Tremors is a 1990 American monster movie directed by Ron Underwood (in his feature directorial debut) and written by S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, from a story by Wilson, Maddock, and Underwood. The film stars Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, and Reba McEntire (in her acting debut). Set in the fictional isolated desert town of Perfection, Nevada, it follows handymen Valentine "Val" McKee and Earl Bassett as they and the town's residents confront giant subterranean worms dubbed Graboids.
Conceived as a modern variation on 1950s monster films, Tremors was designed around ordinary protagonists rather than conventional genre heroes, while its monsters were deliberately left without a fixed origin. Filmed in Inyo County, California, with an extensive desert set built to represent Perfection, the production relied heavily on practical creature effects and miniature work. It distinguished itself by staging much of its monster action in broad daylight. Its music underwent major revision during post-production: Ernest Troost composed the initial score, but Robert Folk later wrote much of the music used in the released film.
Released in the United States on January 19, 1990, Tremors debuted in fifth place at the box office and grossed $16.7 million against a $511 million budget. It received generally positive reviews from critics, who described it as an affectionate and entertaining update of 1950s monster films. Although the film underperformed at the box office, it later found a larger audience through the video rental market, where repeat viewing helped it develop a cult following. In the decades since its release, Tremors has received largely favorable retrospective reviews and has appeared on several rankings of the best monster films of all time and the top horror films of the 1990s.
The film's later popularity led to a long-running franchise comprising six direct-to-video sequelsTremors 2: Aftershocks (1996), Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001), Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004), Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015), Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell (2018), and Tremors: Shrieker Island (2020)and a television series, with Gross serving as the franchise's mainstay. A TV series reboot of Tremors starring Bacon did not go beyond the pilot stage. In 2025, Underwood, Maddock, and Wilson regained the rights to the original Tremors script and began discussing a new sequel that would return to Perfection.
Plot
In the isolated desert town of Perfection Valley, Nevada, handymen Valentine "Val" McKee and Earl Bassett decide to leave for the nearby town of Bixby after growing dissatisfied with their work. Before they can depart, they discover resident Edgar Deems dead atop an electrical tower. The town doctor determines that he died of dehydration after refusing to come down. Soon afterwards, a shepherd and his flock are killed by an unseen creature. When Val and Earl find the shepherd's severed head, they suspect a serial killer is at large. Two road workers are then killed, and a rockslide blocks the only road out of town. The men return to warn the residents, only to find that the phone lines are dead as well. During another attempt to leave, a snake-like creature wraps around their truck's rear axle and is torn apart as they drive away.
Val and Earl then ride horseback toward Bixby for help. On the way, they find the doctor's station wagon buried near his camper, with the doctor and his wife missing. A giant, burrowing, worm-like creature suddenly erupts from the ground, revealing that the earlier snake-like creature was one of its tentacled tongues. With the men thrown from their horses, it pursues them until it crashes into the concrete wall of a culvert and dies. They are soon joined by Rhonda LeBeck, a graduate student studying seismic activity, who concludes that three more creatures are in the area. Stranded overnight on boulders, the three realize that the creatures hunt by sensing vibrations in the ground. Using discarded poles, they jump between rocks and eventually escape in Rhonda's truck.
After returning to Perfection, they warn the remaining residents, and the creatureswhich Walter Chang, the store owner, names "Graboids"attack again and kill Walter, forcing the townspeople onto rooftops. Elsewhere, survivalist couple Burt and Heather Gummer kill one Graboid after it breaks into their basement armory. Back in town, the two remaining Graboids undermine buildings and kill town resident Nestor when his trailer collapses. The survivors attempt to escape to the nearby mountains using a track loader towing a trailer, but the Graboids trap the vehicle in a sinkhole. Taking refuge on boulders, the survivors follow Earl's plan to lure the creatures into swallowing homemade pipe bombs. One is killed, but the last spits a bomb back, destroying all but one of the remaining explosives. Val then uses the last bomb to drive the last Graboid over a cliff, killing it. The survivors return to town and contact the authorities, and Earl encourages Val to pursue a relationship with Rhonda.
Cast
Production
Development
Tremors originated from a story credited to S. S. Wilson, Brent Maddock, and Ron Underwood, with Wilson and Maddock receiving screenplay credit. Gale Anne Hurd served as executive producer, while Pacific Western Productions handled the film as a non-union acquisition for Paramount Pictures before Universal Pictures released it. Wilson and Maddock wrote Tremors as an uncommissioned script, which carried the original title Beneath Perfection. Because Underwood was responsible for giving them careers in educational films, they lobbied to get him onboard the project in return, seeing Tremors as an opportunity to finally work with him after failing to do so for Short Circuit (1986). Hurd backed the film after responding strongly to the script and supported Underwood as director in his feature directorial debut.
Underwood, Wilson, and Maddock approached the project as a contemporary variation on 1950s monster films, combining a traditional monster premise with more contemporary character comedy. Wilson said that the premise originated while he was working as a film editor at a naval base in the Mojave Desert. During weekend hikes near the gunnery ranges, he imagined being stranded on a rock while a creature moved beneath the ground, and that image became the basis for the film's central idea. Maddock distinguished the script by making the protagonists two ordinary men rather than the lawman, soldier, or scientist more commonly used in the genre. The writers also chose not to give the Graboids a stated origin, since Wilson considered the usual science fiction explanations too familiar.
Pre-production The film entered pre-production under the working title Land Sharks, which was eventually dropped after the filmmakers found that Saturday Night Live had already popularized the Land Shark character intended to parody Jaws (1975). The project briefly carried the alternate title Dead Silence. Dr. Kate Hutton served as the film's seismology consultant.
Pam Dixon served as the casting director, and the production assembled a principal cast that included Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter, Michael Gross, and Reba McEntire. Gross began work on the film one day after the TV series Family Ties ended. McEntire, a country singer, made her acting debut in the production, postponing her honeymoon until the end of the shoot as a result. The role of Walter Chang was originally written as a Vietnamese character named Phan Vam, but the filmmakers changed the role to Chinese before Victor Wong auditioned.
Production designer Ivo Cristante spent two months constructing the fictional town of Perfection, Nevada, in the desert near Olancha, California. The finished set included a market, a paved street, telephone poles, a garbage dump, a horse corral, and several houses and mobile homes. Other sites were considered before the production settled on the Lone Pine area, which offered the Sierra Nevada mountains in the background and the Alabama Hills in the foreground. Several building frames were first constructed in Los Angeles and then moved to the location, and Cristante also created the large rock formation used in the climax.
Alec Gillis and Tom Woodruff Jr. of Amalgamated Dynamics are credited with designing and creating the creature effects, which they achieved as practically as possible. In contrast, Robert and Dennis Skotak provided the visual and miniature effects, and Art Brewer Special Effects Inc. created the special mechanical effects. The effects team built large puppet heads, mechanical tentacles, miniatures, and matte effects so that the creatures could be shown convincingly in broad daylight.
Filming
With a budget of $511 million, filming began in April 1989 and took place in Inyo County, California, around Lone Pine, Olancha, and the Alabama Hills. The film was a non-union production. Much of the 54-day shoot was split between location work in the Lone Pine desert and studio work in Valencia, California. Two interior sets, Burt and Heather Gummer's basement and Walter Chang's market, were built at Valencia Studios, where the final scenes were shot and the production wrapped filming.
A major visual choice was to stage much of the film in broad daylight, rather than conceal the creatures in darkness, a deliberate departure from many earlier low-light monster films. As such, the filmmakers identify the bright exterior photography as one of the production's main technical challenges. Weather posed a problem during location shooting, with rain, snow, and strong winds complicating action scenes in the desert.
McEntire's participation required logistical adjustments during filming. She toured on weekends, then took two flights and a drive to reach the set for early morning call times. For a running scene near the end of the film, her firearm was replaced with a wooden prop to make it easier to carry.
The ending was changed after preview audiences wanted the romantic subplot between Val and Rhonda resolved with a kiss, prompting Underwood to reshoot the final moments.
Post-production O. Nicholas Brown was the film's editor. Other credits include Ernest Troost as composer and conductor, Ralph Sall as music supervisor, and Steve Flick and Richard Anderson as supervising sound editors. The creature work was completed with additional miniature and visual effects, which complemented the large-scale practical puppets used during principal photography.
The film's original opening sequence, which incorporated real earthquake footage, was removed after test audiences responded negatively. The film's rating was also adjusted after the first cut. The initial version received an R rating for language, after which the filmmakers made edits to secure a PG-13 rating while retaining a single use of the word "fuck".
Post-production included a substantial change to the score. Troost composed the initial score, but Robert Folk later wrote much of the music used in the released film.
Music Troost was the first composer hired for Tremors after producer Ginny Nugent recommended him to the filmmakers. He joined while the film was still in production, then worked with Ron Underwood and Brent Maddock during post-production to assemble the temporary score for a preview cut, which also used some of his earlier cues. Troost said there was no distinct spotting session because the music placement was largely set as the temp track was built. His original plan used two recurring ideas: a blues-influenced rock theme for Val and Earl, and a separate action-driven science fiction theme for the Graboids. After discussions that the monster material was too forceful, he rewrote it in a more restrained style, a choice he later came to regret. He also said that much of his score was ultimately replaced as the filmmakers continued adjusting the film's tone.