Tremors turns 30, the most perfect B movie creature feature ever made

• 

  The first casualty: Edgar Deems (Sunshine Parker). [credit: Universal Pictures ]

It has been 30 years since the release of Tremors, an unabashed love letter to the B-movie creature features of the 1950s that remains as fresh today as it was three decades ago. The film is sheer perfection and ranks among my personal favorite films of all time. As Ars' own Nathan Matisse wrote last year, "If B-movie horror with flashes of comedic brilliance and a few edge-of-your-seat scares interests you, viewers likely can't do much better than Tremors."

(Major spoilers below, because it's been 30 years.)

Writers S.S. Wilson and Brent Maddock came up with the initial idea for Tremors in the early 1980s while making educational safety videos for the US Navy. They climbed a desert boulder for a shot and pondered what they would do if, for some reason, they were stuck there due to some outside force they eventually dubbed "Land Sharks." A friend of theirs, Ron Underwood, was a documentary director for National Geographic and helped them develop a believable creature for what would become the script for Tremors. Wilson and Maddock hit the big time with their 1986 film Short Circuit (directed by John Badham), which enabled them to finally bring Tremors to the silver screen.

Read 11 remaining paragraphs | Comments