Get Your Reps In: Tremble From Practical Effects in “Tremors”

Tremors (1990)

The pleasures of Tremors are simple. Hillbilly Kevin Bacon. A little girl on a pogo stick unwittingly attracting vibration-sensing subterranean worms. A time in Hollywood when original creature features could still take a bite out of the box office. But those simple pleasures weren’t simply achieved. Or so Tremors special effects artist Nick Benson will likely attest. Benson (who also worked on 1988’s The Blob and A Nightmare on Elm Street 4) will attend a Tremors screening and Q&A on Oct. 2 at Cinemagic.

Once you start focusing on the effects in Tremors, the sheer number of hydraulic floorboards alone—rippling like accordion gills whenever the worms pass beneath a building—look like a small miracle of monster movie engineering. Toss in snarling tentacles, prosthetic severed heads, and the rocky desert ground swallowing station wagons, and Tremors is a great reminder that even the larkiest genre movies can be craft-rich. Cinemagic, Oct. 2.

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