If you don't know about the Tremors movies, you're either way out of touch with horror movies or you're younger than 15... and whoever started that crap about "Teens Are People Too!" was wrong: teens are not people, they're just a vessel for the mainstream to steal money from the
parents of teens. If you're reading this and you're one of the billion or so cock snots who made the Hannah Montana concert movie the number one box office draw last weekend, I've got a tack hammer with your name on it... well, it doesn't literally have your name on it, but if you schedule an appointment with me to turn your head into a skull bucket of brain oatmeal, I'll gladly have your name and a short message inscribed into the handle for the small one-time fee of $17.95! Think of how all the other underage car wrecks down at the emergency ward will be so jealous of you! You might even win the 2008 Shiavo Award for your floor! It's every teen's dream to win a Terri! It's the popular thing with the kids these days!... or it will be, as soon as our media department starts posting videos about it on YouTube and MySpace and FaceBook and... uhm... PornHub... and StupidDrunkHighSchoolerShitheadsIWantToBeatToDeathWithACrowbar.com... you get the idea.
Anyway, yeah, Tremors. I followed the series up until the third installment where the monsters evolved to the point of anal propulsion. Despite the sharp decline of quality, there's was something all around endearing about the movies that kept me watching. I haven't seen the fourth one yet, but that's nothing against the movies so much as it is a complete lack of personal time in the last 4 years to dedicate to its viewing. You'd think that a guy who can waste his time watching bowel looseners like Ankle Biters and Carnival of Blood would at least set aside 90 minutes of his time to watch the final installment of a movie series he's had no real complaints against, but you'd be wrong. I just go where the bad movie fates' loom crochets me. Anyway, the Sci-Fi Channel thought it'd be a good idea to make a TV show based on the movies and, unlike their "Stargate" and "Battlestar Galactica" stuff, it almost immediately failed and was canceled after only a handful of episodes. Fortunately the bootlegging market has its unwashed digits into the deepest, darkest of places where many a TV show unseen by human eyes exists to be brought to the light of your DVD player's laser.
"Feeding Frenzy" is the premiere episode, and takes us back to the shifting sands of Perfection, Nevada: home to giant man-eating worms, towns with ironic names, and everybody's favorite overkill firearms fetishist, Burt Gummer, still played by Michael Gross (who just so happens to be a producer too) because, well, who the fuck is knocking down Michael Gross's door to put him into anything these days?... though he does fill out a cum catcher as good as the next gay porn star... Burt isn't the only Tremors character that made it into the series, as Tremors 3 store owner Jodi Chang and original Tremors single mother Nancy Sterngood also make their "triumphant" returns. However, neither is played by their original actresses, either because the ladies turned down the roles so they could continue having bit parts in other shitty TV shows at the time, or because they'd rather not be typecast into roles as a general store owner and a single mother... or maybe Michael Gross has a personal feud against the girls because he father illegitimate children by both of them, who fucking knows or cares!? The point is that Michael Gross playing a conservative, gun-wielding, militant nutcase is the complete opposite of his "how did I ever end up with such a hot milf for a wife?!" hippie father role on "Family Ties", so there's some kind of fun to be had with the irony in that, I'm sure.
Actually, it's not entirely true that Michael Gross is the only returning member of the original Tremors cast. Bob Jacoby returns as local kid-turned-self-proclaim real estate visionary Melvin Plug, looking to turn Perfection into a bustling wormtropolis called Melville… minus the “Herman”… Of course nobody wants anything to do with Melvin "that little turd" Plug, especially not Burt. Speaking of Burt, he starts off the show saving a goober named Tyler Reed from the hungry maw of their local albino treasure El Blanco, who's under the protection of endangered species laws... meaning that it's okay for Big B to munch on any passersby too stupid to stay in their car. Tyler's attacked because he pulls to the side of the road to take a pic of himself in front of Perfection's big Graboid safety sign. As Burt says, a lot of people get attacked when they try to do the same, so much so that you'd think the highway department would've been smart enough to put the sign and the patch of land around it in solid concrete so tourists wouldn't disturb Blanky like they do... might also help to put up something other than a little barb wire fence around the area too, as one hiker learns all too late. Then again, it wouldn't be a real Tremors endeavor without people getting eaten!
As it turns out, Tyler's an ex-NASCAR racer in Perfection to take over the tourist trade from local entrepreneur "Desert" Jack Sawyer... whose business was so "booming" that he went headfirst into the deep end of the debt pool and had to pawn it off on our ner friend Mr. Reed, who might be better off just changing his name to Mr. Reamed to get it over with. We also meet Rosalita Sanchez, Perfection's generically named Hispanic "firecracker" of a "mamacita" who inherited her uncle Manuel's ranch. He might've been eaten in Tremors 3, I don't really remember at this point. Hey, now that I think about it, we've got an Asian woman, a Spanish woman, and a white woman. If Perfection gets a black chick in there, Burt'll be able to go on a bedroom world tour every Friday! Well, he's pretty much the only Snausage left in Perfection aside from the new guy, so you gotta figure he's got his pick of mustache riders... Anyway, while everybody brings Tyler up to speed on just what type of life threatening clusterfuck he's getting himself into, Perfection's answer to Dale Gribble (to whom Mike Judge and Fox should probably be paying rip-off cash to) tries to figure out what's making Blanky so ornery... and if you say it's because he's got a tooth ache, I'll beat you to death with that copy of The Waterboy you're holding, so help he Isis.
Along the way we also meet another new character named W.D. (yes, like the spray lubricant) Twitchell, the government agent assigned to keeping tabs on El Blanco and the general doin's traspirin' in Perfection. Being the resident representation of "The Man", Twitchell is of course always at odds with Burt, making them the Felix and Oscar of Perfection Valley. Burt seems to think that Mr. Blanktastic's recent rash of burro munching and misbehavin' is an effort by the government to drive the local residents out of town so nobody can stumble unto what the men in black are really doing around their little armpit of the dessert. Paranoid ramblings of a conspiracy nut, or is Mr. Gum Gum smarter than he looks? Well, he's close, but it turns out that Captain Feces Melvin is actually behind Billy Blanco's manic behavior, driving the worm loco by an experimental technology box created to force cows to eat more as an alternative to growth hormones in an effort to force Burt into killing the creature so the government will no longer be able to declare Perfection an endangered species habitat, thus allowing him to buy up the property and establish his stupid little city. Of course there's no evidence to prove Mel had anything to do with any of this, so nothing happens to him, thus allowing him to return in future episodes to continue playing a scheming bad guy, cuz Kryst knows we all apparently need more Bob Jacoby in our sad little lives...
Bad music. Bad acting. Bad camera work (though to be fair, most of that's to hide the bad special effects). Bad show. To be fair, the show’s not a total loss. Michael Gross is still great as Burt (does he know how not to be Burt at this point?!); the guy playing Tyler ain’t half bad in the “guy who, despite being a former NASCAR racer is still likable” role; and Bob Jacoby’s Melvin is an asshole, but a pathetic asshole who’s fun to laugh at. Everybody else was “meh”, but at least nobody was especially irritating. The music’s really uninspiring, but considering the shoddy budget I wasn’t expecting John Williams’s name to pop up anywhere in the credits. The always blasphemous “shaky cam” rears its ugly head, and Tomb faithful will recount my seething disdain for the medium lovingly referred to as Parkinson’s Cam. The special effects actually aren’t too bad considering this is a Sci-Fi Original Series, but again, I think part of that is because the Parkinson’s Cam doesn’t let us get a decent look at anything. I guess in the end this was an okay introduction to the series and our new cast members, but I’d much rather stick with the movies then watch this more than once.
Moral of the Story: A dirt bike is not the best mode of transportation in Perfection Valley.
