- General Questions about Tremors
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Note about Tremors 5 and Tremors 6 questions:
Stampede did not work on Tremors 5 in any way so we have NO information about it or Universal’s plans for future Tremors movies. All questions about those topics should be sent to Universal Studios.
General Questions about Tremors
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.
- We never knew about that series (we were hard at work on Tremors 1).
- Very cool idea.
- See the several other places in the FAQ where we point out that fans are more creative the studio people.
- 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.
Can you set up a petition for fans to convince Universal to lend creative control back to Stampede?
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.
When the snake vomited Jon Voight why did JLo stand there like a idiot and… Ooops wrong franchise!?
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!
Miscellaneous Tremors Questions
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.
Questions about Tremors
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.
We wrote Rhonda to be a strong independent woman but did not specify her sports history. That said, we agree there is a very athletic quality to her run. That came totally from Finn Carter and her commitment to the character.
Lacking Rhonda’s can-do creativity, she’d have needed a lot more help from Val and Earl if she were to make it.
Low budget movie! No need to see it, so don’t build it!
There was more information planned for both Edgar and Old Fred. We thought of them as old-timers who had lived in Perfection Valley longer than anyone else. And we shot scenes with them where we learned that Edgar takes good care of his donkey, Fred brings her carrots, and the two guys like to get together to play cards; but those scenes were cut from the final movie.
The gummy worm version: they would tear off. It’d be like what happens in Tremors 1, when Val and Earl’s truck tears off one tentacle.
In that draft, the owner of the store was a Vietnamese immigrant. When we got the opportunity to cast well-known actor, Victor Wong, we went for it. Since Victor was Chinese American, he asked if we’d change the character name to Chinese, which were were happy to do.
Neither Brent Maddock nor S. S. Wilson remember writing the character of Viola, but other fans have asked about here. We’ve been unable to find those early drafts of the script. We must’ve dumped them many years ago. Mostly likely she was cut in order to help hit our low budget. Even the character of Mindy was cut for a while, but the studio relented and let us put her back in.
Despite that fun image, we’re fairly sure Burt and Heather came to Perfection as adults, and chose it very deliberately, after much study, driven by their increasingly survivalist tendencies. Remember how Burt touts “geographic isolation” as one reason they settled there.
OMG, Nancy haters? Well, not damsel in distress, certainly. But from the beginning we felt it would be fun (and hopefully not annoying) to have a character who is the polar opposite of Burt and who would also seek out the isolated lifestyle of Perfection. Given our ages, we thought of her as an ex-hippie. That said, yes, the nature of Tremors is that Burt is more often right about the extreme situations they get into, but Nancy has to be given credit for standing up for her beliefs!
The Perfection store owner was originally Vietnamese. We chose that because, way back when we wrote the original, there were a lot of Vietnamese immigrants coming to the US. But when we got the chance to cast Victor Wong, we jumped at it, and he asked if the character could be changed to Chinese, which we were happy to do. Amusingly, we don’t remember the character of Viola, but the question has come up enough that apparently there are early versions of the script in which she appears. We had to cut many things from the original script in order to get our budget approved (and even cut the character of Mindy for a short time), so that’s when Viola would have been taken out.
We don’t own the rights to Tremors and have no say over what Universal studios does with the franchise. In the past they seemed to have no interest in promoting it or creating merch or anything. Lately, it does seem like there is more interest at the studio, especially with the success of the fantastic 30th anniversary DVD by Arrow. So while we would have said, “probably not,” we will say now there could be hope.
Update Dec 2023. It appears to have finally happened. Apple Music has a sound track featuring both Ernest Troost’s and Robert Folk’s music. https://music.apple.com/us/album/tremors-original-motion-picture-soundtrack/1565626895
We’re afraid we’ve long ago published or posted the known existing supply of graboid photos. That said, if you’ve not already gone ahead, you might peruse the behind the scenes Tremors videos from Amalgamated Dynamics or S. S.Wilson’s Tremors: the Lost Tapes video series, as those might have glimpses of graboids that are new/different.
No. We always do opposite if we can figure out what it would be.
We just thought it seemed like Burt’s sense of humor to refer to a machine gun on his custom plate.
Sadly that’s one of those details that we don’t remember, if we knew it. It would have been bought by the costuming department, probably one of many different types that then would have been presented to director Ron Underwood and actor Michael Gross to choose among. These decisions get made in a rush, and possibly only the costumers knew the actual make/brand.
But like with the question about Larry’s car in the Tremors TV series, if any fans know the answer, send it to the FAQ page and we’ll add it here!
With details like her folding lawn chair, we always felt she was camping out (maybe sleeping in the bed of her truck?), since she was only planning to be there a few days. Guess we should have added a small tent to her gear. Would have been more clear!
Great question, and one that actors would love answered. Some writers and directors come up with that kind of background to help actors. And some actors create it on their own if not given it because they feel it helps guide their performance. In our case, I confess we didn’t give a whole lot of thought to Val and Earl pre-Perfection. They just evolved rather quickly as we went through the early drafts of the script.
We checked with Ron Underwood on this, but he does not remember picking the watch, so we can’t say for sure. It is very unlikely that it was custom made (given our low budget), so it is probably a real watch from the time, found by one of our costumers and offered to Finn/Ron when they were finalizing her look for the movie. If any fans recognize it, please chime in!
We actually struggled to come with with a cool name for the creatures. We threw different names around (grabbers, chompers, crunchers), and we don’t remember who first said “graboids.” We didn’t love it, and kept trying, but never came up with anything we liked better by the time we had to start to start shooting.
Yes. When Val is racing to get the bulldozer, we wrote that Melvin’s little shed gets knocked apart. Only the metal roof is left and he ends clinging to it as it is slid around like a surfboard by a graboid underneath. Val arrives and saves him.
Well, we’ve gotten lots of positive comments from other industry folk over the years. Can’t say any were out of the ordinary. One fun event was Edgar Wright and Quentin Tarantino hosting a screening of the film in LA. And of course it’s been gratifying to have studio execs sometimes talk about wanting “the Tremors tone,” meaning the mix of comedy and horror that was pretty fresh when we did it back then.
Ron Underwood thinks “Yes, and No.” We have not saved a TV version of the movie, so can’t double check. But he’s pretty sure they did use an alternate (non flip-off) take of Melvin for TV. On the other question, we did not shoot footage of the townsfolk jumping into the semi trailer, so TV version could not have had that.
Well, 1) we’re not fans of blood and gore. 2) we’re family oriented and like to think we make family-oriented films.
Earl is a less hot-headed than Val. He’s mad, but we think he still would have said something like he says later: “They’d have torn your place out from under you in half an hour.” Maybe adding, “Burt, you really don’t understand what we’re up against here.”
Egad! No! I suppose we can postulate that it was Stumpy who got the road workers and line workers, but we really didn’t track the other three in that sort of detail!
No, the tentacles are just part of the graboids, like tongues, or maybe octopus arms. From a script writing standpoint, we invented them so we could have the surprise that the graboids are actually much larger than everyone thought. Also, the tentacles saved us money during production, as they were easier to work with than the full sized puppets.
Well — that actually hasn’t come up before. But perhaps it’s because of the number of people who get attacked as the movie gets going. Road workers, Old Fred, doctor and his wife. But it was just four — moving fast and — always hungry.
We assume you are looking for the shooting location, not where the house was in movie story terms. You may have some trouble, as that’s the one location that was nowhere near Lone Pine. The set for the house and the car sinking scene was just north of Los Angeles, along Route 14, somewhere just off Soledad Canyon Rd. No longer remember specifics.
Update: I recently learned of a Tremors crew member who kept a ton of original paperwork from the shoot. In that trove was this page detailing how to get to the Jim and Megan location!
What can we say? Finn Carter is the kind of actress you hope for, always in the moment, always reacting in character to everything going on in the scene.
If he did, given his success as he moved on in life, it doesn’t seem to have held him back.
Hammering and shooting a rifle are two entirely different skills. Val excels at the latter.
No. They are just part of a graboid’s mouth.
She is 9. Here’s the line introducing her, from the shooting script: “While they talk, Nancy’s daughter, MINDY (9), comes bouncing
along on her pogo-stick…”
It’s a question scientists like Rhonda would love to answer more fully, but graboids are pretty hard to test in the field! That said, evidence indicates they can sense something as small as a rabbit if it is moving on the surface nearby. Even so, walking slowly does help because you are both making less noise and spacing out the time between steps, thus hopefully preventing the graboid from investigating.
No, it was not a set up or a reference to a cut scene. We were just having Val express his feelings and frustration about what would really help them in that moment. And of course the reference to tank is what triggers Earl to think of the dozer.
No, we didn’t happen to see this episode of that old show, but we did check it out. We agree the boy’s creepy creation certainly looks similar to a graboid tentacle. And it is attracted by sound! Funny coincidence!
This is one of those questions that more expert writers would be able to answer, since they have created detailed histories and backgrounds for their characters. In our case, we thought it was funny that they disagree and literally didn’t think more about it.
One could argue that the tentacles crushed his chest when they grabbed on. But the timing is odd, we have to grant. During production we felt we wanted that moment, so we shot it. Then in editing we probably found we didn’t have the shots needed to extend the moment, or Ron maybe felt adding shots didn’t add anything and slowed the overall action down, so we ended up with the timing you see in the movie. BTW, getting the fake blood up his nose, then having to keep his head tilted awkwardly back until camera rolled was very uncomfortable for Victor, making him feel like he was choking. We certainly weren’t going to ask him to do it over and over in different ways.
We didn’t have one! We were a small 2nd unit crew way out in the middle of nowhere and had many more shots we had to get done that day. It wasn’t possible to drive a couple of hours to a town and see if we could rent a jack hammer. We had been very sure the squibs would work. When they didn’t, the crew had to scramble to come up with a solution. They had wire, so that was it.
They are wrong. The one that sinks Burt and Heather’s SUV did return to Perfection. Our feeling is not that it was scared away by the car alarm but that Burt and Heather’s concrete bunker was just a tougher target than the flimsy buildings in town that the graboids were already having success pulling down. Graboids play the odds.
Neither. On that one take, Kevin just happened to have a hard time hitting the nail. Later, in editing, Ron Underwood decided it was a fun moment and decided to use it.
Our memory is, at least for the “hero” graboids (the fanciest full-featured ones used for closeups), each of the four jaw mandibles had its own hinge and cable control. So, yes, at least two people were pulling levers to operate the mouth.
On the contrary, he was delighted to be able to say he still had weapons to fall back on.
He was a first generation immigrant, but ORIGINALLY he was Vietnamese and named Pham Van. Back when we wrote Tremors, a lot of immigrants were coming from there, so it seemed topical and a way to show how America has become home to so many diverse industrious people. When we were able to cast Victor Wong with his many movie credits, we re-wrote to fit his heritage.
We feel it’s a little more mainstream than that. Maybe in Reno.
You are assuming a graboid’s brain is roughly where most critters’ brains are. We are not assuming that. It might be lower down or maybe further back in the “neck.” Or maybe it’s just small and Val missed it!
We totally intended the second thing: that it was that close!
There were cardboard graboid tentacles that theater owners were offered to hang from the lobby ceiling. Also there was a large motorized lobby poster (called a “standee”). S.S.Wilson has one of the only known complete ones. It will be on display at the Tremors Fest in Santa Fe Oct 25-27, 2024.
The pace of the first film is pretty fast. The graboids have not been around very long as the story gets going. So it’s only over a week or so that Miguel first notices some cattle have disappeared.
It’s 38 miles to Bixby, so all other distances are quite a bit less. We never worked it out specifically. But let’s say it’s 10 miles to the narrow canyon road worker site. So might take 15-20 minutes to get there on the slow-ish road. Edgar’s tower and Old Fred’s place are even closer.
Questions about Tremors 2
It is an older model Jeep J series pick-up, sometimes called the Gladiator. Produced from 1963 to 1987 these are rather rare. The transportation coordinator on Tremors I found the one we used in the first movie and no, unfortunately it was not put in a museum. Maybe it should have been, because we had a heck of a time finding another one for Tremors II! By the time we made Tremors II, the transportation staff had to buy three of them from junk yards in order to get two of them up and running. We used one or the other depending on what sort of shot we were doing. If you watch Tremors II closely, you can spot differences between the two “identical” trucks we used. We always try to have more than one picture vehicle so that we can keep shooting when something goes wrong with one of them or, when we damage one (as when Earl backs into a steep ravine to escape the Graboid that drops on the hood)
It took a long time to get the sequel made because the first movie, while successful, was not a HUGE box-office hit. It’s easy to get a studio to greenlight a sequel for a HUGE hit (like BATMAN). But we had to work a long time to convince the studio that the fans really wanted a Tremors II. Ultimately, it was Universal’s video division that really supported the idea, because the first Tremors had been HUGE in video and on TV.
Fans continue to ask about the “Miss October” seen and mentioned in Tremors 2. Here’s the scoop.
We had a number of arguments about what year Playmate we should pick. We decided on 1974 because it made the Kathy character about the right age for Earl (about 40).
Then we cast Helen Shaver as Kathy. But it turns out that the real Miss October, 1974, Ester Cordet, doesn’t look remotely like Helen. So, we searched through Playboy files and selected the Playmate actually seen in the film, Miss September, 1970, Debbie Ellison.
There are only two cut scenes. One was a short scene in which Earl said good-bye to Kathy before the first Graboid hunt. The other was the last part of the night scene in which Burt’s truck is attacked by Shriekers. We tried to a do a joke in which you see Shriekers all over the truck, then Burt blasts every one with his semi-auto pistols. Unfortunately we just didn’t have the budget to do any more computer animated shriekers and tried to do the scene with our floppy dummy shriekers. They looked like rubber dummies — which they were. I tried editing the scene a dozen different ways to keep it in, but eventually my writing partner, editor, and producer ganged up on me and made me take it out. Even worse, I had stood in for Michael Gross in the master shot, firing the pistols inside the truck, so I was cutting myself out of the movie! No Alfred Hitchcock moment! That outtake did not make it onto the DVD and I’m afraid it would be hard to dig it out of Universal’s storage areas now.
When Brent and I were working on the script, we needed a way to identify the new monsters for the people reading the script. We didn’t want to keep calling them “new little monsters” all the time. We came up with the name Shrieker because that’s what they do: they shriek (scream real loud) whenever they see food with their heat sensors.
A name is useful on the set, too, even if it isn’t used in the movie. Often times the crew will invent names for things so they all know what they’re talking about when setting up a shot. You’ll hear them say things like, “We’ll have a Shrieker over there, and Graboid back there, and the hero Shrieker will be in foreground. When filmmakers refer to something as the “hero”, they mean the one that is used for close-ups. We had several Shrieker puppets, but two of them could perform more actions than the others, so they were the “heroes.”
We’ve gotten some complaints that Tremors 2 was less gory than Tremors 1. And when SS Wilson was visiting some grade school kids last year, he was approached by an eleven year old who had only one piece of advice for Tremors 3: “Make it gross!”
Well, we’re in kind of a fix, folks. The people paying the bills are Universal FAMILY Home entertainment. Not only that, parents e-mail all the time telling us how great it is that we make monster movies that aren’t so gory. And we have little kids ourselves we’d like to be able to watch the movies (well, they were little when we started the series!)
So the Tremors movies will have to be a little less gross than some of you might like. We’re trying to please all of our fans. But keep an eye out for other Stampede movies. We’re trying to set up a feature a couple in the next few months that will be really scary, and more gross. Wish us luck.
Why did we choose the L.A.R. Grizzley over, say, the Barrett semi-auto? It had more to do with timing than anything. Tremors 2’s pre-production was very rushed. The prop people brought me a picture of the L.A.R. target gun and I loved it. Fifty caliber target shooting was relatively new then, and frankly we didn’t know much about it. At the time we didn’t happen to see any other guns built for the sport. We’ve since checked out a number of special guns for Burt and would love to use the Barrett. But it’s LOT heavier than the L.A.R. so in some ways would be impractical for Burt to lug around.
They got married and are running the theme park established by Earl and Grady with the money they made Graboid hunting.
Well, life sometimes refuses to imitate art. Reba McIntire is a very busy country star and hasn’t wanted to reprise her stand-out role.
Can Shrikers “see” with their heat-seeker closed? Yes, Shriekers can sense some heat through the bony shield on the heat seeker organ. They open it to get a more accurate iamge and “sight in” on their prey. They close it before they attack, because it is delicate and vulnerable to injury.
Why don’t warm blooded Shriekers attack each other? All animals are equipped to easily recognize others of their kind. Honeybees can identify bees not from their own hive, for example. It is not known for sure how Shriekers avoid attacking one another, but it is likely they they can either the shape of the heat image or possibly the exact body temperature (which is much higher than that of most other animals).
It went like this: Universal had asked us to come up with an idea for Tremors 2. We knew that most fans expected to meet a Queen Graboid of some kind, since that’s the way most monster sequels tend to go. So we wanted to come up with something else. We were stuck for quite a while. Then one day we said “What if the Graboids got smaller instead of bigger?” From there we realized that, if they were smaller, there’d have to be more of them to be dangerous. From there we realized that we wouldn’t want to have to watch Graboids lay eggs, watch the eggs hatch, and wait for the Shriekers to grow to dangerous size. Boring! So that’s what led us to sudden hermaphroditic metamorphosis. See?
At the time we came up with the idea for Tremors 2, it seemed better to set it in a new location. Way back then it seemed too co-incidental for Graboids to show up in Perfection again. It was Michael Gross who encouraged us to go back to Perfection for Tremors 3, because he missed the emotional connection of people fighting for their home. He said while we were making Tremors 2, “What are we fighting for, an oil refinery?”
Can’t tell you exactly what the cost was, since it is buried in the lump-sum creature effects budget for the film, which also included Graboids, human body parts and other things. The articulated Shreikers had metal cable-controlled skeletons and bodies of foam rubber. The skins are other kinds of molded rubbers and the beaks are fiberglass.
They are “born” (ejected from the mouth of an adult) nearly one fourth full size, and grow very rapidly. Nancy Roberts currently owns the baby Shrieker made by Amalgamated Dynamics for the “birth” scene.
It’s a fabulous piece written for the movie by composer Jay Fergusen. We wanted something which was the opposite of the usual monster movie music, something lyrical and soft, with a Mexican flavor – before the mayhem started.
It’s great that you fans notice stuff like this. And there IS a reason. When the Mexican government offered Burt whatever he wanted, he loaded up his T-2 truck with all the fun stuff he’s not allowed to have in the U.S., high explosives – TNT, C-4, and the like. When REAL H.E. goes off, it makes very little flame and creates a devastating shock wave. That’s the effect S.S. Wilson wanted and that’s what Peter Chesney created for the end of Tremors 2, using real high explosives, by the way. If you look at the grass in the foreground of the building when it blows up, you can see the shock wave.
Now, in Tremors 3, we wanted the look of Burt’s ammo, reloading powder, black powder, and gasoline blowing up. All those things “explode” more slowly, with a lot more flame, than H.E., so Larry Fioritto and his team created that kind of explosion, with LOTS of gasoline, black powder, etc.
Yes and no. Burt dropped it in front of the tractor in which he took cover from the Shriekers. The whole area was turned into a crater in the big blast. However, Burt, knowing that his rifle is a massive, tough chunk of stainless steel, figured it might have survived. Plotting its approximate trajectory from the blast site, he searched laboriously through the rubble and finally recovered the rifle. Cleaned up and re-barreled, it appeared again in Tremors 3.
It was a cannon shell. Sorry we’re not sure of the exact size now, but it was something like a 90mm round which would be fired from a tank’s cannon. When the Mexican Military said he could take whatever he wanted to help fight the Graboids, Burt slipped the cannon round into the truck, hoping to add it to his weapons and cartridge collection. It was of course destroyed in the Big Blast at the end.
Actually their beaks are fairly sharp. Ever been bitten by a parrot? However, the real secret is the great strength in their jaws and legs. Once they clamp down, it’s almost impossible to force their jaws open. Repeatedly yanking backward with their powerful legs, they can tear or rip just about anything. That’s how they rip open sheet metal.
Well – if you think about it, all the Graboids are dead by the time the Shriekers are running around, since Shriekers come out of Graboids. In Tremors 3, El Blanco did sense the Abs, and he even ate the last one!
Yes, but the fact is, most of the creatures who have lived on earth are NOT preserved in the fossil record. Only a fraction get fossilized. So we thought it would be fun to propose that at least one higher, more complex animal, with a very unusual life cycle, arose in the Precambrian and was lost to history until Tremors 2. If you’d like an alternate theory, at one time there was on the SciFi Tremors series website a much more detailed and scholarly analysis of where in pre-history Graboids may have arisen (the writer proposed that Kate White was mistaken in her original judgment about the Precambrian origins).
On a side note, one thing that is definite is Graboids and their two metamorphic forms were NOT the result of the compound Mixmaster being released into the Perfection Valley environment (revealed in Tremors, the Series). Graboids predated that event by hundreds, if not thousands of years.
No, it’s a muzzle brake, a device that reduces felt recoil (kick) when the gun is fired. Some of the expanding gasses blasting out of the barrel are directed slightly rearward through the holes, sort of little “jets” which pull the gun forward at the same time it is kicking backward against the shooter.
Surprise: because they don’t really exist! It was a fairly complicated thing to shoot. The “baby” is actually a full sized Shrieker in a special cage we built extra big to make the Shrieker look small. (You’ll notice there are no people seen in the same shot with the baby. That would have given away that the cage was huge). We didn’t have the time or money to make real baby Shrieker puppets, so the effects team came up with that clever “cheat.”
A lot of it just has to do with the way they were filmed. In the series the directors tended to use quicker, closer shots of the Shriekers than we did in T-2. Outwardly the series puppets are almost identical to the T-2 puppets, but the ones in the series have more range of motion.
Technically, they can keep producing babies as long as they get an unlimited amount of food. But in reality there is an upper limit. Studies were done by the scientific team which brought the Shriekers to Perfection Valley in the series. They found that it requires tremendous effort to “birth” the baby and this takes quite a toll on the Shrieker’s body. After producing ten to twelve babies, an adult often dies suddenly of apparent heart failure. In the wild a Shrieker would rarely be able to get enough food to reach that state.
He wisely beat it out of there before things got bad.
Yes, they do. But not nearly as much. Scientists think the reason may be that Shriekers are designed to alert each other when they find food. ABs are more solitary animals, primarily looking for a good place to lay their single egg, so the theory is there’s not as much need for them to signal each other about food sources.
No, the pouches aid in the animals’ breathing. If you watch closely in T-2, you can sometimes see them pulsating. Baby Shriekers grow from eggs lining the stomach walls of the adult, feeding directly on digestive products there. When an adult eats enough, one of the eggs suddenly starts to grow, forcing its way into the stomach cavity and up the throat. Yech.
It’s not clear why only one egg is “triggered” at a time.
Yes, they were. They had to give a discount price, since:
- there were so many Shriekers and,
- the refinery they were supposedly “protecting” was destroyed. But Earl, Grady, and Burt came out quite handsomely in the end.
A Graboid is nearly dead at this point. The tentacles’ primary purpose of for pulling prey into the mouth. Since the animal is no longer eating, it doesn’t need to use them any more. All its remaining energy is going to support the growing Shriekers inside it.
Yes, Earl was taking a chance. But all the cold surrounding his face helped disguise it. Also, the Shriekers had food all around them and were all happily eating. As a result, they weren’t paying as close attention as if they’d been in full hunting mode.
We think it’s always fun and interesting to have characters come back, but unfortunately, there are no plans for future Tremors at all, with or without Grady.
At they time they were killed. none of the Graboids in Tremors 1 had yet started the metamorphic process which leads to Shriekers forming inside its body. So there was no sign of Shriekers in the T-1 Graboids studied by Rhonda and other scientists, and no hint that this is how they reproduce.
Since we were focused on introducing Shriekers to the Tremors world, we didn’t feel we should spend time and money recreating all the things Graboids did in Tremors 1. Also, since we had had trouble getting good full scale burst-ups in T-1, (remember how slow the Graboid comes up next to Earl before the run to the cliff?) we were excited about showing our full sized 8 foot Graboids bursting out of the ground with real energy (as when one eats the oil worker in the opening, and later, when one makes a grab for Grady by the pickup). So we put our effects dollars into those moments, rather than refurbishing and using the tentacles with all their cables, which required many puppeteers.
Ummm, we see where you’re coming from, we think, but the answer is no. Shriekers do not appear inside an adult Graboid until right before they’re “born.” Science would love to be able to study a living Graboid in which Shriekers have started to grow, but so far that opportunity hasn’t come up. Thus far it appears that El Blanco, the albino Graboid now living in Perfection Valley will never reproduce.
Many animals have coloring that seems to serve no purpose. What we often find, however, is that science just hasn’t figured out what the purpose is. For example, some have theorized that these colorful patches on Shriekers might have more blood near the skin surface in order to emit more heat than the rest of the body, and that might communicate something to another Shrieker like, “Stay away from my food,” or “Look out, I’m about to throw up a new baby.” Unfortunately, Shriekers are hard to study because they are the shortest-lived of the three Graboid life forms. Some years ago, the few that the government had in captivity escaped in Perfection Valley and multiplied, much to the consternation of the locals, who barely managed to destroy them.
Good question. In most cases, yes, but not too well. Glass tends to limit the transmission of infrared light. Some insulating glass is designed to block almost all infrared light. While we could see right through it, to a Shrieker that sort of glass might look like a mirror. Wish we had thought of that when we were making T-2. We could have had Earl, Grady, and Kate carrying glass doors, and the Shriekers couldn’t have seen them! Of course it would have required a lot of dialogue from Kate explaining the science behind it.
Update to this question: Here’s alternate answer from a fan who says:
Are you ready for the true scientific answer? Well here goes. A friend of mine keeps pet rattlesnakes in his house (in double locked containment, of course}. As you know, rattlesnakes and other pit vipers can see warm objects in total darkness. Before entering the reptile room, you must turn on the overhead light or else the snakes will vigorously rattle their tails until the lights are on and they can see you clearly. Snakes can not hear because they have no ears (unlike Graboids), but they can sense heat through the tempered glass in the window of their terrarium.
(SSW admits he has not tested the glass scenario with rattlesnakes, nor is he likely to.)
No. Burt and Heather were very careful, since they had grave doubts about the value of bringing children into a world under constant threat of disaster (and that was before they knew about Graboids).
Burt initially went along with Rhonda’s request to donate all the Graboid remains to science. A few days later, he regretted his decision. At considerable expense and effort, he reclaimed the head of the most-damaged Graboid, the one that fell to the bottom of the cliffs. Its head was relatively undamaged, and he had a taxidermist mount it, also at considerable expense.
Okay, we gotta be honest, this one stumped us. As far as we know nothing was intentionally written in the dirt in this scene. Can other fans help us out? Anybody else see any mysterious writing in the ostrich pen sequence?
March 2019 update. A fan has responded with the detailed analysis below! Thanks!
Regarding the “writing” in the dirt behind Earl in Tremors 2, I just now watched that scene several times on blu-ray and the only “patterns” I can see behind Earl in the pen are the sparse, naturally random growth patterns of the grass and some of the fence’s shadows in the dirt, along with the inevitable patterns of Earl and the ostriches’ movements within the pen.
No, they felt he’d performed the duties asked of him and the loss of the truck was well worth getting rid of the Graboids and Shriekers.
Well… we gotta say, it’s amazing that fans are still coming up with new questions! Apparently there is need to invent, er, divulge new Shrieker behavioral secrets! Our belief is that Shrieker tongue-searching is a fall-back food finding technique. If they have sensed no warm-blooded prey for a certain amount of time, they resort to tongue searching for less palatable cold blooded, or just cold, food. They can’t use the technique non-stop, however, because they’d trip over their tongues trying to walk and, with their mouths open too much they’d quickly become dehydrated from slime evaporation.
Did the grabiod hunters charge the refinery owner or president for the shriekers they killed? – NEW
Yes, they did. At least they tried to. The refinery owners weren’t too happy about it, and weren’t happy that the refinery got blown up, but they ultimately made a deal that covered both Graboids and an undecided number of shriekers. Earl and Grady made out pretty well in the end.
Uh, okay, remember what Kate said about exponential growth? We actually have no idea. There was like, a whole lot of them inside that storage building that Earl blew up, and they were all eating and making more Shriekers the whole time. So, like, a zillion?
Burt is a perfectionist! He feels you can always improve your game, so he was taping the kills to learn more about Graboids and how best to take them out.
Here’s what we think: the Graboid in the first movie had to swallow the dynamite before realizing it was the bad stuff. Burt, with his RC cars and remote detonator, is too quick for them, hitting the button before they realize they’ve been “hooked.”
We don’t think Earl and Grady stayed in Mexico. We think they took their money and returned to open their theme park in the U.S. But, that said, we never thought about what happened to the ostriches! As I often do, I congratulate this fan on a creative soliton. Miguel would totally have wanted to take over the ostriches. He was probably a better rancher than Earl, anyway.
Well, we don’t think so. They did make a lot of money, but probably not enough to be able to act on Grady’s grandiose ideas.
They got married and lived happily ever after! And used the money Earl made to start a better business than an ostrich ranch. The money also allowed Kate’s to continue doing research in geology without being tied to oil companies.
Here’s what we intended: Burt reports that he ran over dozens of the creatures, so one of them became lodged in the truck’s undercarriage, but not killed. It regained consciousness after he parked inside, and immediately began seeking food.
We don’t know. And here’s why. In Tremors 1 it was important to say exactly how many Graboids there were, so that the heroes and the audience would know when there was only one left. In Tremors 2, it didn’t matter so much, because ALL the Graboids turned into Shriekers. So we just wrote that they killed a lot, and cut in lots of explosions. We even re-used some of our Graboid explosions (using different camera angles) to make it look like they got even more.
We are sorry to report that we no longer know, if we ever knew. When we were making the movies, I always thought I’d remember all those details. But film making is such a fast and intense process, it’s possible I never even thought to ask the people in the sound department how they created that cool sound.
Absolutely. Shriekers are all about eating — anything, anytime, as fast as possible.
Good question! Hopefully Rhonda or Kate has done some research on this. For now, we’ll have to guess that there was an abundance of food in that area of Mexico. More baby Graboids survived, thus more adults.
Sometimes the details get away from us. Sorry to report that nobody in the current Stampede circle remembers what brand of hat we picked for him all those years ago.
Before. Jodi had to take over the store very soon after she learned Walter had been killed. We just didn’t show the town in Tremors 2.
Hey, those fire extinguishers have pretty limited capacity. It was used up!
Here is my attempt to translate. If fans speaking better Spanish are out there, please feel free to correct me.
Pedro first asks “Are you the American monster hunters?”
As Grady looks in his Spanish-English phrase book, Pedro rushes on, saying something like, “They are under the ground and they are eating everybody!”
Then, as Pedro is about to leave, he says, in effect, “Good luck and hope the monsters don’t eat you!”
This is a valid point. Our feeling is that when Burt refers to taking the high explosive cannon round for his collection, he is caught up in the moment (having just talked the Mexican government into letting him have all this stuff) and isn’t really thinking it through. Burt is a bit radical, but he’s not a law breaker, and none of his gun collection in Tremors 1 was illegal when we shot the original movie.
Not really. They are each driven by the desire to find and eat as much food as possible as fast as possible. So they tend to behave in a way that only appears to be coordinated. However, they will cooperate if it serves their main purpose, as when they climb on each other to reach the Earl, Grady and Kate on top of the oil tanks.
Yes. And — very screwed. However, as we’ve noted elsewhere, shrieker hatches are limited by the amount of food available in a given area, so it would have been bad, but maybe not a total shrieker apocalypse, since the oil field was fairly isolated.
After all these years, fans are still coming up with new ideas. In truth, we did not even think of this possibility when we wrote and shot those scenes — and it’s totally logical! However, we’re always up for adding to Graboid lore, so here’s an explanation. The young shriekers do eat most of the parent Graboid when they awake and burst out, but they need all that initial nourishment to become fully formed and get strong enough to walk on their own, etc. When are they capable of reproducing, they move out into the world in search of more food. The tough Graboid skin and bone they leave behind isn’t nourishing enough to allow them to reproduce.
Sadly, that’s a legal issue. Universal Studios technically owns the script, so we can’t just put it up online without their permission. We were surprised to discover we do still have it lying around, though.
No, this design is not something ever created or considered by us or the creature effects team. Even on the first movie we did not control what the marketing department did for poster artwork. They agreed not to show a full-sized Graboid (since we argued that was a big surprise in the movie) and so came up with the infamous “Jaws tentacle.” For Tremors 2, when it would have been okay to show a regular Graboid, for some reason they decided to create the extra-jaws-super-toothy Graboids, presumably to make the artwork similar to the original poster.
No, as much as possible we let Tremors fans do the math for us. It’s exhausting! I will admit, though, that in editing Tremors 2, we inadvertently implied that there were more graboids than we originally intended, because we fell in love with the idea of Burt blowing so many up with his remote control cars. Our editor kept reusing explosions! But since we also love answering graboid biology questions, here’s the totally scientific explanation: The large number is easily explained by the rhythms of nature. When conditions are right, almost any animal species can suddenly become numerous. So, many decades or even a century before the story in Tremors 2, graboids spawned in the area (no people around back then) and a large number of their shriekers survived, producing a large number of ABs that also survived, producing a great many eggs. When those eggs hatched in the time of Tremors 2, the saga of the oilfield began!
If we are correct about which scene you are referring to (when Burt returns after being ambushed by shriekers), it is Grady, not Burt, who says “sounds like you got’em all.” Grady assumes this because Burt estimates he killed “a couple of dozen,” and that number roughly matches the number Kate earlier calculated have probably hatched.
We love the things you folks notice! It’s a good question! Actually, Earl points the rifle out the window when they hear Burt’s truck coming, and then leaves it in the office. But it’s not there later when they could have used it against shriekers. The truth is, I think we forgot about it either when we were writing or during production. But we love the suggestion that Burt took it. Perfect! That’s exactly what Burt would do. He’d add it to the arsenal in his truck.
It is simply Grady mispronouncing the Spanish word for monster: “monstruo,” which Pedro said to him when he and Earl first arrived. He’s just means that the chain is for attracting the “moonstrose.” Pedro laughs politely at the attempt, even though in our minds he may not really understand Grady’s broken Spanish.
Yikes, these wardrobe questions! Sadly, S.S. Wilson, director of T2, totally let the wardrobe department do what they thought was best. So Burt’s black gloves are probably like for tactical military or police work (or something they found that just looked right). But we can’t track down the specific info now.
Yes, except for the budget numbers which were somewhat different. Here is how it happened: the studio said if Kevin Bacon agreed to play Val again in Tremors 2, it would be theatrical. If he did not, it would be lower budget direct-to-video. At the time he thought Tremors was one of his worst movies, and he didn’t want to be in Tremors 2. So the decision was made.
We don’t think so. They are extremely rare after all, and limited to environments with suitable soil for them to move around in. So it’s actually uncommon for humans to come into contact with them. Our feeling is that the noise of ongoing expansion at the remote oil field in Mexico attracted the graboids to the operation.
We KNOW how Val would have reacted, because the first few drafts of the script had his character in them (we did not know when we started that Kevin Bacon was going to decline the role). The scene in which he and Earl meet the Shriekers was almost identical to the one in the movie, with Grady’s dialog done by Val. That said, many other things were different, because Val and Earl have such a long history as bickering buddies. They complained a lot to each other about whose fault all this new trouble was. Also, there were fun scenes with Burt and Heather, who BOTH came to help, because we didn’t know Reba McIntire wasn’t going to come back either. Ah, missed opportunities.
I was about to write, “Oooh, that one has escaped into the mists of time” when I remembered — I actually OWN the tank! So I dug it out of storage. It looks like the props department deliberately obscured the maker and model info, but I’ve put some pictures on my S. S. Wilson Facebook page. Maybe one of you can identify it. It was running when I stored it all those years ago, though I’m not sure now. A few parts are falling off, as you’ll see.
First of all, the refinery building that actually blows up is a beautiful, highly detailed miniature that was about six or eight feet long in reality. Built by Joshua Culp, it was set up in a field near our location. We used several “sticks” of very powerful high explosive for the scene, though I don’t remember the exact number. They were embedded in plastic drums full of dust and powder inside the miniature building. The special effects team always has to be very careful not to use anything that would become dangerous shrapnel in a blast. The crater, I’m proud to say, is NOT CGI. It is a genuine old-school film special effect called a matte painting. It was painted by Rocco Gioffre to exactly match footage of the actors that we had already shot. It was then filmed and combined with that footage to create the final image of the characters walking toward it. S. S. Wilson still owns the original painting.
We assume this question refers to Mexican-style tune that plays over the opening titles. It is a beautiful original tune by our composer, Jay Furguson. Sadly, no, it is not officially available to buy, as Universal Studios has never released any of our Tremors film scores. (This answer is Oct 2019. If anyone finds any Tremors music legitimatley available, please let us know so we can share!)
Well, the screenwriter answer is, “Because it’s not as dramatic and surprising!” However, we have to admit this particular scene maybe bends the shrieker rules a bit. Shriekers do shriek when they see food. Here’s a half-answer: the shrieker was far away when it first spotted Julio, so we didn’t hear it shriek. Then it ran toward him in total silence! Okay?
About half.
It is made up. Just silent stock film footage from WWII that we bought. And, thank you, we thought it was the prefect way to introduce Burt, too. The narrator you hear on the TV, by the way, is T-2 director S. S. Wilson.
Our opinion is Burt killed graboids. The logic is that not all of the graboids would release shriekers at exactly the same time. Earl and Grady’s graboid could be an early one. Other graboids in the area might change later.
While it is true that the shriekers did not destroy the engine, the entire building was full of them. Four people never could have made it to the truck, climbed in, started it, and backed out before being swarmed by shriekers and eaten!
Both songs were written by Jay Ferguson, who created the music for Tremors 2 and Tremors 4. I don’t think he gave the songs titles.
It was not sold or destroyed. At the time we did Tremors 2, the creature FX team, Amalgamated Dynamics, had a mounted graboid on the wall of their shop. I think it may have been that one; in which case it went back to ADI after production. Later, one of the full-sized graboids was donated to the Lone Pine Museum of Western Film History, and it’s still there today! (as of this Jan 2020 post).
We did use a few graboid and dirt hump shots from Tremors 1 in Tremors 3. But using tentacle shots would have been a bit trickier. In T1 the tentacles are almost always doing something very specific (feeling a wall, searching a rock, grabbing something). To reuse them we’d have had to shoot scenes with Grady and Earl or Burt that matched what the tentacles were doing. Also, the lighting has to be exactly the same in the shots before and after. Since there weren’t many times tentacles would have been called for in T2, it didn’t seem worth the extra trouble.
Burt goes for the military style, but within that category there’s a pretty wide variety of different individual meals and lots of different manufacturers. I confess I don’t know what kind we actually bought for the movie.
Hey, it gets hard tying up all these loose ends! Seriously, though, we feel that Earl and Grady made a go of it (with the money from the Mexican government), and it probably did pretty well for a time, when Shriekers were in the news. But in the end it was kind of a “niche” destination, like you had a theme park devoted to zebras or platypuses; and Grady and Earl probably moved on to other things. Hard core Graboid and Shrieker fans were disappointed when it finally closed.
Our intent was this: Pedro was surrounded by shriekers attracted to his warm engine. His first natural impulse, to slam on the brakes, let the monsters start swarming aboard his truck. He climbed out the window into the bed and tried to get as high as he could, up onto the top of the truck’s cab, but by then, so many shriekers had hold of him they ate everything but his arms.
I WISH I could say it was a deliberate homage. But in all honesty, it was such a long time between shooting Tremors and writing Tremors 2, I doubt that we even remembered the axle reference. We just needed a good way to visually show the truck was disabled.
Hard working guys like Earl are honest but not clued in to how shrewd business people operate. After Tremors, graboids were big news, so lots of people were looking for ways to capitalize on that. Someone came to Earl and offered him a flat fee for selling them the rights to the graboid name. Thinking it was easy money, and not realizing the potential, he signed and got his check. Later, he saw graboid arcade machines popping up all over the country and realized, too late, that they were making a fortune and he was stuck with his flat fee.
We would argue that the distances between these events are not as great as you may be imagining. Also, shriekers’ constant signalling to each other with heat causes them to act more or less like a pack of wolves, staying relatively close together. So we feel it’s likely the ones at the radio tower quickly “got word” about the heat of Burt’s truck and joined the attack on him. And gosh, if any of them had remained hidden somewhere, eventually there would eventually have been reports of AssBlasters in Mexico!
In hunting, it’s all about shot placement. Even today, the science is a little murky on where graboids’ most vital areas are, as they have very strange lungs and circulatory systems. And of course getting a clean shot is hard with a creature that’s usually at least half underground. But we feel certain Burt could down a graboid with one shot from the .50 BMG if he had the right opportunity. That said, he would also happily opt for those larger calibers. “When it comes to graboids,” he’d say, “You can’t have too much gun.”
I am somewhat embarrassed to say that, because the movie was to take place in Mexico, we felt it would be too cumbersome to have a threesome on the hunt (plus adding Burt later). We felt we had to return to the pure team of Val and Earl, and flip things around introduce a woman for Earl to meet. So we wrote various versions of an early scene in which we learn Val and Rhonda broke up, and Val came back to live with Earl and help raise ostriches. In retrospect it seems something of a disservice to the wonderful character Finn Carter gave us as Rhonda. In any case, none of it was ever shot, since Kevin Bacon decided not to come back for T2.
It is actually both things. Earl has called Pedro to pick up him and Grady (more than their truck). And Grady is convinced that, once Pedro gets there, they’ll be able to winch the graboid onto Pedro’s flat bed. And Grady is probably right that he could talk Earl into it once Pedro gets there.
S S Wilson actually still owns the tank, but apparently the prop department removed any brand names and marks. Brand name on the controller is Futaba. But here’s a couple of pix that may help you figure it out.
Well, I’m not sure where such a rumor originated, but I’m afraid I don’t know the answer. We never discussed it!
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!
Our feeling was that Earl already knew that Burt and Heather were having some difficulties in their marriage (which he asks about next). So he’s trying to ease into his question by first suggesting he knows Burt hasn’t been seen around Perfection much lately.
They are a real thing. Small binoculars you wear like a pair of glasses. These days you can find many different kinds on line. I don't remember if our prop people came up with the idea or if it was suggested by Michael Gross. He was very into researching things Burt might use.
Sadly these questions are getting harder to answer. I’ve not stayed in touch with the costumers on T2. It would have been something they discussed with Fred Ward, as I didn’t get into costuming details very much. These decisions are made quickly in the rush of pre-production, with many options discussed. Today, they probably wouldn’t remember themselves what it was.
The things you folks notice! Yes, that is a p-38. Sadly I don’t have a good answer. I’ve never paid much attention to what people wear, including myself, so as a director I’m very dependent on the wardrobe people to come up with a character’s look based on the script. I was probably asked about it at the time and obviously okayed it, but don’t remember what the reasoning was (given that, yes, Grady never uses it). Over the years re-watching the movie I’ve never noticed it. All the more ironic because I still have my original GI issue p-38 and used to use it a lot on camping trips.
We assume you mean under the titles at the very beginning before the unlucky oil worker appears. That is a lovely original tune by our composer Jay Ferguson.
Our logic is that the shriekers attacked his truck from BEHIND. And Pedro, even if he had a graboid sensor in his truck, had no warning he was in danger since shriekers wouldn’t trigger it. His first impulse, feeling something hit the rear of his truck, would be to stop and investigate. Once he did that, it was too late. He barely made out of the cab and onto the truck bed.
This is called a “continuity error.” It results from the fact that we only had only one, (sometimes two) cameras, so we shot scenes multiple times. First we shot the whole scene with the camera seeing everybody. And we then shot it over and over again, each time with with the camera looking at a different character. Later, the editor took all the different versions and cut short pieces together into one coherent scene. We were shooting on film, so there was no way to go back and check every detail (film had to be taken to a laboratory, developed and printed, so you couldn’t see what you’d shot until at least the next day). Until video and digital you just had to try to remember the details. In this case, none of us noticed that Michael had the dog tags out of his shirt for some takes and inside for others. So the editor had no choice but to live with the slip-up, and just use the short pieces with the best performances. Continuity errors are actually pretty common. These days there are many web sites devoted to finding and cataloging these “mistakes” in every possible movie. So… you caught us!
Sadly I did not end up with much. Just too busy directing and editing to think about collecting. Ironically I seem to have have only versions that were later edited for television, so they have even less of the original movie, let alone any outtakes.
No. Like any animal, graboids will do what they must to ensure the best start for their offspring. A graboid about to morph into shriekers will always come to the surface unless for some reason it can’t do so.
Here is another of those genre-crunching question, but we’ll tackle it. Assuming an apocalypse in which the zombies are caused by a virus and noting that, generally, animals are not usually harmed by human diseases, it is probable that graboids would have a field day. Lumbering noisy zombies would be very easy prey. Once shriekers emerged, they’d have hordes of zombies to eat and, with virtually unlimited food, would proliferate astronomically. So a zombie apocalypse would quickly become an shrieker apocalypse, and then an AB apocalypse. Presumably, any remaining humans who had been fighting zombies would have no chance at all.
No. It’s a baked-in part of the graboid life-cycle. The graboid’s body is needed to give the hungry shriekers a head start in life. Mother nature is cruel that way.
Uh… they would be a BIGGER problem?
We think a bit faster, based on the one we see charge Earl and Grady when they are behind the car.
When a real .50 caliber rifle is fired, there is a terrific concussion. It can easily break nearby glass (and ear drums). The blanks for the movie don’t have that effect, but I was hoping to imply it by having the window break. FX man Peter Chesney rigged a spring-loaded hammer to break the window when the gun was fired (we didn’t have a permit for explosives that day). The timing was a bit late, but we had no time for retakes and had to move on.
For this one we are fortunate to have a reply direct from Production Designer Ivo Cristante:
“As far as the refrigerator goes, it came that way from the prop house if I remember properly. We kept it thinking that he would have picked it up at a thrift store. When fridges get ratty, they are often covered with contact/shelf paper to cover the grime, rust, etc. Point was, he couldn’t be bothered to redecorate.”
When T2 came out, were quickly made aware that fans missed the townsfolk. Indeed, that’s why Tremors 3 was called Back to Perfection. In our defense, when T2 went from feature film to very low budget direct-to-video title, we had to drastically cut everything we could. I don’t remember specific discussions, but we could never have built the Mexico refinery AND rebuilt Perfection to shoot scenes there. Also, from a strict story-telling perspective, there’d be no reason for Mindy and Nancy to get involved in the Mexico adventure. Why would they want to?
How about a full answer from Alec Gillis of Studio ADI, the designers and creators of the shriekers? —
The Shriekers were puppets whose outer skins were foam latex and fiberglass, and innards were cable articulated aluminum mechanisms. They stood about 4′ tall with heads about 2′ long. Most of their mechanisms were eventually salvaged and re-used on other creature builds.
Though most got repurposed, one may still be on display in the Lone Pine Movie Museum.
Finally, check out the awesome behind the scenes videos Studio ADI has done on the shriekers.
We worked backward from a self-imposed rule: There would be no Queen Graboid. At the time Universal asked for Tremors 2, that was already a major cliche in monster movie sequels and we were determined not to go that route. But then we had to answer the question: if no Queen, then what? Somewhere along the line we thought, okay, if not bigger then smaller, and from there went to the idea that there’d be a quickly growing horde and that’s what would make them dangerous.
The puppets: 30-60 pounds depending on how full of mechanics. Real shriekers, like a lot of animals, probably weigh more than you’d think, in the 200lb range.
When I went through my collection of stuff to provide to Arrow for their Tremors II HD video, I did find more material than I thought I had, so yes, I am considering doing some sort of mini-lost-tape thing for T2. However, I’m currently busy (Apr 2024) working on my next novel.
We feel the arcade game was probably a side-scroller where you’re navigating a desert landscape avoiding graboids by moving slowly and/or hopping from rock to rock. The faster your character moves, the more noise he/she makes and the more graboids are attracted. Later you get a pole vault upgrade. Those concepts were being developed for a real Tremors video game years ago, but the company making it went under. Another lost opportunity.
As for where the cabinet came from, we no longer know unfortunately. Those decisions get made in the frantic rush of pre-production. Might’ve been bought somewhere or might’ve been quickly thrown together by our expert carpenters.
Earl’s truck of course was left far out in the oil fields, stuck in that ravine with a broken axle. Our feeling is we can argue the answer either way. He gets a lot of money at the end of the movie and can afford any truck he wants, so maybe he’d abandon it. Or you could also imagine gruff Earl mumbling: “Hey… I like that truck,” and paying a crew to retrieve and restore it. Like you, we sort of prefer the second idea.
I wish I had more knowledge of the sound effects in all the films. For some reason I never got into those conversations with the FX creators. Especially on T2, while busy directing, I’d get to the editing room and the editor would say something like, “Oh, they sent over these shrieker sounds and want to know if you like any of them.” And he’d play them, and I’d go “Oh, good! Use that one for when they die!” And we’d move on!
Sounds right to us. It’s definitely a Grady sort of idea.
As we have had to say in other vehicle ID questions, the movie’s transportation dept handles finding, renting, maintaining the vehicles. We asked for a deuce-and-a-half, and we okayed that truck when they found it (and S. S. Wilson had great fun driving it around the location one day) but we’re not detail-oriented enough to say now what year or specific model it was. If any military collector friends cad add more info, we’ll share it in an update!
The 50 BMG is a very powerful cartridge, and what we showed is pretty close to what one can do. But of course none of it was “real” in the sense that we never, ever use real ammunition on a movie set. Effects people blew up the shrieker with a squib. The fake bullet hole in the concrete wall behind it was already there (hidden by the shrieker). And prop people made each of the other fake bullet holes you see in the next shots.
Technically, yes. But Burt was a), making almost no noise, and b), pretty confident that graboids would be attracted to his noisier remote control tank and not him.
We have wondered ourselves how the Tremors creatures would fit into the ecosystem, especially before humans. Bears and graboid habitats don’t overlap much, but certainly an encounter could happen. Since a shrieker is all about getting as much food as fast as possible, it would probably attack mindlessly, assuming other shriekers will “hear” its food call and also attack. If its brethren don’t join in, its probably bear food.
As we noted in that previous reply, Burt paid an expert taxidermist to complete the job. So we must assume one of the tentacles is a reproduction.
Don’t remember for sure, but it’s a mismatch caused by the difficulties of making a movie. We had a completely different camera rig on a different vehicle for Grady’s closeups. There may have been some reason we couldn’t use the same “track” to tow the truck. It’s even possible we just didn’t notice how different the background was, since we shot the scenes hours or even days apart.
Actually, when Burt hands them the guns he says one is a Westley Richards .480. The other (Grady’s) is 375 H&H mag. That said, .480 is probably still not the correct caliber for the Westley. But that company did sell an elephant gun that fired a 12ga solid bullet. I’m guessing that’s probably what we actually had from the prop department.
Movie vehicles are usually rented or bought by the company transportation department. And usually they’re sold or returned to the rental places after production. So that’s what happened to the Jeep Gladiators we used on Tremors 2. They just went off to be rented or sold again. We know, not very romantic.
Yes, we did shoot that scene. It was really only one shot showing Burt blasting the shriekers off the truck’s hood from inside. S. S. Wilson actually doubled for Michael Gross in the shot. You can find it in the extras on the new Tremors 2 HD-DVD from Arrow. We cut it from the final movie because we realized it was better NOT to know if Burt survived until we reveal it later.
We don’t know! They had a ton of food, so were procreating very rapidly. We’ve never established how quickly they get to full size after multiplying. Let’s say it would have been at least double the number we see when Earl creeps through the warehouse to get the bomb.
Questions about Tremors 3
Here’s one that surprised us: some fans wrote that they were disappointed we didn’t announce when and where we were shooting Tremors 3. They would like to have come to watch us shoot. Well, first of all, we didn’t think of it. Maybe in the future we should have a contest or something where the winners get to come to the set. But the main reason is, while we love all you fans, we’re trying to surprise you! We didn’t want people to see what the next phase of the Graboid life cycle was, or see what tricks Burt might have up his sleeve! So we were actually pretty secretive all during the shoot.
Often people ask why a particular cast member has not returned for Tremors 2 or 3. There are several reasons. Sometimes actors don’t want to repeat a character they’ve played before. Sometime schedules don’t work (they’re already doing another movie when we have to be shooting ours).
For example, Kevin Bacon was asked to be in TREMORS II, but he was about to do Apollo 13, and is really enjoying playing a wide variety of different characters. He didn’t feel at the time that he wanted to come back and repeat the Val McKee character.
Sometimes, since we’re the writers, we can’t think fun things for the earlier characters to do and we feel like inventing new ones. That’s part of what happened on Tremors 3. Since many of the townsfolk are back, we felt we needed some new characters to add to the mix.
We did get some complaints from parents about this name. From our perspective, given the R-rated films many kids see all the time, we didn’t think it was so bad. But in hind-site it probably wasn’t the best choice. Our apologies to those the name offended. On the set we just called them Abs (“aay bees”) and we sort of forgot what it stood for over the course of shooting.
Yes, they do. They were completely computer generated except for a few shots. We did our best to get them to look identical but there’s something slightly different about them. The upside is they have a lot more movement than the eight foot tall full scale guys.
Well, yes and no. Sometimes the CG Graboids look thinner, but the Himani fx crew worked very hard to make them match exactly. We all studied many CG test versions before picking the final one. Here’s my theory, the CG Graboids look thinner because we see more of their bodies exposed. We only see the full scale puppets up to their “shoulder” so they sort of look like they are even wider below ground. But now we’ve revealed – they’re not!
You know, that’s a good point. But reptile just sounds better, more lethal. Yeah, we think they’re a very rare form of legless reptile.
We have one fan who says there only 3 Shrieker sacs in the split-open Graboid in T-2. So how come Burt says 6 Shriekers come out of each Graboid in T-3?
Slick Hollywood answer: the second generation Graboids seen in T-3 are a more highly evolved variety that metamorphoses more efficiently than the Tremors 2 Graboids.
Real answer: WE GOOFED!! All four of us who worked on the story forgot the right number and we never checked it! How embarrassing!
A LOT of you have asked about those tantalizing comics. Sorry, as yet they’re not real. We made a deal with Dark Horse to use their logo on the custom-drawn covers. We are told that the covers for the Graboid comics were done by artist Chris Qulliams. At various times we’ve tried to explore doing a real comic book series based on Tremors. So far it’s never gotten past the talking stage.
Sadly, as with T-1 and T-2, it’s still no. There’s not enough interest at Universal Family Home Entertainment to pursue merchandising deals. A few items from the movies have been sold on e-bay (as a charity fund raiser), but that’s it.
So would we at Stampede. It’s another of those things that takes time and money to put together and the T-3 budget was the tightest yet. Sorry. To tell the truth, though, there weren’t too many bloopers. The cast was amazing and Brent, Nancy and the crew worked like maniacs to fit the show into the extremely short schedule. We didn’t have time for bloopers!
I love questions like this. Gang, eleven years ago, when we made Tremors 1, we never thought there’d be a Tremors 2, let alone a Tremors 3. It wasn’t like Star Wars, where Lucas wrote all six episodes before he made the first one. When we got the chance to do the second and third films, we just studied them to try to make the new stories consistent with what we’d done earlier (except for the Graboid/Shrieker conversion factor).
Bixby is the town we’ve never seen that’s somewhere near Perfection. Here you have to re-study your Tremors 1. We explain in that movie that Perfection is in a valley hemmed in by mountains except at one end. The Graboid hatching area is at the other end. So, the Graboids pass through Perfection to get out of the valley. They’d probably like to go to Bixby, but our people always kill’em before they get that far! Tremors 3’s El Blanco stays around because, as Miguel says, he’s got a “thing” for Burt.
We had an idea here that we didn’t work into dialogue. Jodi Chang got rid of abandoned buildings and trailers, and cleaned up the old junk yard in trying to attract tourists. Why doesn’t Melvin still live in Perfection? Obviously, he hates it! That’s what he tells Burt, “I wouldn’t wish this place on anybody!”
Well, yes it is, you sharp-eyed fans. Here again, we wanted to work in lines explaining that Jodi moved the junkyard (and Nestor’s trailer, etc.) further from Perfection to make the town more attractive. With all the other character information we needed to work in, and always facing length problems, we had to drop these ideas from the final script.
Well, it was in a scene in Tremors 3. But that had to be cut to make our budget. He was going to use it to fire a shell into the canyon where the Shriekers are morphing into ABs. We had to change it to just throwing a bomb.
Yeah, we talked about putting that back up. But we had more scenes in the basement than we did in Tremors 2 and the darn thing is so huge, it would have been hard to work around (we had to shoot all the basement scenes in one day). So we decided Burt got tired of it and took it down.
Very good question. We don’t know! Except for the basement, we’ve never written a scene set in any other part of the house. I guess we feel Burt spends a lot of time in his basement, especially since Heather moved out.
Boy, you fans don’t miss much. Yes, again to save money, we lifted a scene of the Graboid bursting out of the ground and another of one moving the dirt around the rocks and used them again. Hey, at least we only stole from ourselves. It’s not like we stole the flying saucer from Forbidden Planet like they did in those old Twilight Zones.
Hey, we even get comments on the behind the scenes material on the DVD! Keeping us honest, a scientifically oriented fan pointed out that the real-life bombardier beetle (on which the ABs are based) does not use its chemical explosion ability for flight, but rather as a defense mechanism to startle would-be attackers. That’s correct. But it’s not as cool.
One fan says the population number on the sign is wrong. It’s says “five” but he counts only four: Burt, Jodi, Jack, and Buford. Not quite right. It actually it works out like this: Jack and Buford are newcomers and weren’t counted in the latest town census. The actual five members at the start of Tremors 3 are: Burt, Jodi, Miguel, Nancy and Mindy. Melvin, of course, moved out years ago.
Nope. Universal decided not to produce one for this installment. It’s almost like they were testing you guys to see if you would find out about a movie with no advertising at all. You did. The movie is outsold all their predictions. Many thanks to you fans, but there’s still no poster. Dang.
The reason we had Miguel get killed was that we wanted the audience to take the Ass Blasters seriously. Otherwise, they could have easily thought of them as funny creatures (which, given their method of propulsion, they are.) Unfortunately, we love Tony Genaro (the actor that played Miguel) and now we’re trying to figure out how we might be able to have him reappear every now and then in the TV series (as another character, of course.)
Fans continue to suggest new firepower for Burt to pack (a few naming exotics even our gun research hasn’t turned up!) One fan noted that Burt has now run out of ammo in two movies and should learn from his mistake. Here’s our justification for his running out in Tremors 3: He had hundreds of extra rounds in his truck, but had to sacrifice it to lead El Blanco away. Then it blew up. So he was left with what he could grab in the moment.
Burt of course has a following from all three films, but Susan Chuang and Shawn Christian won the affection of fans, too, who want to know more about them. Susan is a sometime stand-up comic and has a semi-regular role on Dharma and Greg. Shawn just finished a TV pilot. Let’s hope it gets on the air!
Interesting, many fans have e-mailed this question. But if one stays true to the Tremors rules, it’s hard to see how it would work. Graboids are not strong enough to break through most concrete, so they couldn’t come up through most streets. They’re attracted to sound, but a city has constant noise from thousands of sources, so they might not be able to hunt at all. They might be “blinded” by all the racket. A Graboid might be a temporary threat in a place like New York’s Central park, eating bikers, joggers, and horseback riders. But it would be pretty easy to track it down and kill it in such a confined area. So we think Grabids, if they ever tunnel into the cinema world again, will probably stick to the country side. Now – if some Shriekers got into the sewer system and started eating all the rats. Hmmm.
Yep, our theory is that Jodi had it taken up and graded. It was too expensive to repave. You’ll notice she had a lot of other things in the town cleaned up, too, like the old mining equipment that was across the street.
This isn’t really a question but some Burt fans were horrified that we blew up the house of the infamous gun-wall. Other fans pointed out that if we’re lucky enough for Burt to come back, he’ll rebuild an awesome place that is Graboid, Shrieker, and A-B proof.
Yes, that was part of the fun of making the third film.
ABs, the Graboid life-cycle form into which Shriekers metamorphose, are three to four feet high at the “shoulder” and five to six feet long.
Burt’s weapon is a modified Ruger mini-14 Ranch Rifle, reconfigured using a “bull-pup” design stock. Semi-automatic, stainless steel, it is basically a scaled down version of the military’s M-14, but fires the cartridge used in our army’s M-16.
Miguel was Catholic and the rosary beads were part of his religious beliefs. Burt meant only to keep them safe in order to later give them to Miguel’s family members.
Well, we never really thought of it! Actually we already had great concerns about killing Miguel. We were afraid fans might object. But we also felt it was good to remind people that the danger in Tremors is real, that anything might happen. Wouldn’t it be too cruel to kill two of our original characters in the same movie?
[This reply came from T-3 director Brent Maddock:] The song, such as it is, is, I believe, just something Keven Kiner [T-3 composer] had or threw together. There was no way we could afford an actual song by a real metal band. Maybe Kevin has a name for it. I don’t know.
Underneath. We may reveal in the future how they decide where to lay them.
Melvin got into real estate and has been buying and selling land not only in Perfection Valley, but in nearby Bixby. Even though he was sort of a lazy kid (Tremors 1), he got his act together and started working really hard once he hit his 20s.
This is where those history and political science classes really pay off. Eminent Domain is the right of a government to take private property for public use by virtue of the superior dominion of the sovereign power over all lands within its jurisdiction. (A very hot topic for Burt)
Throughout history governments have used the concept of eminent domain to justify everything from the taking of a single house to huge sections of a country often resorting to a political upheaval or war. In 1903 President Roosevelt used eminent domain as the justification for taking the Panama Canal from Colombia. It was a strategic section of land to the US so Roosevelt went down to Colombia and took it. The Louisiana Purchase, the Spanish American War and the taking of land from the American Indians are all examples of the use of eminent domain by the US government.
We still see eminent domain used today but most often it involves a city or county government buying houses and tearing them down to build a road, airport or other public facility.
Burt has had two military trucks, one in T-2 and one in T-3. We rented the second one from Valuzet movie ranch (they have many military vehicles). We had only one, no multiples, since we were not doing any stunts or driving which might damage it.
Good question. There’s a spare room in Chang’s market. Maybe he stayed there. Or, being Burt, maybe he slept in an Army tent on his property.
Come ON people! Burt is ready for anything, and that includes floods. Okay, less sarcastically, Burt also lives not too far from Lake Mead. He might occasionally feel the need to get out on the water, eh?
Well… yes and no. He refused to sell it, but soon after that you may remember that Dr. Merliss was killed by Shriekers. Jodi then quietly “appropriated” it for the store. Jack later convinced her the right thing to do was send it to the organization for which Dr. Merliss was doing his research. She cut them a good deal.
Only one.
Their infrared vision would be temporarily blinded, but there’d be no permanent damage. If they stared at the sun for a long time, it might damage their sensors, but what animal is going to do that?
Jack was living in one of the outbuildings of town, not clearly seen in the movie. Buford lived in Bixby, driving up on the days Jack had tours.
No, that Graboid was still relatively intact after the explosion. Like others, it was eventually dug up and sent off for scientific study.
Here again, you fans get into details that are sometimes a bit hard to answer. If you’re seeing a difference between El Blanco and normal Graboids, it’s probably because of the different coloring on his white skull. If you’re seeing a difference between the CGI El Blanco and the full scale mechanical El Blanco, it’s possibly due to differences in “real” lighting and “CG” lighting. Or maybe we just didn’t get them matched closely enough.
It didn’t work out. Jack got tired of life in the tiny town while Jodi remained absolutely dedicated to making a success of her uncle’s store. They parted company, amicably, when he sold his tour business to Tyler.
If you mean the trailer that Val pulled behind the bulldozer to get the townsfolk to the mountains, it’s still out in the desert by the rock where the bulldozer fell into the Graboid trap. No one saw any need to drag it all the way back to town.
There is a limit on how often an AB can “blast off” in a short period of time. It has to generate the flammable chemicals in its abdomen, which it then ignites. That said, under the right conditions, a flying AB which is staying airborne like a glider, using updrafts and thermals, is able to fire a second, or even third burst, and thereby gain greater altitude, achieving very long flights.
The programs used to create the Tremors CG creatures are either custom-designed by the special effects CG programmers, or were heavily modified versions of then-existing CG software. To build your own three dimensional monsters or characters, you should research the commercial software that is available today. It changes all the time.
Burt is extreme, but not insane. Level One Security wouldn’t do anything like open fire on trespassers. However, it would send a coded signal to Burt’s cell phone, as well as to Chang’s market, signaling that unauthorized personnel were on site. In addition, tear gas and pepper spray bombs might “accidentally” get set off in the event of attempted forced entry.
Burt disdained its low rate of fire and short range.
If we’re talking about the same case (the one she is cleaning as she talks to Jack), there are Graboid hood ornaments (like on Jack’s jeep), and Graboid beer glasses, mugs, ball caps, t-shirts and buttons.
Ah, you sharp-eyed fans. Yes, to say the true, it’s a mistake; what we call a “continuity error.” The live action of the actors approaching the full-sized AB on the fence was shot weeks or months away from when the CG AB was animated falling onto the fence. I’m sure director Brent Maddock felt it looked better with the head visible on top of the fence – and we all hoped no one would notice the difference. Dream on, eh?
How do you people make these connections?? No, it isn’t; at least I don’t think it is, but it would have made sense for that truck to end up there, and would have been totally cool if we’d thought of it.
I believe it was because, while we had the rights to use Sigfried and Roy in Tremors 3, we could not get the same permission for the series. The series was very low budget, so it may have been that we couldn’t afford to pay for them, but I don’t know for sure. I just remember being told by higher-ups, “You can’t use Sigfried and Roy. Make up some other name.”
We feel that they die after laying their one egg.
They got into their van, and were ready to run for it, then realized Burt had it under control.
The potato gun is technically real, but it would be really dangerous to try it the way we had the characters in the movie do it. When ours shoots it’s just an optical special effect, much safer than using an explosive or flammable fuel!
Sorry! We don’t know! Some old wreck our set dressers found out in the desert I guess. Can any car-buff fans help us out on this one? The old car appears at about 15:45 into the movie, but the shot is pretty dark.
Well, actually they did eat Miguel. We had some shots showing his demise in more detail, but decided they were too gory and took them out.
Well — these are supposed to be family movies. He was definitely a creepy guy, but we don’t like to think he was really THAT creepy.
Well —— sure. Why not? AB hunting dogs. Gotta love how fans think!
Well, we’re not sure. There are many unanswered questions about Graboid biology. For example, why were they seen in the late 1800s, then not again until the 1990s? Were their eggs dormant all that time? Unfortunately, nearly all Graboids have been killed (so far) each time they’ve appeared, so El Blanco is an anomaly. Our best guess is that he/she can live more than fifty years. We’ll have to wait and see.
We need help from the fans on this one. Do two ABs fight in any of our movies?
We’re not sure where this fascination with members of the Graboid life cycle attacking each other is coming from. But of course, in the case of Tremors 3, it is our fault, since we had Jack TRICK El Blanco into eating an AB. That said, we don’t think El Blanco would be changed in any significant way, except maybe for getting indigestion. He wouldn’t end up with mangled AB/Graboid DNA or anything. He would simply digest the AB and move on to his next meal.
We do try to work out the details on every bit of action. Note that Burt takes cover inside an oil drum as he is swallowed. So a little air is trapped with him. He mentions that he has “limited air” on the radio. Also, a person can survive at least three minute without air. From the time he is swallowed til the time he is cut out of the Graboid is 3 minutes and about 14 seconds, actual screen time, although in “movie” time it does feel longer. Finally, Burt plans for everything, and has probably done breath-holding exercises like deep sea free divers, right?
We have not heard these rumors, but this is an excellent theory! We can only hope that Rhonda or another Graboid researcher will put it to the test. Perhaps by sampling El Blanco’s DNA?
Hey, our movies are PG13! That’s Jack and Jodi’s secret — if there is a secret.
We LOVE Tremors fans. All these years later you are still coming up with provocative questions. Yes, technically it is possible that, when El Blanco’s jaws crushed the AB, the chemicals would mix and explode. But we would argue that it is equally possible that the chemicals would be mixed first with blood and other fluids (not to be too graphic) and then be too diluted to explode. But you have a point. El Blanco probably got lucky.
We were open to it, but Fred was not. Some actors are not interested in playing the same character over and over.
Okay, wow. This seems like less of a question and more of an idea for a whole new direction for ABs and Tremors franchise. Sadly, we at Stampede aren’t working on Tremors any longer, so — uh, maybe?
Like most movies, Tremors 3 was shot in several different locations and we just made it look like they were near by each other. If you are talking about the town site itself, it was near Valencia, California, actually not too far from Interstate 5, north of Los Angeles. We shot on private land, so it could have been bought, sold, or even developed by now. None of us have ever been back out there!
There were many props to fill the shelves of Jodi Chang’s store, since the plot had her selling Graboid memorabilia. We believe Universal auctioned some of it for charity soon after production ended. Other items were sold by individual cast/crew a different times. But, except for stuff that might turn up on eBay, nothing is “officially” for sale any more.
We really had to think about this question. We did not intentionally break the fourth wall by having the tourist say something they really wouldn’t say (sort of like winking at the audience or talking right to the camera). We put the line in because we’d learned that many Tremors fans call Graboids “tremors,” as in, “The tremor crashes up through the floor.” Since Tremors 3 is about Graboids becoming a tourist attraction, the line seemed totally logical to us. But THEN we thought, oh wait, in the movie world of Tremors, there isn’t a movie called Tremors, so why would anyone use that term? The question is correct! We did break the fourth wall! But wait, how about this? Before Tremors 3 takes place, there were obviously many articles and TV stories about Graboids, and some of them no doubt had titles like “Mysterious Tremors Rock Small Nevada Town.” Or, maybe Rhonda LeBeck’s first scientific report was called, “Incredible Source of Mysterious Ground Tremors Identified.” So, we feel we can claim we dodged the bullet. Great question, though!
Question part one: We don’t know the specific reasons Fred didn’t want to return. These conversations are had between agents and managers and not in person. So you don’t get much back other than something like, “Fred doesn’t feel this project is right for him at this time.”
Question part two: Thanks for the praise of Tremors 4! We had great fun making it, and Michael had a blast playing the opposite of Burt.
We think El Blanco is still be living in Perfection and is still occasionally being glimpsed by excited tourists. Sadly, we no longer have any say in what happens with the Tremors franchise, so can’t really answer this question.
For this one I had to go back to the script to see what we intended. In the script it says the AB lands on the roof behind them, they look out of their box, see it, and run. But I re-watched the scene and the AB does seem to fly down as though it knows right where they are. So, I checked with director Brent Maddock, and he replied with just one word to the second part of the question (was the box heated over time by their bodies):
YES!!!!
In all honesty, we don’t remember why we shot it the way we did, except that it probably seemed more dramatic than, “they look out and see the AB.” My hope is we were thinking it was sort of an accident that the AB hit the box.
Well… dang it, this is a valid question. In the script we tried to write it so that you didn’t know what Mindy was doing for a few minutes; then you find out what she’s done. But sometimes you get into the editing room and realize don’t have the footage you need to make the idea work. We loved the idea of Mindy being smart and using the microwave, and didn’t want to cut it. But there was no way to make it work realistically. We couldn’t have the AB just stand there doing nothing for five minutes. And we hadn’t shot any other action to allow for the time really needed. So we had to go with what we had and hope no one would ask this question!!
Now, on big expensive movies you can go back and re-shoot scenes, or shoot new scenes to solve problems. But on our low budget, that was never an option. Most of the time our sets were torn down just days, or even hours, after we left a location. If we didn’t catch mistakes while we were shooting, we had to do the best we could in the editing room.
All excuses aside, I timed it, and the ham is in the microwave for almost FIVE whole seconds! So there!
The things you people notice!!! We checked, and we admit the crashed truck is different from Burt’s “real” truck. Certainly its wheels and rims are totally different. That said, none of us can remember why! Yes, probably it was a budget issue, it being perhaps the closest wrecked truck the transportation team could find with limited money and time. We now assume that none of us noticed how different it was, or possibly that transpo asked if it was close enough and we said yes. Director Brent Maddock adds that he does not remember being asked about it at the time, and certainly didn’t realize it when we shot.
I will say, at least, that the wrecked truck is black and clearly is not Miguel’s green Ford 150!
Truthfully, the life cycle evolved with Universal offering us more movies. While we implied that a shrieker might grow into a graboid, we left it open, giving ourselves the freedom to come up with a new form if we got the green light for Tremors 3. At that time Universal insisted that Tremors 3 would be the last movie, and that there was absolutely no financial incentive to do more. So we decided to close the life cycle loop and have ABs be the egg layers. So, yes, ABs are technically the “adult” stage, even though graboids seem more “adult.” Ironically, very soon thereafter Universal asked us for Tremors 4 and SyFy asked us for the series. Had we known all THAT was going to happen, maybe we could have invented a 4th form of graboid!
Well, we always tried to make the tone of our Tremors movies that delicate balance between scary and sometimes funny. In the case of T3, it definitely tipped a little bit more toward funny. As for the ABs, we did argue about what to call them, but in the end felt the name worked because entrepreneur Jodi Chang comes up with it. Not that everybody agrees with us!
We had to ask around about this one. We think it’s a reference to something that happened in Tremors 5, which we did not work on. If so, we can only say that after Tremors 4, all the creature rules and comedy/horror rules we tried to keep consistent have apparently been thrown out by the current filmmakers. Fans have told us the movies are now farcical comedies.
We assume this question refers to Tremors 3, in which Burt’s watch plays a key role. Sadly, it’s also a question whose answer has slipped away over time. Even director Brent Maddock does not remember the brand of the watch. If any fans recognize it, please let us know!
Dec 2023 update. A helpful fan did just that! Burt’s watch in Tremors 3 is a version of the Storm Navigator.
It was both, but a bit more the former I guess. We always like to look at what would really happen (even in a fantasy situation) and we felt that clearly people would rise up to protect the super rare graboids. But the fact that graboids turn into shriekers presented a problem; they technically have a pretty short life span as graboids. That’s when we hit upon the idea of El Blanco. And that led to the idea that he could just stay in the valley indefinitely.
It’s not a continuity error. We were aware of the issue. There’s often an editorial struggle between real time and movie time. We tried to address it by putting in the dissolve to night (where the light comes on) and having Burt say “What’s taking Jack so long?” Also, the battle with the ABs does go on for quite a while. But as far as “movie time” goes, yes it does not really feel like hours have passed, so you can argue we didn’t get away with it.
ABs, like shriekers, are hermaphroditic, so there are no males or females and no mating. They are “born” with the single egg they will eventually lay already in place.
It was an excuse to have a Graboid around because WE loved them. When we got the green light for Tremors 3, we had many discussions about how to expand on the series but keep fun elements. We were happy when we came up with El Blanco.
We felt like it was important to try different things with each movie. We had seen Walter Chang get pulled into a Graboid in Tremors 1. And we had seen the oil worker swallowed in Tremors 2. So in Tremors 3 we thought it would be more fun and fresh to have Buford just disappear, then reappear in a graboid’s mouth. So for a few seconds maybe some viewers are thinking, “What happened? Where did that guy go?”
Good question. And actually a two part question. ABs are the most rarely seen form of the graboid life cycle and there’s very little hard evidence on their abilities. Since, after they launch, they glide, their range-per-launch is highly variable. Normally a flight is less than a mile, but with the right conditions they can catch thermals and glide for extreme distances (many miles). With multiple launches, they can theoretically cover hundreds of miles. But they probably don’t. That’s why part two of the question is significant: It is believed graboid eggs require geothermal heat to hatch. That means the options an AB has for laying its egg are VERY limited. What they probably do is circle the area in which they were “born” trying to find the location where their parent graboids hatched.
We only know what has been documented about the animals. The odd thing about graboids is that their life cycle is more like an insect’s than like other large vertebrate animals. For example, a mosquito goes from egg to larva, to pupa, to adult mosquito. Graboid to shrieker to ass blaster is similar. Why graboids evolved in this way scientists just don’t know. Only Mother Nature has the answer.
We assume you mean the ones on the counter in front of Jodie. They are auto hood ornaments, like the one you see on the hood of Desert Jack’s truck.
Ah, but Burt also points out that shriekers multiply just by eating. If a shrieker gets enough food, it splits into two shriekers. When Jodie asks how ther can be more of them, Burt points out that they are probably eating small animals; so two shriekers ate enough to split, resulting in the total of eight.
I discussed this with T3 director Brent Maddock. He does not remember any time he was on an actual T2 location. I don’t remember the comment you refer to, but I THINK what I may have meant was that the two movies were shot in the same GENERAL area north of Los Angeles. When we shot T2, there had been a record wet year and everything was very green. When we shot T3, the same area was more typical: dry and brown. I don’t think there are two scenes that were literally shot in the same spot. Sorry for sending you on a wild goose chase.
OMG, never thought about it! So we’ll have to make a semi-educated guess. Given that they sold it privately to Las Vegas entertainers with a major animal act, we think they got top dollar. While their sale was legal, ILLEGAL rare animal sales can be 10,000, 20,000 or more (even for dead animal parts). So, let’s say Nancy and Mindy got maybe 30,000 or 40,000, or maybe more!
We learn more interesting things from our FAQ questions! And maybe we’ll keep our distance from Muscovy ducks! That said, the ABs were designed to look like they could reasonably “hatch” from shriekers, but be leaner and capable of gliding. That shaking movement came from the inventive animators and HimAnI Productions. We don’t think they were thinking of ducks.
What specific questions! I’m afraid no one now knows, if anyone ever did. Michael Gross probably just made something up. He may even have just tapped something different for each take of that shot at the door, since we knew we’d see it only once in the final movie. What I love about the shot is Michael making sure to hide the keypad, because that’s what Burt would totally do!
No, the situation didn’t come up. While S. S. Wilson directed 2nd unit on Tremors 3, we never needed a full Burt double for the 2nd unit shots.
No. As a born and bred American she has only distant ties to her ancestral heritage.
ABs don’t need as much food as shriekers, and don’t live as long. They have to survive only long enough to find a good spot to lay their single graboid egg. So while there could be a vestigial remnant of the long shrieker tongue somewhere down in an ABs throat, they have to rely solely on their infrared vision to find prey.
Yes, of course it is partly for dramatic impact. After all, it’s a movie. But we do have logic; when a graboid gets large prey like a person, it often (not always) surfaces so as to be able to swallow its meal without also gulping an unpleasant amount of dirt.
Burt is holding one of his boots when he emerges from the cut-open graboid, but the idea (perhaps not totally clear) was that it got pulled off in the violence of being swallowed, not that he took it off on purpose. But, Burt being Burt, he wasn’t going to leave a good mil-spec boot behind in there.
Uh… nope. That idea never crossed our minds.
It was partly a budget question and partly a “reality” question. The full scale graboids take a very long time to set up and work with (with your full crew standing around getting paid). We had less than half the budget and time for Tremors 3 than we had on Tremors 1. So we decided to experiment with some CGI because it could be done after the main shoot and would allow us to, for example, see El Blanco come further out of the ground, or have an AB burst through a door into the middle of the room all in one shot. That said, it was early CG days and we know fans weren’t thrilled with how some of the shots came out.
Long question, but certainly valid! Yes, the press and the scientific community would definitely have had to tone down Jodi’s graphic impromptu name. It’s not something we thought about even going into the TV series. Internally we just call them ABs, but it does seem folks would have wanted something more descriptive. Not sure shrieker or graboid in the name works. Thunderbird might be an option, but one would have to check how that would square with Native Americans. At the moment we confess we’re stumped for something better. Maybe more fans can chime in?
You know, we were wondering about that ourselves the other day. I don’t remember for sure, but I think our idea was the barrel does get swallowed. It protects Burt as he’s going down, and gives him a few minutes of air so he can talk on his walkie-talkie. I’m sure we had discussions like, “Okay, if it did get swallowed, why doesn’t Jack have to cut through it with the chain saw?” Obviously, in the end, we kind of skipped over that.
I think so. It is what director Brent Maddock would have wanted.
Well, we confess we didn’t expect to get a pro-Buford question! And, we kind of see the point. Our defense is, since we always intended the Buford character to be unlikable, we viewed him that way during writing and shooting, and perhaps weren’t aware that Mindy might come off as being unnecessarily mean.
There wasn’t really any avant garde to it (despite director Brent Maddock’s love of French film). In hearing reactions to Tremors 2, the one thing audiences consistently said they missed was the ensemble nature of the town in the first movie. So when we got the go-ahead for the 3rd film, we knew for sure we were going to return to Perfection and bring back as many cast members as possible. Then we just chose to explore how things would be different when the world knows that graboids exist. Hence: graboid tours and government interference.
We were so busy, once we worked out the story, we had to hand off script writing duties to the capable John Whelpley. We hassled him with lots of notes and changes as we worked through the process of getting to the final shooting script, so it’s possible there are other versions floating around out there. They might differ in details or scenes, but would not be drastically different from the basic story.
Well… we don’t think it is. He (literally) came from the same molds as the earlier ones. It may be an illusion due to his being pale, or perhaps due to how Brent Maddock and DP Virgil Harper chose to shoot him (like using wider lenses, or doing more close-ups, etc).
Our intention was not that the characters were surprised the AB could fly, but rather that it could launch itself via its bizarre built-in chemical rocket. But that might not be clear.
The general consensus is that graboids and their subsequent forms are not cannibalistic. El Blanco would not eat his own kind.
Yes, it would not have been wrong for someone, maybe Jodie, to comment on the wings and ask the question. But given the evolution of the graboids up to that point, it still seems an unlikely thing for someone to expect. Also, we feel their surprise is as much about HOW the ABs take off as the fact that they fly/glide.
Just covers. And no, Universal never pursued or authorized licensed comics as far as we know.
I think we talked about a quad mount, but budget and/or availability may have reduced us to the twin mount. And am not up enough on hardware to know which model!
Absolutely.
Dramatic effect. We are always trying to make explosions look spectacular. And we always shoot with multiple cameras. Editors often use the different angles to “extend” the blast. It’s not very realistic, but at least in Burt’s case we can justify it by assuming he had stashes of many different flammable, volatile and explosive materials going off at different times.
The situation is, Burt and the others are desperate to kill the shriekers in the box canyon behind them before they multiply any further. But they can’t hunt the shriekers with with El Blanco near by. So Burt uses his truck to lure El Blanco away.
It’s an interesting theory, though doesn’t make for as scary a monster. Our defense would be, having just emerged from their shreiker chrysalis, they are very aggressive until they get enough food.
Questions about Tremors 4
We thought it would be cool for the prequel to take place exactly 100 years before we shot Tremors 1 (1989). And we knew you’d demand an explanation. After the end of T-4, Hiram and Christine settled in Hiram’s new house. He eventually became an excellent marksman and they lived well on the proceeds from the silver mine (some of which Burt inherited). Later, when it came time to incorporate the town, Nevada bureaucrats decided that, even though people had lived there since 1889, they’d make the official founding date 1902, the year of incorporation Hiram objected, but was overruled. He was so angry that he and Christine pulled up stakes and moved to San Francisco, never to return. Thus began the generations-long Gummer distrust of Big Government.
We don’t know exactly when Black Hand was born, but we think he was around fifty when he met his fate in the gaping maw of a Graboid.
This was a place where mule teams were changed on the heavy ore and equipment wagons going to and from the mines. One set of animals couldn’t make the long trips, so the station was set up at a half way point — an old West gas station.
The town was built on the Polsa Rolsa Ranch in Acton, CA. It was torn down immediately after shooting wrapped – the sad fate of all Perfections. We also shot the camp site and hot spring scenes on that land.
The mine (interior and exterior) was the famous Bronson Cave in Hollywood where zillions of movies have been shot. We had to add some fake walls inside the real mine to make it smaller and more claustrophobic.
Carson City was Calico Ghost town, near Barstow, CA. This is also where we shot most of the wide Western vistas of various characters riding their horses, as well as Hiram returning in the wagon.
The muling station (interior and exterior) was an existing barn we found on the Valuzet movie ranch, north of Los Angeles. We modified the barn to fit our story’s needs.
Long time fans and readers of the FAQ know the answer: Of course not. It’s not big enough business for Universal to bother with. However, keep checking the Stampede site. We may be able to pull something off like we did for Tremors 1.
We shot it in 25 days. The budget was under 5 million dollars. Only a very creative hardworking crew makes it possible to get this quality on that budget.
Hmm… actually we don’t think they are. In fact, we made the Graboids in T-4 smart because many fans had written saying that they liked how the Graboids in T-1 learned things and changed their behavior, and they didn’t see as much of that in T-2 or T-3. So we made sure to add “smartness moments” into T-4. We didn’t mean to make them smarter, but maybe it seems that way. Maybe modern day Graboids are adversely affected by environmental pollution which wasn’t present in the Old West?
In truth it was a lucky accident. Sara Botsford, who happens to be a natural red-head, gave a marvelous reading for a role on the TV series. As soon as we got the green light for T-4 we knew she would be a perfect Christine. We never read anyone else for the part.
I’m not quite sure what this means. The Graboid puppets technically are not animatronic. They are not controlled by computers or motors, but by people power, using cables. The full scale Graboid for Tremors 4 was mounted on a new rig built by KNB FX which gave us greater mobility than we’ve had in the past. We do feel that such a large creature shouldn’t move too quickly, or it would start look fake. Maybe that’s why it looks slow to some people.
You know what? In the rush to get T-4 done, we never came up with one. If only we could’ve asked Walter Chang. But one fan has suggested “Grablits.” What do you think? Hop over to Stampede FanTalk and let us know.
Because we thought you’d all get a kick out of it! We put as many “in jokes” in T-4 as we could, without breaking the rules we’ve set up or making it silly.
You guys are relentless. Well, the cynical answer is, “Because we couldn’t afford less.” The Los Angeles area locations in which we shot T-2 and T-3 were not available for T-4. We investigated shooting the whole movie out in the real desert (like Lone Pine, where we shot Tremors 1), but the budget would not allow it. So we had to find new land close to LA. The Polsa Rolsa ranch we selected has a lot more vegetation than even the ranch we used in T-2 — so that’s why.
However, a kindly fan has provided a different (and less cynical) answer below:
It could be as simple as a geological shift. We know there are hot springs in the area, as well as many interesting geological hiccups and burps that the geology students were studying in modern day. A slight shift could lower the water table in the Perfection area, thus leaving modern day Perfection much drier than it was 100 years ago!
Juan (Brent Roam) is an ancestor of Miguel (Tony Genaro) in Tremors 1. Miguel’s family inherited the cattle ranch that Juan dreamed of building, and finally did build after the end of Tremors 4.
Unfortunately (like so many other merchandise-related things) Universal no longer makes posters for video stores any more. So they don’t exist.
This is where the reality of a location and the reality of what you actually film bites you in the butt. In real-world reality there was a very steep drop-off just beyond the edge of town. When the stage coach and Hiram’s wagon enter town, they are driving along the edge of it; which is why they don’t just come straight into town. When we chose the location, we thought, “Great, we don’t have to use many telegraph poles because they’ll just disappear down in the valley below the drop off.” In fact, on film, you can’t really tell the valley is there, hence, it looks like the poles just stop short. Our bad.
No, Hiram and Christine eventually left (see the question about the town’s founding date) and no Gummers lived in the Valley until Burt and Heather returned. As they became more extreme survivalists during the Cold War (see your history books) they decided to move to a truly isolated place. Burt was aware of his great-grandfather’s roots in the valley, so he and Heather investigated it among others. It proved perfect for their needs. They actually re-acquired the land on which Hiram built his original house, and that is where Burt’s house, or at least his basement, stands today.
You’re right. Universal feels Tremors sells itself, so they do next to nothing. That’s one reason it’s so hard to find Tremors 4, even now.
Fans in the U.S., count yourselves lucky. We have called and emailed Universal for weeks trying to confirm they did not put the special features on Tremors 4 DVDs for UK, but have had no reply. If it is true, it’s really an insult to that part of the DVD audience. We busted out butts to make the special features for Tremors 4 the best since the Tremors 1 collector’s edition. We’re very sorry our UK fans aren’t getting to see them!
You mean in like miles per hour? We’re not exactly sure. What we wrote in the script was that they leap like salmon. Maybe 30 mph?
Yes, but they are rudimentary and non-functioning, just a small “bud” at the back of the throat. KNB actually made them part of the mini-Graboids they built, but you can’t see them in the film. The bud expands into full fledged tentacles as the animal grows to full size.
For the most part, our actors had no trouble with the T-4 firearms. Sarah Botsford had a little difficulty getting the Gatling Gun loaded, (you can see that in the DVD gag reel). All the weapons, including the vintage Gatling gun, performed flawlessly.
He’s not, at least not as far as we know. We figured there must be some people who were not ancestors of our Tremors 1 townsfolk.
Yes, you caught us again. That was the first Graboid sequence we shot after finding out we couldn’t dig Graboid holes on our location, so we were scrambling to find ways to make it look like they came out of the ground and went back in. It was the best we could do under the circumstances.
Come on, think about it! It was BURT! We felt that Hiram should meet someone who would put him, and future Gummers, on the path of rugged, independent, slightly paranoid survivalists. Writer Scott Buck took that idea and expanded it into Black Hand. Actor Billy Drago brought his own special touches to the character.
No, no, no. The bullets are never real in Hollywood. At least almost never. They were special blanks made to work in that beautiful 100 year old gun.
S.S. Wilson’s original research found punt guns with bores as large as 1.5 inches so in keeping with true Burt philosophy he designed the Tremors 4 punt gun to have a larger two inch bore. Tremors fan Christian Willis researched this topic further and found that according to the Gun Barrel Proof Act of 1868, the largest size is, “A Gauge”, which is in fact a two inch bore. The Tremors 4 Punt gun does appear to be historically accurate!
Here’s all the info courtesy of T-4 Propmaster, Bill Davis. The gun itself features an internally mounted H&R 12 gague single shot shotgun. The entire trigger assembly drops down to permit reloading. The total weight of the gun is 94 pounds. The overall length of the gun is 8 feet 4 inches. We used triple loaded blanks on the set as well as spraying WD-40 in the barrel to produce extra smoke.
Actually they do have spikes, but only along the edge, (look closely at the one Juan kills with his pick axe). The bigger Graboids need more spikes to move their large mass through the dirt.
Sort of. That was a very complicated shot, and we only had one chance to get it right. We duplicated the entire telegraph room on top of two steel shipping containers (the big ones they put on ships) so we’d have space to work underneath. The entire floor was made of super delicate balsa wood. You couldn’t stand on it. You could barely touch it and it would break. So we had to “fly” Brent Roam’s stunt double on cables above the floor. When the puppeteers smashed the Graboid through from below, the stunt crew tried to yank the double up at the same speed so it would look like he was carried up by the Graboid. Unfortunately, the Graboid got a little hung up and our Juan double flew up faster. Linda Drake’s visual effects people worked really hard to try to blend the action together (by adding dust and boards and trying to digitally move Juan and the Graboid closer together) but you can still tell if you look closely – and you fans always look closely, don’t you! By the way, in all the closer shots that’s really Brent Roam doing his own stunts. He loved riding the Graboid.
Well, there’s quite a gap in Tremors history between the late 1800s and the late 1900s. There are many unanswered questions. Our reasonably good guess is that the statue probably got sold off by a Chang descendent. Genuine cigar store Indians have become more and more valuable over time.
It happens when they’re just slightly longer than the ones we see in the movie. They lose the plates and go into a semi-dormant phase during which all their energy goes into growing very fast.
They are similar, but shorter and fatter, like fat slugs; almost colorless and slimy. They remain fairly inactive for a time after hatching, waiting for their protective armor to harden. Then they start feeding aggressively and grow quite rapidly to the 4-5 foot stage.
That would’ve been cool, but we just like the name Hiram because it sounded old fashioned and very un-Burt like.
No, but you are correct that it’s in about the same spot as Nancy’s house. After Hiram and Christine left, the hotel fell into disrepair. A few years later, like so many structures of the old west, it burned to the ground. Arson was suspected but could not be proven.
We like to think so.
We don’t think so. Nestor moved to Nevada from back East. His family was not from the West.
It was buried along with all other evidence of the “dirt dragons.” Remember, at that time, the people of Perfection did not want the world to know about the creatures.
No. To be clear, Hiram is given a Gatling gun, which is an early version of a machine gun. The cannon Burt refers to is a replica of a Civil War cannon (single shot, muzzle loaded). It can be fired with a fuse, which is why he has fuse on hand.
Okay, long question. Long answer! To be honest we didn’t put a lot of thought into it. We were getting excited about returning to present day and finding Graboids in Australia (Tremors 5). But, as avid faq readers know, that didn’t happen.
In any case, here’s what I think. For a time, everyone made money, since Perfection was an active boom town, ballooning to several thousand residents. Pyong and Lu Wan saw their store rebuilt (with real walls this time). Juan rose to foreman in the mine, wisely putting every penny he made into improving his paid-off ranchland.
Inevitably the silver played out and Perfection went the way of so many other boom towns, shrinking almost overnight, never to return to its glory days. But it was never abandoned. There was always a core of hardworking residents. Juan took over his ranch and turned full time to raising cattle. Decades later, the ranch would be owned by Miguel.
Chang’s market never closed. Pyong and Lu Wan gamely ran their store well into the next century when Fu Yien did indeed take it over, with Walter following him.
Perfection was not helped by its geographic isolation. Due to the mountains and the cliffs, to this day there is only the one road into the valley. The road wasn’t even paved until the 1950s, when there was increased activity in town due to the nuclear weapons testing in Nevada. Even then, the use of Federal funds to pave the road was denounced as government pork for a “road to nowhere.” Government money and personnel disappeared with end of testing and the Cold War, and Perfection was once again a lonely outpost. Burt, Heather and Nancy were relative newcomers, arriving in the 70s and 80s, respectively. Melvin’s parents used it as a second home, spending most of their time in Vegas.
So, that’s a bit of the history as we now know it!
Our prop man just described it as a pistol firing a 10 gauge shotgun shell. I thought maybe it was custom made. But a fan flagged it as probably a Remington Mar III flare gun dating from the late 1890s. Here’s part of what he told us: “These are Spanish American War era flare guns, and were often issued to the Navy.” [They] could have been used in the Spanish American War, or in Mexico going after Pancho Villa, or WWI. Even without the notion of a custom made gun, the design of the Mark III goes back far enough.”
Absolutely! The whole idea is that Graboids have been around a very long time, but they are so rare that they, and shriekers, and A-Bs have almost never been seen by humans. Also, the eggs incubate for years, depending on conditions. So A-Bs might have laid them decades or even a century before people arrived and established the town of Perfection of 1889.
I’m afraid we no longer know what part Sara read for in the series. If it was early, before production, she might have come in for the role of Nancy. After that, were were reading dozens of actors every week for every guest part, so it was pretty crazy. I also don’t know what Sara’s reaction was when her agent told her she’d been cast in T-4, but I know we were really happy to get her!
Man, you fans really have it in for the people of 1800s Perfection! Well, jokes aside, it would have been fun to continue the evolution in the Western version of Tremors. I’m sure the townsfolk would have come up with creative ways to fight the other incarnations. We’ve always prided ourselves on having our characters do what they can with what they’ve got. Hiram gallops across the desert dragging a burning side of beef to lure shriekers into a box canyon — where Fu Yien and Christine open up on them with the Gatling gun!
If we remember right, the bike was actually custom made for the Tremors 4 production. It had to look right for the late 1800s, and bikes were pretty different back then but isn’t a specific brand/make. After the movie it was sold at auction.
I’m embarrassed to say we did not think of that! We were shooting and writing the TV series at the same time we were shooting Tremors 4, so things were pretty crazy. Excuses aside, we now adopt this idea officially! Yes! The Ghost Dance mine is at least part of Hiram’s original silver mine!
Terribly sorry, but we just don’t remember what it was. I actually checked with the propmaster for that film, and he took the time to look through old records and invoices he still had, but couldn’t find the watch. You can be sure he chose a watch that was correct for the late 1800s period of the film, and for Hiram’s upper-crust lifestyle.
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.
The part had an interesting genesis. In the script, Black Hand was a young gunfighter. But, with many younger guys, the casting director brought in Billy Drago and said, “Wouldn’t going with him be unexpected and more interesting?” At first director S.S.Wilson was unsure of the idea, but fortunately got behind it, especially after seeing Billy read for the part. It’s been gratifying to see how well-loved the character became. As for backstory, we confess we didn’t focus on it much. We just wanted him to be legendary. That’s why Tecopa gets all wide-eyed when he sees him and says, “Black Hand Kelly?!” It sort of tells the audience all they need to know. Getting this question, I wish we had more ideas. Because he’s older, Black Hand certainly must have had many adventures and gun fights before he got to Rejection, Nevada! Prequel! The Black Hand story!
I think this means if Black Hand had not been hired by Hiram Gummer. If so, then yes, it was unfortunate for him that he took that particular assignment. He likely would have continued being a successful gunfighter.
You are 100% correct. Calico Ghost Town.
Detailed 19th century handgun question! While I don’t remember discussing it, I do feel the character Blackhand would definitely have followed this safety practice. And, expecting possible attack, might have loaded six on special occasions. On set our super-careful armorers would load only what was needed for a given take. If Blackhand was to fire one shot, then only one blank would be loaded before the gun was handed over to actor Billy Drago. Guns were never loaded at all unless needed for a given take, and then only right before the cameras rolled.
Actually, no. Black powder (the old kind of gun powder) does not explode unless it is confined inside a strong container. If lit in the open, it just burns rapidly with a kind of “whoosh” sound.
It’s actually not a bad idea. Our argument is that shooting the tentacles didn’t hurt them that much, and our characters felt that getting close enough to try to cut them would likely lead to getting grabbed and pulled into the graboid’s mouth.
This sort of seemingly odd decision is usually driven by budget concerns. A movie’s production managers are always checking and re-checking the cost of everything while you work. Sometimes it’s cheaper to keep the crew working days than to “turn around” and start shooting nights, because time/money can be wasted in the changeover.
We assume you mean where did we get the idea. It came from our constant striving to come up with new things, but stay true to the movies that came before. Having the early Perfectionists just face graboids would only be repeating the first movie with an Old West look. We wanted to have something new for fans, so that’s where baby graboids came from. It was probably writer Scott Buck who added the idea of having the Changs invent the name.
I no longer have the script (!), which probably specified his age, but about 10 or 11.
I’ve told the story before, but perhaps not in these FAQs. Universal had insisted that Tremors 3 would be the last movie in the series, so we by invented the ABs in that movie and completed the graboid life cycle. But Tremors was getting more and more popular and Universal suddenly decided they wanted Tremors 4 almost immediately (and the TV series got green lit as well). Not wanting to have to cheat and come up with some lame reason the graboids keep changing into other things after ABs, we asked if we could do a prequel western instead. They didn’t hesitate and said, “Sure!”
Questions about Tremors 5 and beyond
By now (2006) you all know the likely answer: Not likely.
Actually, it hasn’t been revealed even to us. What we learned in Tremors 5 was that ABs congregate in special geologic areas, each laying a single egg. But we never saw the actual laying in the script. Still a secret.
The script is owned by Universal. It is very unlikely that they’d let it be seen. We can’t talk about cast, characters, or cost.
All we can say, as we’ve said before, is we wish you fans were making the decisions at the studios. Unfortunately, Universal is no longer interested in Graboids of even one dimension.
Both are great ideas as far as we’re concerned. But we’re only the creators.
Nobody from the earlier movies or TV show. We’re not that blood thirsty.
It was all about the Burt you know and love in a wild new adventure. The overkill was awesome.
Yes, there was some brief, guarded interest in Tremors 5. Hollywood politics being what they are, we must be secretive about the players. We can say at present (October 2009) that Tremors 5 may not be completely dead. But it’s only un-dead, not alive. (And if it’s 2019 as you read this, and there has still been no Tremors 5, this answer is then “Yes, but it died again.”)
Sorry to have to keep saying it but, unlike Johnny Five, Tremors 5 is not alive. Someone posted a fake entry on IMDB saying it was coming out, starring the entire original cast plus people from the TV show. They even listed Stampede as the contact company (and we even got calls from some cast members and from Universal asking us what the heck was going on). But it’s just a cruel online joke by somebody. We’re trying to get IMDB to take down the post (as of August 31, 2010)
What’s up is the internet is a loopy place. No, they are not the same. The series was created on its own for SciFi (aka, ludicrously, SYFY). Tremors 5 is a screenplay about Burt’s adventures in Australia. Universal Studios has no plans to produce the movie, however.
We gotta give you credit, you all keep coming up with different approaches. Sometimes I think one of our fans will actually figure out a way to make Tremors 5. However, that said, the issue remains that Universal owns and controls all rights Tremors for all media in all forms and they do no believe there is any money to be made in creating new material. There’s no point in our discussing it with any other studio or entity, as we have no control over it.
A number of fans have asked about this. Yes, we’ve investigated it. The difficulty is that, even if we raise the money to make the movie, Universal still has to agree to distribute it — and distribution is expensive. Without their prior approval, it’s a no go. As of now (May 2013) we don’t have a clear answer from them.
Since the movie was never made, it only had a working subtitle. On the actual finished script that is “Gummer Down Under!” Somewhere along the line, we also started informally calling it “Thunder Down Under.”
Ye gads, I guess Tremors fans have started going to law school! This question raises valid legal arguments that I don’t think I can handle. But I’m pretty sure we still need Universal’s permission to use their material/characters, even if the end product is “free.”
No, the Tremors 5 script stands on its own, a new story taking place in a new location. While Burt is in it, we did not put in other Perfection townsfolk from the series or the movies. Update 2016: and fans now know that Universal ending using almost nothing from our old Tremors 5 script anyway.
We are not privy to what offers may have been made to Universal. But, while movie rights are sometimes sold by studios, such deals can end up being so expensive (because lots of fees and other charges get tacked on) that the resulting movie has to be a run-away hit to make them worth the risk.
(Posted February 2014) I know it’s a pain that I keep repeating this, but we’re really not supposed to talk about specifics of Universal’s material. If that ever changes, I’ll put the news on the Stampede site. Meantime, I’ll go this far: Burt finally got the mini-gun I always wanted him to have. (Update 2016), by now you all know that But not get a mini-gun in Tremors 5. While the movie was originally going to be based on our original T5 script, they ended up using almost nothing from it.
I can hardly believe it myself (see the many negative posts above), but after all these years there has been some discussion about Tremors 5 at Universal. As usual, the bloggers and movie websites are buzzing with fragments of this activity that have slipped out. But we can’t comment until we know more. We will post an official update here if/when we feel it’s responsible to do so.
As we approach the 25th anniversary of Tremors, we have news about Tremors 5.
Most fans are aware that Universal Studios has announced production of a new DVD sequel, being shot in South Africa. For all of us at Stampede, this is a bittersweet development in our long connection with the franchise, since we, the creators, are not involved.
Stampede has always been interested in reassembling the original Tremors creative team to produce a fresh new theatrical sequel in the Tremors voice. We attempted rights negotations with Universal for an independent theatrical film in 2012. However, the sudio passed on the option, preferring to continue the franchise with DVDs at some future date.
Early in 2014, Universal Home Video indicated that they were budgeting another sequel based on a 2004 script written by Brent Maddock and S. S. Wilson. While they pointed out that they had “no further contractual obligation” to Stampede, they did offer us Executive Producer positions. But they also made it clear that in this new even-lower budget project, the Stampede’ partners’ participation would be severely restricted, with little control over cast, director, special effects, locations, or indeed any aspect of production.
It was always only our full involvement as creators that gave us the means and incentive to reinvigorate and expand the Tremors universe with Tremors 2, 3, 4 and the series — despite the significant increasing budget limitations. Without meaningful creative control allowing us to continue to gurantee the integrity of our Tremors vision, we sadly declined to be involved.
The entire Stampede Team extends a big THANK YOU to the loyal fans who have clamored for this movie for so long. For your viewing pleasure, we hope it’s good!
The Stampede Partners:
S. S. Wilson, Brent Maddock, Nancy Roberts. Ron Underwood.
Uh — no. They are two separate things. Tremors 5 is a finished screenplay for a stand-alone Tremors movie set in Australia. Unfortunately, Universal has no plans to make it.
Sorry. Still no can do. Universal owns and controls all versions of the material.
In our version the Australian Graboids looked somewhat different, but that was all.
Only one member of the original Tremors creative team has seen Tremors 5. We’ve decided to let the fans make up their own minds about it — by buying or not buying it, before we weigh in with our opinions.
Update: June 2015. SS Wilson is still the only team member who has seen Tremors 5. He was disappointed. The new monster designs were fun and interesting. But the idea of tentacles running around like independent snakes was ridiculous. In the end, he felt the new installment had many story and logic issues and broke most of the rules we tried so hard to maintain during our time with the series.
You fans are great! You’re already thinking about Tremors 6! Yes, we would certainly be willing to work on any new Tremors, if we were given the creative control we enjoyed on the first four. Sadly, at this time (June 2016) it seems unlikely that we will be invited back to the franchise.
We have no answers to this sort of question about Tremors 5. You’ll have to send your questions to Universal Studios.
We are no longer involved with the Tremors movies, so we have no information. Future questions should go to Universal Studios. They control everything done with the franchise.
Though we have no more involvement with Tremors I couldn’t resist at least posting this question as it is a lovely idea. At Stampede we would absolutely be open to it.
We like to think El Blanco still lives in Perfection Valley. But we did not work on Tremors 5, so we can’t say what the writer or director of that movie intended.
Nothing can be Tremors-related, since Universal controls all rights to that. We continue to try to get new projects going. Recently we’ve worked on a new TV series and two new movie ideas, but nothing has sold yet (2017).
Don Michael Paul has not written any Tremors movies. Tremors 5 and 6 were written by John Whelpley. We have no say over what format Universal will choose release future versions, so we’ll all have to wait and see. Finally, we are somewhat baffled by how many fans want to see Graboids, ABs, and Shriekers battling it out. It seems to us that Graboids would win every time.
We did not work on Tremors 5. The people who did changed or ignored all the rules we tried to be true to when we were working on the series.
You are correct. The answer is no. The people developing the series refused to meet with or discuss it with us.
They did not give a reason. Just said no.
Okay, this is a VERY long question, but we really appreciate the comments within, so we decided just to run the whole thing. If the opportunity arose, it would be, frankly, hard to turn it down, as we love the world we created. That said, we feel the task of trying to explain or incorporate terrible and inconsistent ideas we never would have approved would be too frustrating. So, yes, it’s probably too much of a mess now. One recourse would be to ignore Tremors 5 and 6, and try to pretend they don’t exist, but even that has its drawbacks. Control was taken away from us and can’t really be restored now.
Thanks for the kind words. We have not seen the trailer or the movie. One of us saw Tremors 5 and alerted the others that it’s too painful to watch where Universal has decided to take the franchise.
We did not make or work on Tremors 5. The new writer and director chose to break most of the rules we tried to maintain in the first four movies. So no, in “our” version of Tremors biology, tentacles do not become shriekers. Nor could a tentacle break off and become an independent organism. But other people are now making those decisions.
Gotta say, we love the hard core Tremors fans and appreciate their support. Seems like we spend a lot of time explaining that the creators of a movie usually have no control of any kind after a studio buys it. I guess we’d try to return to the world and rules that we established — and just ignore the other movies? Or throw in a bad joke about Burt waking up from dreams about being in Africa and the frozen north?
And just to be clear, a wildly successful Tremors video game (an idea we’ve always wanted to work on) would make Universal a fortune. Not us.
As we keep having to say, Universal Studios has decided they don’t want us working on Tremors at all as of Tremors 5. They prefer to have new people make the movies now. So we don’t even know as much as the fans about what’s coming up. Likewise, our representatives contacted the company making the series with Kevin Bacon to offer our services as collaborators, but they refused to meet with us. They did not say why.
April, 2018, we have seen news reports that Kevin Bacon announced that his series was cancelled and will not be made. But we have no other information.
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.
Thanks for the kind words. No, when you sell a screenplay you sell all rights to everything in it forever. We have no say whatever in what Universal does with Tremors. We don’t know why the creators of Tremors 5 chose to throw away the fantastic original design by Tom Woodruff and Alec Gillis of Amalgamated Dynamics.
Sorry, we don’t know. We were not allowed to work on Tremors 5.
Sorry, we have no idea, since we were denied any opportunity to work on or consult with the creators of those versions of Tremors.
Michael was disappointed that Universal chose to take us off the movies, but he likes playing Burt, so is hanging in there.
Sorry, we have no information on Tremors 5, 6, a possible 7 or the Kevin Bacon series that was cancelled.
As of this post (July 2019) Michael Gross (who plays Burt Gummer) has been occasionally updating fans on Tremors 5, 6, and 7. So one possible way to get future info is to follow him on Twitter.
We have not seen Tremors 6 or 7. But we would have continued trying to do what we always did, keep the creature rules consistent, never make fun of people dying, and make the movies both scary and funny without being nasty, gross, or farcical.
Doesn’t seem likely.
No. We wouldn’t have written anything like what appears in the movies after Tremors 4.
We appreciate your comment. Other than T5, we have not seen them and have no intention of doing so. It is frankly too painful.
We’re not sure what this question refers to. Perhaps the Tremors TV pilot with Kevin Bacon that did not sell? If so, we know nothing about it and have not seen it. If not — please clarify and we’ll try to answer.
This question comes up a lot. I understand fans’ interest. So SS Wilson’s new compromise idea is to post a synopsis of our version of T5. He’s working on it now (Mar 2021), so we hope to have it up soon.
Hello, Estonia. We have not seen Tremors 7, so have no comment.
Maddock and Wilson wrote the full original script for “Gummer Down Under.” Effectively none of it was used in the final production. They wrote the stories for Tremors 3 and Tremors 4, but since they were directing and racing into pre-production, didn’t have time to do the screenplays.
Come on gang, we don’t know. Universal studios tells us nothing about their plans for Tremors after firing us off of T5.
Yes, we are. There was no way it would have been fair to expect him to say no to Universal when they were asking him to keep playing the character he created, regardless of our involvement.
Yeah, not a question. But we enjoy that fans are forever coming up with new sequel ideas even though we don’t get to work on them.
We did not work on those films and don’t know why the writers/directors made the decisions they did.
Actually, our original script for Tremors 5, mostly not used in the final movie, included the idea that the Australian graboids were different from the U.S. ones. And it’s something we’d have liked to explore more had we continued with the series.
We hadn’t considered it, but always enjoy learning all the different ways fans come up with for expanding the Tremors universe!
As we had nothing to do with those films we can’t say why creature designs were changed. Generally, studios lock up all rights to material like that, so it’s unlikely they were unable to re-use the old designs, and more likely they just wanted to change things up.
No, our version of Tremors 5 was a stand-alone story. We all felt that, except possibly for the series going forward, the franchise had about run it’s course, and the idea in T5 was to introduce a younger character who seems like he might carry on Burt’s traditions.
Tremors 5 is flat out awful.
Have not seen T6 or T7.
It was for the website Unseen Hollywood. This link should work:
https://www.oneheatminute.com/articles/unseen-hollywood/2021/06/22/fair-dinkum-terror-graboids-down-under
For us, from a writing stand point it’s a bad idea to present the audience with an easy escape from your monster. You’re saying, from then on, anyone with a gun needn’t worry about being eaten by a graboid.
We get versions of these questions from time to time, so feel we should respond in some way. We understand that fans want more Tremors and have dutifully watched each incarnation. But other than T5, which was incredibly worse than we ever could have imagined, we have chosen not to see the rest, and thus don’t have opinions.
We have not seen the Kevin Bacon Tremors TV pilot. We don’t know anything about its graboid design, etc.
Fans also ask us to weigh in on what we think of over movie worms, but a) we’ve often not seen them and b) this seems to go beyond the intended scope of this FAQ.
You make a compelling case. We may have to concede the point.
No. As with the original Tremors, we did minimal description in the script and didn’t imagine much beyond it. That’s the joy of working with world class creature designers. They do the heavy lifting!
Fans can see the synopsis referred to here:
https://www.oneheatminute.com/articles/unseen-hollywood/2021/06/22/fair-dinkum-terror-graboids-down-under
Tremors The Series
Shawn Christian was not able to return to Perfection for the Tremors Series because he was already committed to star in another series shooting at the same time.
Tremors The Series was filmed in Rosarito Mexico. The town of Perfection was built in a remote location outside of town and the soundstage we used in town was built for the film Titanic and actually had some of the old sets still in place. We had to tear them down to build our own sets.
Burt has all new, or rather different, guns for the series. Unfortunately for him, the destruction of his beloved bunker home (in Tremors 3) also destroyed most of his substantial stores of silver bars. He’s not been able to replace his entire gun collection; and is having to make do with some older semi-autos, one Mauser style bolt action, a Desert Eagle handgun, and one shotgun. Poor Burt! However, he was able to replace the destroyed Grizzly Big Boar single shot .50 cal with something even more impressive.
Our fans in the UK have been burning up our E-mail server with this question. Here’s what the SciFi reps have told us so far. The network is not yet international, but they are negotiating in various territories and hope to expand out of the USA soon. For the sake of our mail system we hope it’s sooner than later!
A number of fans have wondered why Burt, of all people, has always driven ordinary SUV type 4-wheel drives. Well, the real reason is born of low budget film making. When we work on these movies we have to do everything to save money, and one way is to “promo” the vehicles. That is, we make deals with car companies to loan us vehicles for free. It’s a logical trade because it essentially gives them free advertising. Bur for Burt, it means he ends up driving whatever late model SUV they’ll let us have. HOWEVER, when we started producing the series in Mexico, we found American car companies didn’t want to send promo cars there. We had to buy all our vehicles. So S.S. Wilson got to pick almost any truck he wanted for Burt. Check Burt’s “new” truck when the series premiers! BTW, we also got the Desert Jack Tour Jeeps back (sold after completion of Tremors 3). They were still painted the same color with the sign still on the doors.
I was not in Mexico when the trucks (two identical ones) were purchased and outfitted by the transportation team. I do not know the tire sizes, roll cage specs, engine type, etc. Unfortunately, with the series now canceled, the trucks have been sold. We don’t have any decent pictures of it at Stampede to our knowledge. But there is a partial shot of it on the SciFi Tremors site (for as long as the keep the site published)
Yes, of course Burt should have a snorkel. (For our non-off-road vehicle fans, that’s a device that, along with other adaptations, allows the truck to ford deep water.) But the truth is, we’re lucky Burt has a decent truck at all. Shooting in Mexico, we found out American car companies won’t make their normal movie/TV deals to provide vehicles, so we had to buy all vehicles for the show. I fought to get him a vintage Dodge Powerwagon (or military M-37 version of same). But these were just too old for our transportation department to try to keep in repair. So we ended up with a pretty gnarly Chevy K-5 Blazer, and gnarlied it up some more. But someday I’d still love to do a scene where Burt suddenly fords a stream that’s about six feet deep and pretends like he doesn’t even notice.
To our knowledge, there are no plans to release it. But this is something to bug SciFi network about. We have no control over what they do with the series.
Honest answer: Sorry to report it’s just because we couldn’t get our series directors to understand how subtle the shaking effect should be. And since we were rarely able to be on the set in Mexico, we couldn’t over-see shots like that. The result was the directors had the camera operators shake the cameras really violently, resulting in the comical, unrealistic effect seen in the series.
New answer provided by a helpful fan (thanks!): The Graboids in T-1 were moving slowly because they were listening for prey in the store. By the time of the series, the townsfolk have sensors which warn of El Blanco’s presence, so they remain still when he’s around. Since El Blanco never senses prey as he passes near the store, he continues moving at top speed, hence causing a greater amount of shake. We buy it!
What I picked originally in pre-production was a Dan Wesson .44 mag (I’ve forgotten the model number). But there were many many problems getting guns, even fake guns, imported into Mexico, so I’m not sure what we ended up with and wasn’t there when the scene was shot.
Twitchell and his family live in Bixby, in a “ranchette” style home built by developer Melvin Plug. Twitchell works out of an office in Las Vegas. Yes, he is level GS 13 in the U.S. government, and would normally have a staff, but the position of monitoring Perfection valley, the world’s only designated Graboid habitat, is so unusual, and the people in the valley so few, the powers that be placed him in charge alone.
It, like his fuel and water storage tanks, is underground adjacent to his basement abode. We do not believe it is placed in his former shooting range.
No, Mixmaster does not alter an animal that ingests it; only the DNA of that animal’s progeny.
We had plans for Larry to work in the store. Writing, shooting, and editing got so rushed late in the season that I don’t know if it’s clear that’s what was happening.
No, guys like Melvin always find a way to recover. Trust us, we know; there’s a lot of them in the film business.
Huh?! I think I need our other fans to chime in on this one. He IS the same actor! His screen name when we made Tremors 1 was Bobby Jacoby. As an adult he decided to change his name to Robert Jayne, but he’s the same actor. We were very lucky and happy that Robert/Bobby agreed to play Melvin in Tremors 1, Tremors 3, and in the series.
Believe it or not, TV production is so frenetic, you don’t remember what you did. You just write as fast as you can and respond to the daily emergencies. But the show’s script coordinator Suzanne Levine has reconstructed it for us. So, here are the scripts for the series in the order they were written. This was also the order in which we intended them to be aired, but as you all now know, SciFi channel thought you’d enjoy the show more if it made less sense, and aired them out of order.
Episode 1 – Feeding Frenzy
Episode 2 – Shriek and Destroy
Episode 3 – Blast from the Past
Episode 4 – Hit and Run
Episode 5 – Project 4-12
Episode 6 – Ghost Dance
Episode 7 – Night of the Shriekers
Episode 8 – A Little Paranoia Among Friends
Episode 9 – Flora or Fauna
Episode 10 – Graboid Rights
Episode 11 – Water Hazard
Episode 12 – The Sounds of Silence
Episode 13 – The Key
Of course this is the BIG question. Many many MANY of you have written to lament the cancellation of the series. We thank you and we understand your frustration. The answer of course is that the show didn’t quite get the ratings SciFi wanted (it was very close!) As always, we encourage you to fire off those same emails to SciFi network and Universal. They need to hear how much you loved the show. You’re the reason it was made in the first place!
Older answer. It’s a mistake. We provided all the original sound effects to the sound department on the series, but the editors there didn’t know which sounds went with which creatures. Production was moving so fast, some of the early shows got the wrong sounds put in, like the sick Graboid sound from T-2 being applied to El Blnaco.
Newer answer. This is a clever one we got from a fan who is trying to expand the rules of the Tremors universe: El Blanco has lived MUCH longer than any previously known Graboid due to his inability to metamorphose into Shriekers. Even so, as he ages, he might logically begin making some of the Graboid sounds that lead up to metamorphosis, even though the doesn’t actually change. It’s like an old age sort of thing.
Highly unlikely.
The editing for that sequence was pretty difficult. Most of the muskets did not really fire. There was not much time to get a lot of footage, etc. I haven’t analyzed it, but it’s entirely possible that Twitchell gets left out of the action. The intention was that he dropped back behind the group after firing his one ineffective shot.
As I may have explained elsewhere, the Tremors creators (Wilson, Maddock and Roberts) were barred from the editing rooms at the end of series production. SciFi and USA for some reason thought “Shriek and Destroy” was a terrible episode and almost unusable. That’s why they aired it last instead of second. We saw some later edited versions and sent in suggestions for changes, but these generally were not taken.
Burt’s biggest rifle is a Barrett 82A1 .50 cal BMG (which stands for “Browning Machine Gun”, the gun for which the cartridge was originally designed). It is way more powerful than the biggest elephant gun. The device on the end of the barrel is not a silencer; it’s a muzzle brake. When a shot is fired, it deflects the explosive gasses slightly to the rear, which helps soften the recoil (“kick”) of this monster gun.
Politics. If Universal Home Video had been willing to delay the start of Tremors 4 two weeks, or if SciFi had been willing to wait until the end of T-4’s 25 day shoot to start the series production, Michael Gross could have been in all 13 episodes. Both sides absolutely refused to compromise, even though they’re both owned by the same parent company. After all that, Universal Home Video then delayed the release of the finished T-4 several months. Go figure.
Great idea for an episode. Wish we were still on the air.
Well, gang, not likely. We just didn’t quite hit those Star Trek numbers.
Well, we had a cool idea for an episode to explain that. We were going have Mindy’s ex-rocker dad show up, much to Nancy’s dismay. We’d find out Nancy was something of a groupie back in the day.
Not likely. SciFi does not consider the show a success. We doubt that they will promote it or support it in any way. You will note that they have now removed it from their web site.
The idea was that he ran back into the house after firing his own musket into the ground. The sequence was shot and cut so roughly it may be hard to see what was supposed to happen.
No, Tyler was not in the Armed Services, nor was he a spy for the government. Our idea was that he had a strict military father. But we didn’t get a chance to flesh out that background.
One thing we wanted to do was reveal that Rosalita was in fact an imposter, that she wasn’t really related to the Tony Genaro character, Miguel, (Tremors 1 and Tremors 3). She got in trouble with gangsters in Vegas, heard about Miguel’s land, and impersonated a relative to get control of it, so she could hide out from the mob. That’s why we had all the jokes about her not liking her cows and not knowing how to run the ranch very well.
We were going to have Burt get into an online romance, only to find out it was with Nancy.
We were going to find undestroyed areas of the Proudfoot labs and reveal more of their experiment in altering DNA.
Ah, the future that never was.
Charlotte had done a big commercial in which she had an exclusive deal. That means she was not allowed to play other characters while the commercial was on the air. Unfortunately the deal covered the time when we had to shoot the series and we couldn’t get her out of the contract. Both she and we were disappointed. But we did get to meet and work with Marcia Strassman.
The later episode ideas hadn’t been worked out by the time we knew Michael Gross would not be in them, so there were no scripts done in which Burt had action which then had to be changed. There was no version in which he fought the chicada bugs, for example. The exception was “Water Hazard.” Burt was originally part of the end action of that show, but had to be written out so Michael could leave in time to get to pre-production on Tremors 4.
Actually, we had not come up with too much beyond the thirteen episodes. It was all we could do to get them written and into production. One idea which was floated, however, was mysterious MixMaster modified bugs which eat all the rubber (synthetic and otherwise) in town. All the faucets leaked, cars’ fanbelts broke, etc. SciFi thought it was too goofy.
We did not build the whole creature full scale — only his head with its horn. However, S.S. Wilson estimates he was about six feet long and about three feet tall at the shoulder.
It wouldn’t have been an actual head, but it might have been one of the piñatas Jodi was selling. I think some were ABs.
Well, sadly the director and 2nd unit crew on that episode chose to shoot it that way. KNB Effects actually did build the whole creature and it looked really cool. In editing the show we went through all the footage, looking for shots where you could see it more clearly. But there just weren’t any. By then the show was wrapped and there was no way to shoot any additional footage.

It was supposed to be one of those that shoots a single column of water really high in the center of the pond.
This is the result of having to write episodes so quickly. We liked the actor playing Larry and realized he had potential as a recurring character. So we were trying to flesh him out and make him a more realistic character. The result, of course, is some inconsistency from show to show.
The correct answer is c). It is a compound which allows intact, functioning DNA to move readily among plants and animals.
Yes. We had arguments internally about whether to use the invisibat idea or not. But with the pressures of production, we decided to go with it.
Well, on this one we have no idea. Best guess is that props or art department threw something together from existing graphics they had on hand.
It is the military body style of the Jeep Gladiator from the late 1960s.
Yes. We touched on it briefly in “Night of the Shriekers” when we revealed he plays the guitar, etc. We hadn’t officially developed too much background for Twitchell by the time the series shut down, but we were definitely going to do more with the character. We wanted to see more sides of him, find out that he takes being a family man very seriously, and that he doesn’t always like being the “bad guy” of Perfection. We hoped to explain the tortuous government employee route that landed him in that obscure corner of the desert, but never had time to work it all out.
Well, we’re a little confused on this one. Though the series Graboids were built by KNB Effects, they were cast from the original molds made by Amalgamated Dynamics for Tremors 1. So everything should be the same. The writer/producers weren’t on the set much in Mexico, so differences might have crept in we never noticed. One possibility is that the spikes are easier to see on El Blanco than they are on the darker normal Graboids, so they just stand out more. Frankly we didn’t have time for spike spotting. You fans amaze us.
And now May 2010, it is “yes.” Don’t we look foolish? But Universal (despite emails we sent asking them about it) never told us of the plan to release it on DVD. We found out about it from you fans.
[July, 2019 update. Obviously this did finally happen, but it took a long time.] Old answer is below.
It’s no (as of Oct.2009). We were relaying information as we got it from the studio. Before they canceled the series, they were telling us it would probably go the “normal” TV show route to DVD. Why they later chose not to do that is a mystery to us. We have asked several times, but they’ve never explained. We can only guess that they feel the market is not big enough to bother with.
Jodi has a bedroom and full bath in the back of her store. Tyler uses one of those outdoor plastic bag solar showers behind his Quonset hut quarters. In colder weather he begs to use either Nancy’s or Jodi’s facilities.
Larry definitely would have become a more effective member of the Perfection team. But he never would outgrow his enthusiasm and excitement over facing the unknown. He’d always be a wild card in any tense situation. As Burt would complain: “You never know when Larry’s going to start staring when he should start shooting!”
Well, I could try to come up with one of my quippy answers, but this is one of those things that happens in production. The sound people look at a scene and they add all sorts of sounds so that the director and producers have a lot of choices when they do the final “mix.” Series production is so rapid there was probably nobody paying close enough attention the day that show was mixed to ask the question this fan wisely asks. So now it’s a mystery dog. Or maybe a coyote with an unnaturally deep voice.
I’m not sure about the video specifically. Most of the time images (like the seismometer readings on the store monitors) were added later. Sometimes we were able to shoot them on set at the same time.
They were supposed to see images similar to the seismograph images seen on the Chang store video monitors in some episodes. The idea was that the seismos provided an easy-to-read graphical representation of El Blanco’s location and direction of travel.
TV moves so fast there’s a very narrow window of time to Scheduling actors. I don’t know the specific reason but most likely she just wasn’t available on the exact days we had to shoot that show.
None of us at Stampede has an Avocet, and we didn’t get to play with them on the set. My best guess is that the sound editors picked something from their vast audio libraries that they thought sounded right for the show, (and probably not the actual Avocet alarm sound). That’d be the normal approach.
No, for reasons never clear to us, SciFi insisted that the show be shot in the old TV “square” aspect ratio (4:3). We argued that this was crazy since everyone in Hollywood knew that in a few years all TV in the U.S. would go to the HD 16:9 aspect ratio. But they wouldn’t budge. As for it looked “crowded,” that was how the director of photography liked it.
Update: 2016, another fan has pointed out that when Hulu ran the series, it was presented it wide-screen and was NOT cropped top and bottom (as would normally happen if you pulled a 16.9 image out of a 4:3 shaped frame. He even included screenshots proving his point. We don’t have an answer for how this was done. We only know what we were told during production.
As far we know they are not legit. Hard as it is for fans to believe, Universal will not answer our questions about plans for releasing the series on DVD.
Partly this is because in Tremors 1 you’re not really seeing all of the Graboid. Val and Earl have only uncovered the top portion of it. But also, not all Graboids are exactly alike. There are fat ones and thin ones, longer ones and shorter ones, just as with animals and people.
We had one idea for an octopus-like thing that lives in trees. It snatches people up and cocoons them in pods hidden in the branches. Our Perfection heroes are totally stumped for a while, since they assume the victims are being pulled into the ground.
Sorry, we don’t know. That was all handled at SciFi Network.
Given the extreme nature and wide variety of the adventures befalling beleaguered Perfection, we feel it’s at least a year.
Like many of Perfection Valley’s biological anomalies, Twitchell made sure it was packed up and sent off to a government lab for study. Unfortunately, since the government was being secretive about what was actually going on with mixmaster in the previous experiments, the remains of Artimia were later “lost.” The government now claims it never existed.
That’s a reference to United States government employee salary scales. It means he’s got a medium-high ranking.
Desert rat that he is, he often stays where they originally found him. But there are hints that he spends time at Nancy’s place, too.
He was in a bad car crash and decided to get out of racing.
Umm, we never indicated an exact amount. It was “enough.”
No, the Ghost Dance mine was a quick construction down in Mexico. The Tremors 4 mine was Bronson Cave, within sight of the Hollywood Sign in Los Angeles. Bronson Cave has been used in many many movies over the years, including several of the great SciFi B movies that inspired Tremors (like It Conquered the World). SS Wilson was excited to get to shoot there. However, we needed a very low ceiling and narrow tunnels for our mine, so we ended up having to build a mine within a mine, since Bronson cave is huge inside. We also dressed up its smaller entrance to look more mine-like instead of cave-like.
Shriekers are all about consuming food fast. They don’t have time to be crunching bones for the marrow.
Honestly, we never figured that out. Probably something like $12.00 a person.
This may set the record as the most complex faq question to date, and in truth isn’t really frequently asked. That said, wow, I’m really surprised to learn that the formula on the chemical is real. I assumed it was a number made up by the production design team. That said, many compounds produced by living things become toxic to those same living things when used in concentrations heavier than found in nature, or when “tweaked” chemically to behave differently than in the natural environment. That’s what the government hoped to achieve with their compound, but the mutated bacteria were no longer susceptible.
There were a couple of things which drove the creation of the Ghost Dance “creature.” One, due to time/budget limitations, we needed to come up with ideas which did not require the design, construction, and puppeteering of full-fledged monsters. Two, we liked the idea of something that appears to be one thing (ghost) but actually has a scientific (or at least semi-scientific) explanation. Working backward from those end-points, we came up with the glowing cloud idea.
Okay, first of all, how do you notice these things??? Anyway, while I can’t say for sure what happened on this particular episode, for legal reasons movies and TV shows nearly always use fake license plates, fake phone numbers, fake addresses, etc. In this case, they are probably fake Nevada plates.
No, it was not. But it’s a really cool idea. The SciFi network really liked “Ghost Dance” because it was a unique twist on the monster-of-the-week formula we were working with. An idea like this would have been fun to run with had we made it to another season.
A three day course is about $800.00, depending on specifics. If firearms training is involved, there is an additional charge for ammunition, which varies with the caliber.
As noted elsewhere, the Chang’s market in the series is physically different from the one in the movies. However, the reason Jodi maintains fold-down stairs in the store is that she never wants to be in the situation Val, Earl and Rhonda were in – with a Graboid coming through the floor and no easy way up. She wouldn’t want to be trying to run to the outside stairs.
Yes, we intended to increase the Tremors TV family by adding those characters. Also, there was a plan to reveal that Rosalita had run a sort of scam pretending to be a relative of Miquel’s, mentioned in another FAQ answer on this page. But of course we didn’t have enough episodes to get to these ideas.
It’s partly a function of the rush to get the special effects done (i.e., there isn’t always time to fine-tune the color of the FX shots). It can also be exacerbated by colors displaying differently on different TVs.
I’m sorry to admit I don’t know. If he had a first and middle name, it’s already escaped me.
As a rock, unfortunately.
Uh — no. They are two separate things. Tremors 5 is a finished screenplay for a stand-alone Tremors movie set in Australia. Unfortunately, Universal has no plans to make it.
It’s been ten years! OMG. That said, we don’t feel the town has changed a great deal. It is so remote that mainstream tourism has never caught on. Also, it’s a little scary going to Perfection, like going to see grizzly bears up close. Not that many people really want to do it. So, the locals make decent money, but a lot of times life is pretty quiet. Of course, once in a while some strange critter appears created by MixMaster, but they’ve gotten pretty good at dealing with that. Burt, Jodi, and Nancy would stay for sure. Melvin probably got tired of trying to cash in and moved to more urban settings. Tyler and Rosalita, we think, might eventually get tired of the limited setting and move on, too. But then, there’s some mystery about Rosalita’s past, so she might not have the freedom she’d like.
It seems strange, I suppose, but we didn’t set out for it to be that way. We wanted it to have the same tone as the movies. But on a series you have input from the network (SYFY) and you have different directors doing every episode. As newcomers to TV we didn’t have a lot of control over how things were shot and edited.
There were thirteen episodes of Tremors: The Series. They are currently available (Feb. 2013) for instant viewing online via Amazon Instant Video. I don’t think there is a PAL format DVD version available, but I’ve been wrong before, as fans often point out.
It probably would have been 13, a typical season. But if Sy-Fy had wanted to reduce their risk, they might have ordered fewer. (Back in the day, by the way, a TV season was 26 episodes or more.)
The idea of 22 episodes being a “full” season has kind of gone away. The TV business has changed a lot with the advent of cable and the internet. Back in the day, by the way, a full season could be 30 episodes or more! When we did the series, a 13 episode order was considered a major commitment from the network, and we were happy to get a “full” 13.
When you do television you are desperately looking for any idea. So yes, we were hoping to come up with more stories featuring the original creature triumvirate, and we did do “Night of the Shriekers” and “A Little Paranoia Among Friends,” for example. But we were open to other ideas. One I like was the idea of being trapped with an AB in a cave in winter, in the snowy mountains above Perfection. It’s freezing cold, so, without getting killed, you have to provoke the AB into firing its gasses to keep the place warm. Ah the many untold stories.
To be honest, we didn’t have much planned beyond the second season (and not all of that!) These days, more producers think about plotting the whole life of a series ahead of time, but in most cases, you’re just happy to get on the air and praying you’ll get picked up one more time.
Well, I know you feel we should know something just because we created, wrote and produced the show. But the fact is Universal, SyFy, G4 and whoever else never tell us what they’re doing or what they’re thinking. Believe it or not, I usually hear about stuff from fans, like now! My guess is somebody did some math and thought they’d make some extra advertising dollars doing a Tremors marathon. As for Tremors 5, they probably don’t even know the script exists. But again, I don’t know nothin’.
Absolutely! Jodi is all over that stuff, as is Burt, in his own paranoid way. I have no doubt he has put up his own repeater towers in the valley to boost weak cell signals and that Jodi is marketing an app that lets you search for El Blanco on your iPhone.
We’d love to get the chance to explore that. Our feeling is that while there are people who think they’d like to live there, once they realize how isolated, hot, and desolate it really is, they quickly move away again. That said, I think the sheer notoriety of El Blanco and the increased tourist traffic would ensure that there are at least a few new residents
I am embarrassed to say I never noticed he did not have the plate in the series. All I can say is a lot of things were happening very fast as we did the series and Tremors 4 back-to-back. Maybe we just forgot?
Fans, I need your help on this one. I didn’t with the editors and music-cutters on the series, so I have no idea. Does anyone recognize this song?
Ah, but rocks are like icebergs. You don’t know how far under the ground they go. Is it not possible that the rock extends out and down underground, preventing the Graboid from reaching all the way up?
Good question! Here’s a sort of partial answer. It takes the government a long time to pass laws about anything. Since Graboids were the first creatures discovered, they were the first to be protected. Shriekers and ABs will probably be protected at some point, when public outcry becomes loud enough, but at the time we did the series, that hadn’t happened yet.
Universal Studios has total control over what happens with Tremors, not us. This sort of question should really go to them.
Well — I guess the honest answer is that she was a victim of us writer/producers. But here’s a writer/producer after-the-fact answer: Shriekers are easier to mass-produce than Ass Blasters, because they are hermaphroditic. She needed a life form she could just feed to get additional bodies, rather than one that would require her to wait for it to transform into an AB.
No. The company doing it as said they do not want to work with us. They did not say why. So we only know what appears in entertainment news.
We already tried that. They refused to meet with us.
Technically, yes. But a couple of things work against the idea. One, ABs are more aggressive, powerful and difficult to control. Two, her funding was for for work with Shriekers; she’d have had to do a lot of writing and petitioning to get the government to okay such a significant change in her program.
Fans, I need help on this one! I didn’t write most of the episodes, and didn’t even see the last two because I left to work on Tremors 4. I’m SURE there are fans out there who know this answer without even having to think about it.
Before. We were still shooting the last couple of episodes.
Probably not. They tend not to want to talk about these things publicly. But we certainly did not see all the press or online stuff Sci-Fi (SyFy) was doing.
Probably the show runner, David Israel. He was most in direct contact with the studio.
They were sad! We were all sad. We felt like we were just getting things running smoothly, and had a lot of ideas we wanted to put into new episodes.
We didn’t have the details worked out, but our feeling was that she’d find a way to redeem herself in the eyes of the other townsfolk. It’s not likely we’d have killed off such a popular character!
We had seven days to shoot a 1 hour episode. A lot of 1 hour shows get nine days, but Sci-Fi held us to a really low budget.
I think we were in actual production for about 4 months, not counting building the town in Mexico, etc. But I was gone for the last two episodes, so I could be off. We took only one break, a week or so at Christmas. Otherwise we went pretty much non-stop. That’s TV.
It does not matter whether or not Universal owns Sci-Fi. Studios sell (or really rent) the rights to their material only for specific lengths of times or specific projects. They almost ALWAYS retain all underlying rights forever.
No. We did not ever think of that. Kind of wish we had, though.
It was a difficult episode to shoot, using full-scale Shrieker puppet, etc. I don’t remember all the details, but in part they felt the director didn’t get the action right and that it didn’t edit together well. It was shot early in the season. Directors and crew were still struggling to learn the best ways to get the shows done on the extremely tight budgets and short shooting schedules.
This is a very good question, since Max is the one who believes in and knows about Graboids. One made-up answer is that he’s a gangster and just naturally goes for his gun when excited. But another could be that the director forgot the “rules” of the show when directing the scene and just thought it would be cool to have Max do that. We weren’t on location when the episodes were shot down in Mexico, so things sometimes got done in ways we didn’t agree with.
Yes! Though we didn’t have it all worked out yet, we wanted to tell more about the history of the lab, have more fun with what Mixmaster might do, maybe find skeletons of failed Mixmaster experiments, maybe find vials of still-viable versions of it. Lots of ideas. Didn’t get to do them.
Wait, what?! Did El Blanco die?? No. No, he didn’t die, at least not in the Tremors episodes we at Stampede have worked on.
Our memory is that when we got the go ahead to do the series, Shawn Christian was working on another show or movie and wasn’t available. We don’t like to have different actors playing the same character, so we created the new character of Tyler. That said, because Nancy and Jodie were such established parts from Tremors1 and Tremors 3 — and we couldn’t get Charlotte Stewart or Susan Chuang back to play them — we did have to go with new actors for those parts: Marcia Strassman and Lela Lee.
Yes, we feel that Graboids probably have a very long lifespan and that El Blanco could easily be around for future installments of Tremors.
To be honest, since being barred by Universal from working on Tremors, we’ve moved on. There’s nothing to be gained for us by thinking about it. The Stampede team has separated and is off doing other things. Of course we had lots of loose ideas for ways to go. Yes, we think Tyler’s tour would keep running (tourists would still like taking it, even without fake Graboid scares). And yes, El Blanco would definitely still be around! Most likely, we’d have continued to explore the ideas in the TV series, like the secret lab and the Mixmaster DNA tool. Beyond that, can’t say! Don’t know! Haven’t thought any more about it!
Sure! We’d have been looking at all those possibilities and trying to come up with the most entertaining surprises.
This is a great idea. I wish we’d have had time and opportunity to think of it! But, yes, hopefully it would have occurred to us, if the series had continued, to have the townsfolk of Perfection meet baby Graboids! It would have been a great surprise for Burt, especially.
Uh, wow — I think you’re a little ahead of us on this one. Certainly we did hint that the government was doing research on graboid life forms, but we hadn’t gotten to the point of giving them arms! Honestly we probably wouldn’t have gone in that direction, since we loved getting together with the creature designers and trying to brainstorming the wildest stuff we all could.
I’m embarrassed to say we did not think of that! We were shooting and writing the TV series at the same time we were shooting Tremors 4, so things were pretty crazy. Excuses aside, we now adopt this idea officially! Yes! The Ghost Dance mine is at least part of Hiram’s original silver mine!
We think two was his limit. He’s is extreme, but not that extreme. However, AFTER the experience of actually needing his back-up-back-up, Burt might have decided a third one was a good idea!
That’s a great potential connection. But actually the episode was written and titled before it was cast, so Melinda’s other role was just a coincidence. And no, we weren’t consciously referencing “Night of the Living Dead.” There are a zillion “Night of” movies, after all.
We’re not sure what this means, but we’re making a guess that it may be a reference to the episode “Night of the Shriekers.” There are several times in that episode where shriekers and other things are affecting the power in Burt’s bunker, so lights are flashing. Also, for dramatic effect, the editor put in a negative close-up shot of the scientist Megan (Melinda Clarke), right before the shriekers get her. It’s sort of an odd shot, but presumably the director okayed it.
No! We love them both! We were sad that Susan did not want to come back to play Jodi in the series, and it was tough finding someone to replace her. We knew Lela would put a different “spin” on the character, but we loved the more business-like Jodi she did. BTW, Lela went on to create and run the comic series Angry Little Girls, complete with a clothing and accessories line:
https://angrylittlegirls.com/
Uh — we don’t think so. Jack (Shawn Christian) was a restless entrepreneurial type and he probably just moved on. But it is a fun idea to consider. If we’d been able to continue the series, maybe we’d have written a “Jack Returns” episode and learned what happened. And he and Tyler Reed (Victor Browne) could have argued about how to run the Graboid Tours.
Well, we had internal arguments at Stampede about how far to go with exploiting Gladise’s exotic beauty. Most of us felt the infamous water trough escape scene went too far, so yes, we did dial it back in later episodes. Maybe we were wrong. And hopefully Gladise will appreciate the opinion that she could have single-handedly saved the show!
Just the fences. Burt’s place is way too well defended for a loser like Ray to break in. Alarms would go off. Burt would get auto-radio alerts, etc. Burt was probably angry that he didn’t have such anti-intruder hardware defending his fences, though. And probably added some.
Agent W.D. Twitchell is a government employee, so has pretty good job security. Even though being the official protector of El Blanco was stressful, we think he’d have stuck with the job as long as possible. And if he moved on, or up in the system, we kind of hope he did well, since he was basically a nice guy underneath his bluster.
If by “you guys” you mean the people of Perfection, our logic is that such retrofitting of buildings is very expensive, Jodi has a limited budged, and not everyone is as paranoid as Burt. Also, El Blanco hadn’t been causing much trouble up to that point, so they didn’t expect the attack.
This is one of those times where what we wrote and what was shot and edited is a bit conflicted. Our intention was that Tyler manages to lead the shriekers away before anyone is actually attacked. And technically, you don't see anyone actually attacked in the sequence. But we have to admit there are a lot of shots that make it look like shriekers could pretty easily have gotten somebody. Admission aside, the "official" answer is: No, they didn't.
Well, we don’t feel we have an obligation to always show everyone’s eaten bones. We felt it was very clear what happened to her. Also, of course, there are budget issues. Sometimes we don’t want to pay the extra money to have the FX folks make eaten bones.
You see Tyler using a winch that is pulling a cable; that’s what’s pulling El Blanco up the ramp into the truck. We just didn’t show how the cable was attached to El Blanco’s tail. Tyler would have used tow straps. He knows all about that of stuff.
Yes.
It was totally awesome getting Christopher Lloyd! We were fans, too, and blown away when he agreed to come aboard. Sorry we can’t answer the last part of your question. We actually didn’t get to see him much in person, since we were writing the episodes in LA while the crew was shooting the shows down in Mexico.
To our knowledge, no one has documented a graboid climbing a wall like Burt’s. The consensus is they are more like whales than worms, and would have great difficulty lifting their whole mass high enough to get over.
Great question. I like to think we’d have thought of this if we’d been able to continue with the series and expand on Twitchell’s background. For now we’ll say it’s likely since they were all covering the Nevada area.
In Tremors 1 Rhonda points out that Graboids move by pushing with the dozens of spikes on their sides. Though a Graboid is somewhat flexible, the more spikes that get above ground, the less able it is to move well. We don’t feel they can “inch worm” along. If they could, Burt would’ve have built is wall differently!
We begged Susan to keep playing Jodi for us! But with other things going on in her life, she didn’t want to relocate to Mexico (where we shot the series) for who-knows-how-long. So we had to re-cast the part — and felt really lucky to find Lela Lee.
I like to THINK that we’d have thought of that if we’d been able to continue the series. But we didn’t. And it’s a great idea.
Absolutely. We’d have loved to do an episode where that was explored. Secret rooms that the demolition contractors weren’t told about or didn’t discover! Or that they did discover but were too afraid to enter to destroy them!
More than one fan has postulated unique uses of Mixmaster if the series had continued. We like to think that we’d have gotten around to inventive ideas like this, but can’t say that we did. As we were planning possible episodes for the next season, we were actually more concerned about where we would go with each of our characters. For example, as we’ve said elsewhere, we were going to reveal that Rosalita wasn’t who she said she was. New monster ideas were kind of on the back burner.
As always, we appreciate the support and desire to learn more of what we might have done. But you hit on a key stumbling block: Unversal owns all rights to Tremors. While it’s one thing for fans to do unofficial fan fiction, it’s a bit more dicey for us Hollywood types to write something based on rights held by the studio. Plus, having been kicked off the Tremors franchise, we’ve moved on and are working on many new ideas.
Shriek and Destroy was a troubled episode. Many things went wrong during its production, which is why it ended up short and being shown late in the season. Unfortunately, we no longer have any of the scripts for the TV series; so we can’t tell you what was written vs what was ultimately shot and edited. Sorry! We just don’t remember everything!
Brent Maddock and I wrote that episode, but I have to be honest and say I don’t remember discussing what coordinates. The shows were written under intense time pressure and I can only say what MIGHT have happened. We might have asked someone on our staff to give us coordinates for central Nevada and then just wrote them in. As to part 2 of the question, no, we didn’t model our location on a specific area, as we knew there probably wasn’t any place that actually fit all our needed parameters (Burt: ” We got the cliffs to the north! Mountains to the East and West!”
We love that, after all these years, fans are still expanding on and adding to our ideas. We hadn’t thought of El Blanco in that way, but it is quite logical. Animals living around humans adapt in surprising ways. It could have led to a fun moment in the series, wherein El Blanco makes an unexpected choice to help someone like Nancy or Tyler!
Simple question. Simple answer. We were close, but by the end of the first season we didn’t have the viewership ratings Sci Fi network wanted for the show. Not enough viewers: no show.
There are no stupid questions! Couple of things we hope explain our logic. One: the early TV directors on the series made the store shake WAY too much (shaking the camera violently) in the scenes where El Blanco is passing by. We couldn’t afford to re-shoot anything so had to live with these early mistakes. Two: when a graboid moves through the ground, it doesn’t leave a tunnel. It kind of “swims,” and the dirt fills back in behind it. So El Blanco isn’t leaving a network of tunnels ready to collapse under the store. He’s just shaking it a bit!
You are correct, of course. On the low budget sequels and series, we couldn’t afford to go back to the original desert location near Lone Pine, California, so it was always a struggle to make “cheaper” locations look similar. The series was shot in Mexico, actually not far from the coast town of Rosarito, so there wasn’t much hope of making it look like the Mojave.
As with many perplexing things about Tremors, the answer is: Universal Studios. They wanted to start Tremors 4 on a particular date and they absolutely refused to let us wait the few weeks we needed to finish the series. They did not care that it meant Michael would be unable to be in the last episodes. The decision also meant that director SS Wilson had to abandon work on the series to start work on T4.
This question relates to story ideas that, when the series was canceled, we were not able to get to with the character of Rosalita. But we never worked out all the details. the postmortem writer-answer is: Harlowe knew Miguel, but didn't work on the ranch til later, starting sometime in the period of Tremors 3. Where does he live? Well... some remote RV or cabin pretty far from Perfection. Eventually we'd hoped to do a show where it's revealed Rosalita isn't exactly who she says she is, and maybe Miguel didn't really leave her the ranch! Harlowe would have figured into that episode in some way.
We originally went to Charlotte Stewart for the TV series, but she had a prior contract she could not get out of, so that’s why Marcia got the role. That being the case, while we were very saddened by Marcia’s passing we would assume the character would live on and, yes, if Charlotte were available she’d be our choice for the part (but we remind all readers we have no control over what is done with Tremors).
We were working on ideas like that. We had one where El Blanco starts coming by the store regularly, and reaching a white tentacle in through the window for snacks from Jodi Chang.
Interesting question. However, it is likely that graboids sense vibration by some organ other than actual ears, as sound doesn’t travel well through dirt. They may have nerve endings all over their skin, for example. That said, it is also likely that some would lobby for Burt to discontinue the practice on the assumption it’d be bad for El Blanco long term.
Burt would definitely view destroying a man’s fences as the greater sin. A much more invasive act than damaging a vehicle.
Good heavens, the things fans worry about. If such a demented thing did happen, clearly the townsfolk, even Burt, would rally round and figure out a way to feed him.
It’s an interesting question. Our vote is that El Blanco would recognize shriekers as kin and/or offspring (of a sort) and not eat them.
Ummm, pretty sure than couldn’t happen. El Blanco lives underground!
I’m going to have to take a guess here. We were not on location in Mexico most of the time, so many decisions were made without our input. And we are no longer in touch with most of the production team. The car was probably rented in Mexico. And, given our very low budget, I doubt that anyone took the extra time or money to install special seat belts.
Note: if any fans recognize the car and know more about it, let us know here at the FAQ!
We got a fan reply! We are posting it below. Thanks!
Responding to question about Larry's red car. It was a Toyota Camry. I had the same car, same color. Mine was a 1991, not sure what year Larry's was. The shoulder seatbelts being automatic was indeed a Toyota function and was very annoying. Lap belts were manual and separate from the shoulder belts. Great little car for its time. Oh, yeah, I was driving my 91 the same time Larry was driving his on the show. In an even weirder coincidence, my wife had an 89 Mustang like Rosalita's, only hers was white.
Do you guys think El Blanco would get hostile if one of the Perfectionists tried to pet him by now?
It’s possible he’d accept it; like a semi-tame tiger or something. It’s one of those things we wish we’d been able to explore had the series gone on longer. It would have been great fun if say Jodi or Rosalita developed as special bond with the graboid. Burt would have been very annoyed by that!
One of the difficulties of getting to do only one season of a series is that loose-ends like that happen. We had hoped to do more with the character.
Walter of course would not have had that option. Had we been able to continue the series, it might have been a fun moment for Jodi.
Seems like it would be safe — until you ran out of air.
Graboids naturally avoid solid obstacles like underground rocks. In only rare instances are they so frenzied that they plow into concrete walls. It is possible that concrete doesn’t reflect vibration on the same way as natural rocks. That said, El Blanco leads a pretty sedate life and rarely would be chasing something so aggressively that he’d collide with a wall. Also, the only below-ground concrete in the whole valley big enough to pose a danger are Burt’s perimeter barrier and the concrete ditch of the first movie. Both of these El Blanco would have long-ago gotten used to and learned to avoid.
To be honest, we didn’t have any more details than that worked out. The vague basic idea was that Roberto would show up and, accidentally or on purpose, threaten to expose Rosalita’s somewhat shady background. So he could have been older or younger. But we didn’t get the chance to take it any further.
Didn’t remember this, so had to re-watch the episode. Sadly, I think the light is a “cheat.” As far as I can see, nothing in the rest of that show ever explains it. So, my assumption is the director decided to imply that people were being abducted by aliens (since that’s what the locals believe), adding the UFO-mystery light coming from above just for the fun of it.
While we love that fans are out there looking to duplicate the movies’ props and vehicles, sadly we don’t know the answer. On a movie, a lot of decisions are made by various department heads (in the case of the truck, the transportation team) and other than us probably saying something like, “It should have gnarly tires,” as producer/directors we don’t ever learn the names of components like that. Years later there’s no way to track the info down.
Good question! That’s not something we thought about. But it would have been fun to get Shawn Christian back to work with Victor Browne! Maybe we could have had them in competition for Jody, or Jack annoying Tyler with tips on how to run the Graboid tour!
As we’ve often said, we appreciate the positive ways in which the Tremors fans think. We are notoriously bad at prediction what the studios will or will not do.
We enjoyed bringing characters back and expanding their story lines. I think we actually did talk about Cletus and Nancy connecting in some way. Not sure we’d have had Dr. Matthews betray Burt. We tend not to think that way, but maybe our resistance to such extreme “twists” is part of why the series didn’t make it to a second season!
From the beginning we thought of Nancy as a hippie, or ex-hippie. I guess maybe Marcia just projected that more than our original Nancy, Charlotte Stewart.
Exactly the sort of thing we would have loved to explore. I imagine we’d have had them start off as adversaries, maybe Jack trying to tell Tyler how to run the Graboid tours, or both of them competing for Jodie Chang? Then some Tremors Mixmaster stuff would happen and everybody would have to pull together to survive, right?
As of Feb 2023, this link still seemed to work at Amazon. Good luck.
https://www.amazon.com/Tremors-Complete-Michael-Gross/dp/B002ZHKZGA
We assume you mean the character, not the puppet (which would have returned to the effects company where it was made). We like to think El Blanco still lives semi-peacefully in Perfection Valley, enjoying his status as a protected endangered species.
Once we started the series, we may have discussed going to the neighboring town so often mentioned in Tremors 1, but we also kind of felt it was fun to have this place everyone talks about but that we never actually see.
Sorry to say, this one has gotten away from us. Production on the series moved VERY fast and we were mostly up in LA frantically writing. At most we probably saw a photo early on from someone in transportation asking, “Is this truck okay?” And we said “YES!” and moved on.
I liked the invention of mixmaster and the opportunity to come up with more monsters. But for ANY TV series, character interaction is nearly always the most important aspect and the thing the writers discuss most. You want the audience to get to know them and like them, so you can also slip in surprises as the show evolves. I’ve said in other places, for example, we were planning to reveal in season 2 that Rosalita wasn’t really related to Miguel.
Sorry to say that in the chaos toward the end of the season, if we had an idea where we were going with that, it has faded away.
By the end of the season, a lot of things were up in the air. We don’t remember having worked out where we might go further with that idea.
He changes his name and gets shot by Walter White.
[A fan posted both the question and the answer. No need for me to step in.]
ABs’ primary role is carrying eggs. They are not as strong or as fierce as shriekers. It’s actually part of the “reality” we like to apply to our fantasy creatures. We think its good that they have real world limitations.
We hadn’t gotten that far in our thinking. But — maybe!
Probably a lot. Or, alternatively, if the shriekers went into the pre-AB cocoon state and our heroes realized it, they’d be easy to take out!
No. The decision to screw up the order was entirely the fault of the Sci-Fi execs.
When we wrote the originals, we didn’t think so. It’s fun, we think, to say there’s this ONE fantastical set of creatures in an otherwise normal world. The series forced us to open things up, so now we do have occasional thoughts like: could graboids live in a swamp? But then would they be interesting, or would they just be like ugly alligators? In any case we wouldn’t go so far as to start including any and all mythological things. To comic book for us.
Made up. Generally in writing TV and movie fiction we avoid real names, places, addresses, etc. Sometimes there are rights issues. Sometimes you’re portraying them negatively, so no point in potentially offending people by using their town name.
Our goal was to keep the tone the same. That was actually our job as creators. But it wouldn’t come from the cast in any case. They perform what we write. Maybe our staff of writers, all pitching and writing their own ideas, caused it to lean a bit darker.
Highly unlikely. Graboid eggs are laid by ABs, and those were eliminated in Perfection (except for the one that went to Vegas) in Tremors 3. So, too much of a stretch to say Proudfoot somehow stumbled onto some new ones.
Can’t remember now if 412 had a hidden meaning or if we just picked a number at random. And the idea for Proudfoot came late in our frantic writing of episodes for season 1, so we hadn’t had much time to think about its history. Once we were canceled for a second season — all thoughts stopped.
We shot 16mm. On top of that, SyFy/Universal insisted we use the old TV 3:4 aspect ratio, even though 16:9 was already common. That does not seem to have overtly harmed the DVD version of the show I’ve seen, but it was annoying. We have no control over what the studio does as far as remastering.
The cast and crew were great to work with. But the strain of getting the episodes written and re-written plus shooting in far-off Mexico, plus having the studio enforce many odd non-creative decisions like airing the episodes out of order meant that overall it wasn’t a great experience.
It understandable that Tremors fans would send us questions about the TV pilot. But please understand that the company that made it refused to meet with us about it or discuss it in any way. They wanted no input from us whatsoever. We know nothing about the pilot and have never seen it.
One: she would have to be able to see the future and know how and where they were going to try to cut up El BLanco, and also know that Larry was going to be there to screw things up. Two: wasn’t her choice. Tyler was the one with the expertise in how to winch El Blanco aboard.
Yes, El Blanco is following one wall of the underground lab. It’s one of Burt’s early clues once he learns about its existence. And yes, if we’d had another season of episodes, it would have been fun to finally enter the lab and possibly make discoveries like those you propose.
In “Project 4-12,” it was our intention that Cletus shows Burt a tiny piece of roadway that is mostly destroyed and that only goes a few feet (so can’t be followed). But with a different director on every episode, things didn’t always get shot the way we hoped, so it does look like the road keeps going if you keep uncovering it. In “Ghost Dance,” Twitchel explains the government plans to seal the mine, so Burt can’t access it.
We would like to use many concepts from the first four movies and the series, and we have mixmaster in one version we are working on. Of course you are correct that Universal has to grants the rights to use it if we go forward with that one.
Hopefully some original scripts exist somewhere, but we at Stampede didn’t end up with copies. We worked on computers and most hard copies were printed in Mexico. There were no scripts for future episodes, just discussions of ideas. While we weren’t planning to make Rosalita “bad” we did have the idea that she turns out not to be related to Miguel and has kind of illegally taken over his ranch and has to fess up when the other Perfectionistas find out.
It’s not something we thought about. And we probably didn’t have a lot of choices for production vehicles in our Mexico location. All that aside, it’s perfectly reasonable idea. So — yes!
We don’t think the AB’s Vegas owners would have allowed anything harmful done to him. It does raise the question of how long an AB’s egg is viable — not something we have given much thought to!
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