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.

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.

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.

By now (2006) you all know the likely answer: Not likely.

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.”

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!

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.

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.

We don’t think so. Nestor moved to Nevada from back East. His family was not from the West.

We like to think so.

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.

That would’ve been cool, but we just like the name Hiram because it sounded old fashioned and very un-Burt like.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.