials.  For indoor scenes you have to not only build the sets but pay to rent the sound stages.  After the production you have to pay a crew to tear the sets down.  In post production you have the editor, composer, musicians, sound editors, sound mixers, and studio time.  And, back in the day of Tremors, you paid a laboratory to develop and print the film, and make copies of the film for editing, screening and, finally for hundreds of 35mm prints that used to go out to all the theaters.  It adds up!!!

We wanted any distinctive old four-wheel-drive and our transportation department found the Jeep Gladiators, but I never knew where they found them.  I don’t know if they were rented or if we bought them for the movie.   After production they were sold or returned to wherever they were rented.  We had two of them on set, so that in case one had mechanical trouble, shooting wouldn’t be delayed. They were not heavily modified except for changes to make them look alike.    By the way, they aren’t 100% identical.  Look closely for the differences!

Well, great question, and one that stumped the studio marketing people, too.  Nobody knew quite what it was.  Here’s what happened: S. S. Wilson had a love of old horror movies.  His partner Brent Maddock is mostly a comedy guy.  So it started as sort of homage to 50s horror,  but the first drafts kept getting more and more funny as we came up with jokes.  Later in the process (we did seven drafts), we felt that the comedy was ruining the scary moments, so we began taking jokes out until we ended up with only comedic moments that arose naturally out of the situation.  So it became a scary movie with genuinely funny moments.  Ultimately that hurt it when it went to theaters, because the ad campaign made it seem more like a goofy comedy.  But people who don’t like “monster” movies also avoided it.  It was only later that it found a big audience — and years later we started to hear studio people say they want something with “the Tremors tone.”

No, we had not seen Razorback.  It does sound interesting.   Now we have to track it down!

Love this question!  This is totally something we talked about during writing and even during shooting, but we never worked explanations into the script.  Our thinking was that Melvin’s parents go off to Vegas and leave him alone, somewhat irresponsibly.  And he just skips school (where ever it is!)

Mindy is easier.  Nancy is absolutely a dedicated home-schooler — which is why Mindy became so successful later, though Melvin did pretty well in real estate, too, it turns out.

Yes, we feel they stayed in touch.  Earl might’ve been a little jealous, but he’s a loyal friend and wanted Val to be happy (after all, Earl is the one who pushed Val to realize Rhonda was the right woman).   And Earl met Kate in Tremors 2, so it worked out!

It’s a good question because, really, it’s an emotional moment we kind of skipped over.  Looking at it now, Burt and Heather probably should have noticed Nestor and Walter were missing when the people arrive with the bulldozer and trailer.  So we’ll have to say they found out right after the bulldozer leaves and on the long drive up to the mountains.  And of course they were very upset to hear that two long-time friends were gone!

Hah, again we are challenged to explain more about the graboid life cycle.  Here’s what we think: the Tremors graboids were at an early stage of development (earlier than in Tremors 2).  Researchers dissecting them did find small hard-to-identify embryos, but assumed that they were undeveloped eggs that the graboid would lay at some point.  A few scientists argued that there was no apparent birth canal, and that something else must happen for the embryos to be “born,” but their comments were ignored as being too outlandish, because no one imagined an animal spontaneously “erupting” into young the way graboids do.  So no, Burt did not get the heads-up he would have liked.

Well, it’s one of those movie action-scene editing things.  Editors and directors like to “stretch” such moments to get maximum dramatic impact.  But we also often disagree on how much stretching is too much.  At some point, the timing gets so unrealistic it works against the drama.  This one is probably right on the edge.   Yes, Val has a really good arm.

And, yes, I’m amazed that I’m still answering NEW questions 30 years later.

I confess we did not think of that.  But I’ll defend our position as follows: the boulders are not “floating” on the desert sand, but rather are sticking up from, and are connected directly to, the underlying ancient layer of solid rock beneath the whole valley.  So the graboids would not have been able dig under them or sink them.   Rhonda could probably explain it better than I, but that’s the idea.

He was not stupid, but yes, he did make bad decisions under pressure.  Also, to be fair, when you watch the movie, you have to imagine these people are encountering graboids for the very first time.  No one in the world knows anything about them, so Nestor can’t be blamed for not quite understanding the threat.  When he gets toppled off his house trailer, he does try to find cover as quick as he can.  The big tire isn’t the best choice, but the way we designed that set, there weren’t a lot of good places for him to go.

I have to say we did not think about those things.  Building a miniature set would have been time consuming and more expensive (we were a low budget movie!) Also, when we went out to do the shot we thought it was going to work like we planned it. Only when it didn’t did we have to quickly improvise.

We continue to be amazed at what fans think about. It’s actually a good question. We certainly hope it did not involve a “splat!”  That would have been rather disrespectful to old Edgar’s remains.  We imagine that Val and Earl, being clever handymen, figured out a way to gently rope Edgar down.

There is not one specific town.  SS Wilson and Brent Maddock had done a lot of camping in the southwest deserts and had visited a number of ghost towns and small towns like Glamis, Randsburg, Rhyolite and others.  Perfection is a composite of places like that and of the people we met when hanging out in such places.

There are lots of things we would like to have done — but we were a low budget movie! I think we did discuss the possibility of seeing Burt’s cannon, but decided against it either for reasons of budget or other plot ideas we liked better.

Not exactly a question, but we very much appreciate the vote of confidence! Thanks!

Great question.  Sadly,  we’ve long ago lost touch with the sound designers and don’t know what they based the graboid sounds on.

It’s possibly a valid point, but I will defend our famous population sign thusly: Edgar and Old Fred lived far enough from town that they were not included.  That said, yes, we did joke on set about Melvin’s parents being off gambling all the time.

I think we’ve answered this one before, but I know how much people would love to find one of those old military version Jeep Gladiators.  They date from the early 1960s. The two we rented for the first movie were sent back to where ever we rented them from.  The ones we used in Tremors 2 and Tremors 3 were also rentals and were returned.  We have met a few fans who have found and bought them (search the FAQs for one lucky fan’s comment), but the old trucks are just becoming more rare!

We can’t say — exactly.  SS Wilson’s memory, increasingly subject to question, is that we felt Perfection was in central Nevada, like somewhere  East of Reno.

We’re probably answering this question too late (we’ve been busy!).  Hope the convention went okay.   The Graboid tentacles were made in a number of ways.  Most were sculpted in clay and then cast in various kinds of rubber, then elaborately painted.  Some had extremely complex mechanical skeletons.  Some were simple hand-puppets.  The reference to panty hose probably refers to the graboid intestines, seen in the movie after the monsters are blown up.  Some “guts” were panty hose filled with things like canned pureed pumpkin, or other things the creature effects people dreamed up.  The Tremors Blu-ray DVD has some very nice behind-the-scenes extras showing most of this.

We don’t actually agree that he’s greedy.  He’s just a smart small town businessman.  He sees opportunity and goes for it.  His opinion would be that if Val and Earl don’t recognize the value of their monster tentacle, he might as well be the one to capitalize on it.

We think this question refers both to Tremors and the opening of the TV series. There are a couple of ways to answer it. 1) With a movie reality joke: the graboid didn’t catch Val and Earl because they are the STARS!  Or 2) with S. S. Wilson’s penchant for analysis:  El Blanco is unique in the graboid pantheon, and is probably much faster than regular graboids. Furthermore a graboid’s speed of movement is very dependent on the soil it happens to be in.  The unlucky hiker was probably on very loose easy-to-push-through dirt that gave El Blanco the edge in that case.

It’s both a movie review AND a question!  But hey, the internet has unlimited space.  As to the question part, all of us creators of the first Tremors grew up when westerns were very much in vogue.  So at least subconsciously they had influence.  But we’d also spent lots of time wandering around the small towns and ghost towns and abandoned mines of the southwest. It was the people and the look of those modern day Western places that had the most impact on writing and later shooting the film.

I continue to be amazed at what fans think of — and/or what I don’t think of.  It never occurred to us that it might have been the same graboid that got Walter.  It’s possible.  All we know for sure is it’s not the one Val nicknames “Stumpy.” So, yeah, let’s say it was the one that got Walter!  Payback!

S. S. Wilson is prejudiced because he wrote that line.  But I don’t think you’d get 100% agreement from the Stampede crew.  Some like the pole vaulting scene.  Others have other favorites.  All would agree that it is ONE of the best scenes.

Here’s the story.  It was totally planned by the stunt crew.  S. S. Wilson was not there the day it was shot, so he only saw it when it was shown the next night during  dailies.  Even HE thought it was an accident and had to be reassured by director Ron Underwood that it was planned and our Val stuntman wasn’t hurt.

We think it’s a tie between the one in Burt and Heather’s basement, and the one Val drives over the cliff at the end.  Being mercilessly shot to pieces or falling a huge distance seem about equal.

They are totally props, hollow forms covered with chicken wire, sprayed on the outside with a material similar to stucco, and then painted.  We simply could not find rocks of the right shape and size that also had that great view of the Sierra Nevada mountains.  Most of the pole vaulting rocks are fake, too, even though there were hundreds of rocks all around, because they had to be exactly the perfect distance apart for the stunt people to make their jumps.

It’s an understandable request. We love Tremors, too! Unfortunately all the graboid parts and tentacles were custom made at Amalgamated Dynamics shop.  There’s nothing left over.  Universal has never supporting doing any action figures or any other kind of merchandise.  So fans are on their own.  We’ve seen some pretty impressive home made graboid creations over the years, so hopefully you can go that route.

Answer: Sept 27, 2020. You are obviously one of our beloved super-fans. We have had to keep quiet about this for months, and it’s been driving us crazy.  But now the official announcement has been made about the release of a super deluxe edition of Tremors from Arrow Films of UK.  They have not only re-mastered the movie from the original negative, they have put together an incredible collection of extras.  We’re not sure it’ll have everything you’re asking for, but it has a lot!

https://arrowfilms.com/product-detail/tremors-limited-edition-blu-ray/FCD2061

No. We had great animal wranglers and the company took very good care of them.  The only horse that got nervous was the one that had to lie on the ground and “wear” the rubber tentacles after Val and Earl are thrown off their mounts.  The horse didn’t like those tentacles very much, but its handlers were able to keep it calm enough to get through the scene.

It’s actually a hand-held CB radio. Walter had a counter-top version in the store (that Val and Earl use when they’re on the roof).  Even though cell phones have largely replaced them, Citizen Band radios are still used for short range communication in some situations.

Well, in our defense, we’ll say that our intention was that Val and Earl were repairing the fence, not building it.  They were just adding a strand to replace one that had broken.  The points you make are valid, of course. I don’t think we consulted fence professionals about the specifics.

In our minds Burt’s cannon is totally real.  We imagine it’s a replica of a smallish Civil War era muzzle loader.  It’s probably on display in his living room, which we also never see, but is also totally real.

Nice to see that Universal allowed someone to release the sound track.  As to your question, at the time we felt Robert’s additional music was  overblown, too bombastic and “traditional.”  However, we respected Gale Ann Hurd’s decision that we needed a different “take” on the big action cues, as Ernest’s versions were too subtle.

We are long out of touch with the people who provided the vehicles for Tremors, so can’t be much help.  I will add that the trucks (there were two used on the movie) were custom painted by the transpo dept and they quite possibly didn’t use a standard auto paint since it only had to last for the length of our shoot ( a couple of months).  If other Tremors Gladiator fans (and there seem to be many) have info to the contrary, please let us know and we’ll update this FAQ.

BTW, until getting this question we never knew there were two Gladiator models:  the Thriftside we had and the (not as cool) Smoothside.

Yes. It never made it into the deleted scenes, but there was a shot where Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson drove into Perfection in a police car.  Also in that scene, Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff played the third set of phone line workers (the first two teams having been killed by graboids).  But during editing, Ron Underwood felt the end of the movie was just taking too long, so we all got cut out! A few stills of us in costume are all that’s left.

Sadly no.  S. S. Wilson’s Dad shot most of the VHS on Tremors 1. He wasn’t available to hang out as much when we got around to making Tremors 2. And, since Wilson was directing, he had no chance to shoot anything either.

No, it was created by the prop department to match how we described Perfection Valley in the movie.  So it’s unlikely they used any other real locations or names on it.

Ron Underwood confirms that all the test screenings were done without any titles.

Most of us at Stampede have been back to Lone Pine twice, once for an anniversary of the movie in 2002, and again for the 30th anniversary in 2020.  As for the arches, we or our location manager may have been aware of them at the time, but  many decisions went into picking our locations. Each one had to be easy to drive to (with all our many vehicles), had to be as close as possible to other locations, etc.  And since the script didn’t actually call for an arch, nobody would have been actively looking for one.

Ron Underwood and S. S. Wilson were both very surprised to see these — and liked them a lot!  No, we had never seen them.  As far as we remember, when we were called to a marketing meeting at Universal, we were only shown the Jaws-rip-off poster that became the one the studio used; as well as a few in-joke posters that were done just for fun, but also not used.

She would have been deeply affected, certainly, but we don’t think to the point of it being debilitating or preventing her from continuing her scientific work, as she mentions she’ll be doing at the end of the movie.

We can’t offer legal advice, so don’t quote us, but we think if it’s your own creation and you don’t try to market it or sell it, you’d be on pretty safe ground.

It’s one of many twists on movie cliches we enjoyed doing.  Most people seeing the movie the first time are POSITIVE Melvin will get eaten.

It’s an evolution. And it came from our surprise at learning how family-friendly Tremors proved to be, even with the violence, swearing, and smoking.  We were like, “Parents are showing Tremors to their kids??”  When we got the opportunities to make 2, 3, and 4 we felt a responsibility to go in a slightly lighter direction, hopefully not too far.

We actually got into this question in T-1.  I wanted to show that, as you suggest, the graboid in Burt and Heather’s basement was partially helpless, not completely. We had shots of its spikes slipping on the linoleum floor but the director and editor decided not to use them. Love the idea of a graboid pulling itself forward with its tentacles.  Wish we’d thought of it!  BTW, the rig we built to shoot the spike shots will be featured in an upcoming Tremors: The Lost Tapes episode on S.S.Wilson’s youtube channel. [This answer is being posted August 2021]

You’re right that sort of character was not on our radar back then.  We thought we were cutting edge enough making Rhonda smart and tough and having Victor be the most successful guy in town.  Certainly these days we’d be open to any sort of character!

Our hope was that it was clear that after she saw her husband pulled into the dirt she knew it wouldn’t be safe to get out of the car onto the ground.  She assumes she has to be safer in the car (and can’t imagine a creature that is able to “sink” it).

No. The humans were always playing catch-up.  It didn’t occur to anyone the monsters were strong enough to come through the floor until it actually happened.

She wasn’t a fantasy.  She was a former girlfriend.  Earl gets her name wrong, calling her “Bobbi Lynn Dexter.”  Val corrects him, “Tammy Lynn Baxter!”  An bit of trivia, the photos are actually of our 2nd unit script supervisor in an outrageous blonde wig.