1990s – Reel Film Chronicles

Tremors

The moment I saw that a new 4K, special edition of Tremors was announced and coming out, I was online securing my preorder. It’s not often a film announcement gets me excited, but here I was, plunking down a relatively serious amount of money for a boxed edition of a film that I had honestly kind of forgotten about. Obviously, my childhood love for the film rushed forward and took charge: sometimes there are just those films that spur you to action, and Tremors is – apparently – one of those. Does anyone remember Betamax? The alternative format to VHS in the 80s and early 90s, Beta certainly had a comfortable spot in my families home: the basement television. Along with that top, spring loading player came a library of verifiable 80s movies and dubs, including a deep library of Looney Tunes cartoons, random Godzilla movies, a few films like Firebirds, and of course: Tremors. When that package arrived in the mail the other week, I quickly took in the nostalgia of the films imagery as presented in a boxed…

Tremors 2: Aftershocks

Certainly nobody, including myself, would have expected anything but the worst from the followup to such a beloved classic film such as Tremors. Indeed, nobody asked for it but here we are, thirty years later and a barrage of sequels that shows no signs of letting up. So, with my one hand buried in a bowl of popcorn and my other hand clutching a king-size soda, I put on Aftershocks with the foregone conclusion that this was going to be bad. As the film started – between mouthfuls of snacks – I found myself scoffing and eyerolling as I bore witness to this train wreck. While Kevin Bacon would obviously bow out of the series immediately, he is replaced by a bit of a Bacon-esque character to join in Fred Ward’s Earl, as the two are tasked with taking out a few of the graboids in a Mexico oil field. And it seems like they got things figured out, until they don’t: Earl and Grady encounter a sick, non-aggressive graboid and in moments, their entire operation is overwhelmed by new,…

Fire in the Sky

I’ll be completely honest with you: growing up, I was afraid of aliens. There was an ambiguous fear instilled upon me, no doubt seeded by the weird sci-fi films my dad exposed me to as a child; it wasn’t so much a fear of something specific, it was just the horror of seeing an actual alien, or spacecraft, invade my reality that seemed to have me on edge. And perhaps that’s just it: it was a fear of disrupting the regular routine of my life, or something, I’m not sure. I remember driving home one night in the backseat and seeing these lights in the distance search the skies. I was immediately on alert, my mind teeming to life with all he horrific possibilities that it could manifest, but never truly giving thought that it was anything but aliens. They were spotlights from a business in the city, just programmed to pan back and forth in unison. With the fear of aliens and extraterrestrial invasion being so prominent in my mind, I certainly went out of my way to go review even…