Tremors (1990).

Review #2286: Tremors (1990).

Cast: 

Kevin Bacon (Val McKee), Fred Ward (Earl Bassett), Finn Carter (Rhonda LeBeck), Michael Gross (Burt Gummer), Reba McEntire (Heather Gummer), Bobby Jacoby (Melvin Plug), Charlotte Stewart (Nancy Sterngood), Ariana Richards (Mindy Sterngood), Tony Genaro (Miguel), Richard Marcus (Nestor Cunningham), Víctor Wong (Walter Chang), and Bibi Besch (Megan Wallace) Directed by Ron Underwood (#808 - City Slickers and #1930 - The Adventures of Pluto Nash)

Review: 

I'm surprised that I hadn't encountered Tremors before, but then again you never know how many monster comedies will come your way in the horror season. The original idea for the film came from S. S. Wilson and Brent Maddock, a writing duo that had first met when studying at the University of Southern California. After years of doing shorts, the two had their big break in writing and selling what became Short Circuit (1986), complete with a subsequent sequel in 1988. They wanted to break into producing alongside writing, and one idea that their agent Nancy Roberts liked involved inspiration from days spent hiking on a Navy base and wondering what would happen if there was something under a rock that meant they couldn't get off. They worked with Ron Underwood on outlining it in considerable detail before going through the trudge of trying to sell their script, which slowly but surely ended up with distribution by Universal Pictures. This was the debut feature film for Underwood (also a USC attendee), who had worked for several years in a variety of positions for films and TV, such as an adaptation of "The Mouse and the Motorcycle". The screenplay (as originally known as "Beneath Perfection") was originally finished in 1988 and the movie was shot over the course of nearly two months in 1989. The end result was a mild success (being released in January 1990 after all) with audiences that ended up spawning a certain kind of audience curiosity in six further Tremors films (1996, 2001, 2004, 2015, 2018, 2020), with Wilson and Maddock being involved in the first three sequels (complete with each directing a film); Michael Gross appeared in each one of the films, which had varying levels of success on home video. There also was a television series that briefly ran in 2003 that had involvement from Wilson and Maddock.

Well, you do get your monster worm with tentacles, with a mix of those effects being through puppets and wire (Tom Woodruff Jr and Alec Gillis were behind the creature design). People that had fun with say, Piranha (1978), will have a ball with this film for 96 minutes (well, they both involve shark-like monsters). This is mostly because it manages to generate plenty of warmth in its harkening back to some of the familiar beats of the old creature feature without having the aura of being beneath it. One doesn't have a weak link among the actors when it comes to commitment of timing to go with a quality creature look (referred to as "Graboids") to fulfill the basic needs one would like from a horror movie that likes to have a chuckle with its viewer. Bacon and Ward make for quite a fun pair to lead the way that one would almost assume they were playing brothers (interestingly enough, it took a while for Bacon to warm to the film beyond calling it one done for the money) with how they pair off each other in shades of the everyman. It probably works best that Carter just rolls along with only some of the cliches that come with science babble or in monster-peddling, mostly because the film elects to just let the monster origin just go by the wayside (the studio actually wanted an explanation for the monsters and even compelled the filmmakers to do a scene; the scene, involving earthquakes and a dead coyote, did not fare well in testing and was deleted). Gross and McEntire (a debut performance for the noted singer) makes for quite the pairing in offbeat enjoyment to round out the general curiosity. You don't get too many desert-bound horror movies, but this one makes the best of it in maintaining curiosity for its apparent threat and why we grow to care about what happens around this small town, regardless of how the body count goes. Cheesy with pride and clearly committed, Tremors is a delight for all who enter its range of curiosity.

Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.

The Lonely Lady.

Review #2150: The Lonely Lady.

Cast: 

Pia Zadora (Jerilee Randall), Lloyd Bochner (Walter Thornton), Bibi Besch (Veronica Randall), Joseph Cali (Vincent Dacosta), Anthony Holland (Guy Jackson), Jared Martin (George Ballantine), Ray Liotta (Joe Heron), Kerry Shale (Walt Thornton, Jr), Sandra Dickinson (Nancy Day), Lou Hirsch (Bernie), Ed Bishop (Doctor Baker), and Shane Rimmer (Adolph Fannon) Directed by Peter Sasdy (#1159 - Taste the Blood of Dracula)

Review: 

I didn't have this film initially in mind for Turkey Week 4, you know. I thought to myself, hey, what was the next film adaptation of Jacqueline Susann's works after Valley of the Dolls (1967). Well, The Love Machine (1971) did seem like an idea, but I found my way to something that might as well be part of it all. The Lonely Lady was a novel released to stores in 1976 by the hands of Harold Robbins. He dedicated the book to Susann (who had died in 1974). Robbins was notable as a writer in his own right, of course; born and raised in New York to Jewish emigrants, he served in the U.S. Navy for a time before going on to work a variety of jobs that even included Universal Pictures. He started writing in 1948 and basically wrote melodramas for the rest of his life, which would see various film adaptations that went from King Creole (released in 1958, after changing the title from the book) to The Adventurers (1970) to The Betsy (1978). He was the kind of racy book writer that lived a life so colorful that had people such as Stephen King say didn't want to end up like him as a "nightmare". Needless to say, Robbins led a strange life that probably would've made for its own film, even if he liked to fib about his upbringing; he died at the age of 81 in 1997. And then there's Pia Zadora. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey to a violinist and wardrobe supervisor, she actually was an actor from a young age, which included what else but Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964). She later married Meshulam Riklis, who wanted to push her as an actress, complete with financing from his company. This would culminate in Butterfly (1982), a film that saw her get critical savaging and a "Newcomer" Golden Globe. Fake-Out (1982) isn't even remembered as the follow-up, because, well, the next one was this film. It all aligns together because Riklis helped out the logjam that Universal Pictures had when it came to doing a film based on that Robbins book that had stalled for years despite having Susan Blakely in mind to star. The eventual screenplay credit went to John Kershaw and Shawn Randall with a story credit for Ellen Shepard. Peter Sasdy never directed another theatrical film after this failure, which had the dubious honor of having an ad campaign lead by John J.B. Wilson, the guy behind the Golden Raspberry Awards who "liked" what he saw (Zadora apparently said that receiving a nomination but not winning would've been something she "hated" - take one guess how that worked out). Robbins called the film crap but liked the fact he received $600,000 before it opened.

I should mention that Zadora called the film a turkey upon release. She had one more star role in her with the B-flick sci-fi musical Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984) and has since been more known for her musical career. It is kind of like watching a perverted cousin of The Oscar (1967), another film involving an awards ceremony setup (but that one had the actual Oscar statuette). It actually is a short film at 92 minutes, and if you avert your eyes as the ridiculous amount of sex scenes, it is even shorter, unless one really needed to see a guy shoot a pool ball at a naked woman on a table. I think the preening title song has the most life next to Zadora when it comes to such ridiculously lowkey acting around it all. Holland is probably the only "normal" person in the film, which includes plenty of perverts and lurid attempts at hard-hitting dialogue that has the impact of light cat scratching. Bochner and Cali might as well be mailing it in from downtown. Zadora may have been the target of criticism because, well, title character, but who could have helped this film? She really tries to show the trouble and toil that come with an industry that seems to value the body of a woman over a body of work and where it can lead someone to go down the road of shame. Of course, skin showing aside, there is nothing for anyone to grab on to because the dynamics of the film are skewed into lame soap opera with no sense of dignity or interest. For a "writer", you see exactly one line of dialogue that she suggests, which really can apply to dubious choices of any kind: "Why?". I can't tell what is most embarrassing in the opening sequence: Zadora supposed to be playing a high schooler among other near 30-somethings or, well, the garden hose moment. The fact that the particular sequence has Ray Liotta (a future member of being in even worse material than this) making his debut is probably a testament that if you can make it there, you can...escape to anywhere. The movie dives into the mud early, puts oil all over said mud and decides lighting a match would be better than the garden hose to top it off. Calling the film silly trash is actually a bigger joke than you think, because this is the kind of movie you show to someone who thought Valley of the Dolls lacked that cheesy factor. The closing sequence takes the cake for such empty dramatic heft that Zadora gamely tries to make stick, for better and certainly for worse. I especially like how she just leaves the ceremony to no one around, as if the film was about to hang itself in shame. The points that the film that stop one from going all "zero stars" is mostly on her shoulders, because the script and director failed her most of all. As a whole, it is a lurid and ridiculously terrible time to spend for all the reasons you would expect, but Zadora at least seems like she deserved better than the reviews of the time gave her. It isn't the worst of anything, but if you love some Hollywood trash, you have something to consider.

Overall, I give it 3 out of 10 stars.

Once more on Turkey Week, let's consider some religion. The Left Behind (2014) kind.