Tremors 2 (1996)

Cast:

Fred "REMO WILLIAMS!!!" Ward is Earl Basset
Michael Gross is Burt Gummer
Helen "Supergirl" Shaver is Kate 'White' Reilly
Christopher Gartin is Grady Hoover

What the box says:

The foul-smelling "Graboids" from the original comedy-science-fiction-thriller return to snack on more people in this long-awaited sequel. The original worm hunter is called out of retirement to save Mexican oil fields from the pesky subterranean critters, but they prove to be a bit tougher this time around.

Plot:

Mexican oil field, a worker is climbing across an aboveground pipe. He’s trying to keep off the ground because of the Graboid following him. Reaching a bunch of barrels, he falls on the ground and promptly becomes a lunch burrito.

Elsewhere, the ubiquitous Earl is battling an ostrich when a taxi pulls up. Ortega knows that graboids have killed workers at his oil field and wants Earl to handle it. Remo refuses. The cab driver, Grady, explains he’d be paid a bounty of $50,000 per worm. The Mexican army will supply the weapons and munitions. Earl finally agrees.

Travel montage must ensue to the oil field. Ortega mentions that they will pay $100,000 for a live Graboid.

Earl meets Dr Kate Reilly. Seismographs have been set up all around to detect where the graboids are in the valley. Later, Earl and Kate share a touching moment that is ruined by Grady. Never interfere when Remo Williams wants to discover Helen Shaver’s Poltergeist.

The next day, Earl and Grady start the hunt. They use remote controlled cars to make enough noise for the graboids to swallow them completely unaware of the dynamite bomb attached it. Hunting montage with flying entrails ensues. At their lunch break, a Graboid eats their radio.

The next day the hunt is still going pretty good. Grady wants to start his own theme park. A Graboid manages to snag a chain attached to the truck and drag them for a distance until the chain breaks. They see there are still quite a few graboids left and need more help.

Burt Gummer, everyone’s favorite gun-toting conspiracy theorist, gets a call from Earl about the graboids.

Back at the oil field office, Kate realizes that graboids are the oldest Earth lifeform. Burt arrives loaded for bear, bison, or buffalo should they be heavily armored.

Back to the hunt, Burt starts taking those carnivorous super worms down.

Earl and Grady are tracking a Graboid heading away from them. Wrecking the truck, they discover the Graboid can’t move but is groaning and panting. Grady realizes they have a live one. Earl calls for a ride but will have to wait for several hours first. Grady goes to check on the graboid. When all is quiet they recheck and discover the graboid’s side eaten from the inside.

Things are awfully creepy. They spot the truck off in the distance. Walking to the truck, Earl and Grady discover the truck shredded along with Pedro. Our intrepid duo heads to the radio tower.

Burt hasn’t heard from anyone in several hours.

The radio tower is demolished. They find a jeep and hear a noise. They finally see one of the shriekers. Picture a Graboid that is about 4 feet long and has feet. Kill the monster and get away before more of its compatriots come.

Burt spots a shrieker. Cut away before learning what happened.

Back at the main office, Kate hasn’t reached anyone over the radio. A shrieker gets Julio. Earl and Grady arrive to TCB. Another shrieker demolishes the jeep. Burt pulls up. He managed to take them all out but saved one shrieker. Everyone is unaware of the shrieker that was riding on the undercarriage of Burt’s Deuce and Half jeep.

the Shrieker is in a cage. Kate learns it sees in infra-red, body heat. After the shrieker is fed, it whorks up an egg sac. The graboids are hemaphrodites. The loose shrieker rushes the people. Heading to the last car, Burt has to shoot a shrieker between them and the car. Unfortunately, the shot goes through the shrieker, wall, and the car engine.

Spotted by the shriekers, Grady climbs up on an oil storage tank. Burt hops into the bull dozer’s cradle. Earl and Kate lure the shriekers away and climb atop the storage tank.

Earl and Kate have their touching moment when he realizes she was the playmate he’s lusted over for the past 20 years. The shriekers start trying to climb atop the tank. Burt manages to lure the little worm suckers away and trap them into the warehouse.

Unfortunately, they realize the warehouse is full of food. Earl douses himself with CO₂ extinguisher to mask his body heat to go into the warehouse and grabs some bombs from Burt’s truck. The shriekers haven’t spotted Earl, yet…

Earl sets a bomb and gets out of the warehouse. Burt is terrified of the 2 ½ tons of high explosives going off.

Everyone gets away. The shriekers endure their own version of Leeloo’s Big Badda Boom.

Earl and Kate have their final touching moment while Grady realizes how much they made from blowing up all the Graboids.

What I say:

Great Suffering Shai-Hulud, the Worm has Re-Turned!!! The giant man-eating worm is probably best known as Shai-Hulud from Frank Herbert's Dune series. Dune...Arrakis....Desert Planet... That had been my feeble attempt at milking any humor off of any movie version of Dune. Let the more talented and humerous of my ten of fans, come up with their own jokes about the Dune prequel, the Battle of Corrin.

Yes, that above paragraph was taken from the review of Tremors. Let's not call it self-plagarism but quoting a truly intelligent and ruggedly charming intellectual. I may be self-deluded but not a complete ego-maniac with delusions of perfection and along with a persecution complex. Enough of my psychoanalysis.

Tremors was not a runaway success at the theater. Video stores and cable TV helped to keep Tremors in memory. It was still popular enough to pop up a few years later with its first to direct to video sequel: Tremors 2: Aftershocks. For all intents purposes, this is the typical sequel.

Grady was annoying in an almost anime C-Ko from Project A-Ko way. For Grady to be more annoying he'd have to be the kid in a Japanese kaiju movie like a Kenny in any Gameraor the demented kid in Godzilla Returns.

It's a shame that for the most part Fred Ward is just known as a character actor in the same field as Bruce Campbell and Tim Thomerson. For B-movie fans, that would be a pretty cool place to hang out. Fred Ward has this movie as a starring role without the buddy banter between him and Kevin Bacon of the first movie. The man can do gruff in his sleep. Long as we've got Remo Williams acting gruff, that is acceptable...

Too many movies show that being the gun-toting nutjobs in the middle of nowhere will be the first to die...Where are you going to get superior firepower in the middle of the Southwest? Once again we get everyone's gun-toting nut-job: Burt. Bringing back everyone favorite's heavy artillery-toting conspiracy theorist was great. In the next movies and even into the series, Michael Gross returns as Burt or his ancestor.

Exploding man-eating worms is so beautiful in its simplicity. For half the movie, we see the hunters do a pretty good job handling the worms by hunting them. Using the remote control cars with the explosives, an understandable idea.

Quotable Dialogue
"Who are you and why are you so very dumb?"
"Actually, I'm hot the original guy."
"I'm blessed with a sunny disposition."
"Knock down power up the ying-yang."
"She blames our problems on the collapse of the Soviet Union."
"When you need it and don't have it, you'll sing another tune."
"I am completely out of ammo. That's never happened to me before."
"Doin' what I can with what I got."
Morals of the Story
Ostrich farming is lucrative.
Taxi drivers know where people whose 15 minutes of fame ran out 15 months before.
Umbrellas are mainly used in keeping from getting sprayed in entrails.
4 pounds of C-4 is slightly powerful.
Trucks aren't meant to go in reverse down 60 degree incline.
Manicures are best done with K-Bar knives.
CO2 extinguishers can hide one from inra-red