Tremors is awesome.

That's really all this posting is about. When I was travelling around the country last fall, I bought a lot of movies, most of them at 3 a.m., drunk out of my mind, from a "3 for $10" bin at some gas station. I found some gems out there in the rural filling/assrape stations of America. One such find was "Tremors." That's that movie where a bunch of hicks fight some huge monster worms in the middle of nowhere. It's basically the closest we'll ever get to seeing "Cowboys Versus Dinosaurs: The Movie." I've never really been big into monster movies, but I've seen enough to know that "Tremors" is a good one. Most movies like this have some bullshit explanation behind the monster, given by some "expert" who just happens to be in the town being attacked by a creature from said expert's field of expertise (e.g. Willie Wonka being present when a huge sentient Gobstopper attacks a village in Prussia [actually, I would watch that movie]). The only movie where that experts thing really works is "Jurassic Park," because everyone's an expert of some sort and they all have something to contribute; there's not just one dude that knows everything and then everyone else is just fodder.

But in "Tremors," you just have one scene where Kevin Bacon and company give their silly redneck theories about how the monsters came to be. For like thirty seconds. Then they get attacked by more big worms. That's it for the rest of the movie: just people fighting big worms. And some of these people are the dad from "Family Ties" and Reba McEntire (both playing probably the best roles of their careers). Even though it was only 17 years ago, one can already safely say "they don't make 'em like 'Tremors' anymore." Movies now overcomplicate themselves for fear of boring this ADD/TiVo/YouTube/Neon-addled short-attention span freakshow of a moviegoing audience we have today. There's too many subplots and crap.

Take a note from "Tremors," Hollywood: just give Kevin Bacon some tight jeans and let him fight a big ol' worm for ninety minutes*. It'll be good. Trust me.

I can't believe I just sat at my desk at 4 A.M. for like half an hour to write a reivew of a Kevin Bacon movie that came out when I was nine.