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.

Yes, that was part of the fun of making the third film.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!”

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.

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).

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!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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!