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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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!

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)

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.

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

No.

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

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).

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.