If you thought Tremors was just about giant worms,
think again. Over the course of seven movies, one television show, and 30 years of creature-feature
goodness, the series has featured multiple government conspiracies, gunslinging cowboys,
and entire families of monster hunters. In many ways, it really is a modern American epic.
"What do you think? Max firepower or this?"
"I'd go for max penetration. The .458,
shooting solids. Less ammo to carry. Come on, Burt, move it."
Still, there's a lot of Tremors history to keep track of, and you probably have some
questions you want cleared up before you dive into Burt Gummer's latest adventure,
Tremors: Shrieker Island. What happened to Valentine McKee, Kevin Bacon's character
from the first movie? What is El Blanco? What, exactly, are those asses blasting?
Whether you're new to the franchise or just need a quick refresher,
here's everything that's happened in the Tremors universe so far.
Nobody knows where the graboids came from or how long they've been around.
Given that graboid eggs can sit underground unhatched for centuries, they're very difficult to
track. Still, evidence indicates that the monsters have been living underground since prehistory.
A special report from the Department of the Interior suggests that the creatures
evolved in ancient times from an animal similar to the cuttlefish.
The first officially recorded graboid appearance, however, is only a little over a century old.
In 1889, 17 miners in a small Nevada town known as Rejection
died after the heat from a local hot spring forced a clutch of graboid eggs to hatch early,
unleashing the predators on the community. The owner of the silver mine, Hiram Gummer,
hired a gunslinger named Black Hand Kelly to take care of the problem. The graboids killed Kelly,
but not before he taught the uptight Gummer a few valuable lessons about firearms.
"Let your lead fly, man."
After that, Gummer decided to clean up the mess himself. Once the dust cleared, Rejection's
residents covered up the attacks in order to keep new settlers from fleeing their community. Gummer
himself settled in town and began what would turn out to be a generational hobby: collecting guns.
"Oh, dandy."
In 1989, the graboids resurfaced again in Rejection, which had been renamed Perfection,
and began harassing the town's 14 citizens. Unfortunately, this was just the beginning. A
team of Perfection residents — which included handymen Valentine McKee and Earl Bassett,
Hiram's paranoid, gun-obsessed great-grandson Burt Gummer and his wife Heather,
and general store owner Walter Chang — banded together to fight them off.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"I got a god damn plan."
However, there were consequences. Chang died during one graboid attack,
while Burt and Heather grew apart and divorced shortly afterwards.
Still, the incursion was big enough news that McKee and Bassett became small-time celebrities.
McKee married Rhonda LeBeck and amassed a modest fortune.
On the other hand, Bassett squandered his money and ultimately resettled in Perfection.
"It was my big chance. You only get one of those in life. And I blew it."
Thankfully, Bassett got a second chance. In 1995, after graboids attacked an oil field in Mexico,
Basset was hired by an oil executive to root out the infestation,
promising him $50,000 per graboid killed.
"Whoo! Fifty Gs baby, fifty Gs."
With Burt Gummer's
help, Earl stopped the graboid threat once again, although not before learning that,
after they consume enough food, graboids actually birth a new form of monster, called a "shrieker."
By 2001, Perfection, Nevada looked very different.
Over the past few years, graboid attacks had attracted the attention of government officials,
local real estate developers, and thrill-seeking tourists.
"Mom, take a picture of me with the Tremor."
"Oh, cute idea."
As for Gummer himself, well, he'd established himself as the world's go-to monster hunter,
venturing to remote locales like Argentina to take out graboids and shriekers wherever they appeared.
But when the monsters attacked Desert Jack's Graboid Tour in Perfection,
it was once again up to Gummer to save his hometown. Unfortunately, there were some new
obstacles, like an albino graboid known as El Blanco that began stalking Gummer.
"Well call me Ishamel."
Around this time, the shriekers began evolving into their final form, which Walter Chang's niece
Jodi dubbed "Ass Blasters" due to their ability to propel themselves through the air by…uhhh...
Well, by flammable stomach acid.
"Well look at that, it reacts with the air. Smells like a bad night of beans."
Still, it all ended well enough. Perfection was declared a federally protected graboid reserve,
Gummer opened a survival school, and a mysterious compound called Mixmaster began mutating the local
wildlife into monsters — all the usual things you'd expect to happen in Perfection. Oh,
and Gummer was briefly eaten by a graboid. That'll be important later.
Twelve years later, things had changed again. Gummer, now host of his own reality show,
had cut off all ties with Perfection and traveled the world. However, when an Ass Blaster sighting
lured Gummer to Africa, he was in for a number of surprises: A new species of graboid,
one with detachable tentacles, was wreaking havoc. Ass Blasters were found laying graboid eggs.
Poachers were selling graboid eggs on the black market. And if that weren't enough, Gummer's new
cameraman, Travis Welker, was actually his son, the product of a one-night stand 40 years earlier.
After killing the queen graboid, Travis joined his father as his co-host,
but their show didn't last. Just a few years later,
Gummer returned to Perfection, which had become a ghost town, and squatted in Chang's Market.
But Gummer was called into action once again and traveled to the Arctic with his son.
There, Gummer made a startling discovery: When he was swallowed by the graboid years earlier,
a parasite invaded his body. The only cure? Antibodies extracted from a live graboid.
Violence and death followed, but Gummer eventually found the cure and stopped
the graboid threat yet again. Still, Gummer's journey isn't quite over. On a remote island,
a wealthy playboy is taking rich hunters on expeditions to hunt graboids, and Travis' mother,
Jas, needs help stopping them. And so, Gummer comes out of retirement...one more time.
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