Kevin Bacon confirms Tremors reboot pilot coming to Syfy

Rumors of a Tremors television reboot have been in circulation for years. According to star, Kevin Bacon, the show is finally moving forward.

After 27 years, Kevin Bacon is slated to reprise his role as Valentine McKee from the 1990 horror flick, Tremors. If you haven’t seen the film, it’s about some poor schmuck (Bacon) who winds up being a big hero and saving a small town from underground monsters called Graboids. It’s weird, funny, charming, and rides the line of b-horror schlock and clever pastiche.

The first film was released in theaters, and five direct-to-video sequels came out without Bacon. Michael Gross, who played survivalist Burt Gummer in the original film reprised his role in the sequels.

The new Tremors show is not the first go at a small-screen adaptation. A short lived television show on SyFy (back when it was called The Sci-Fi Channel) featured Gross as Gummer and Christopher Lloyd as what was basically Doc Brown again.

The new show is slated for eight episodes and as of yet does not have a premiere date set.

What is Tremors, and why is it the greatest thing ever?

Tremors isn’t so much a series of dumb horror movies as a dynasty of dumb horror movies. The thing about “dumb” is that it’s not inherently bad. Spongebob is dumb as hell, but it’s also amazing. So is Big Trouble in Little China and Hellraiser. Dumb humor and horror is a genre. No genre is bad by definition. What “dumb” is is something silly and irreverent. It’s something that unabashedly revels in the over-the-top without trying to be something else.

So, yes Tremors is dumb. It just does dumb right.

In the first film, you’ve got Valentine McKee, your everyman schlub who’s not a hero. He’s as much Bilbo Baggins as he is Sarah Connor. He’s someone normal who lives a normal life in a (mostly) normal place.

He is pretty much the only normal character in the movie, though.

People start to go missing in desert which sparks concern in the town. When McKee and his crazy survivalist buddy/adviser/Merlin/Gandalf, Burt Gummer, come across a friend of theirs at the top of a radio tower dead from starvation, things take a strange turn. Suddenly huge underground monsters attack Mckee and Gummer. These things are a lot like the sarlacc. They come up through the ground, grab you, and yank you down into the sand to feed on you.

Through some cleverness and a lot of luck (and not a little bit of firepower) Mckee is able to defeat the monsters and live happily ever after, one day following Tom Hanks into space.

Sequels, sequels, sequels, baby.

Five direct-to-video sequels came out shortly after the first film hit theaters. I’ll admit they were lousy, but wasn’t H20? Friday the 13: the (not so) Final Chapter? They continue to get a pass on these horrible movies because we are along for the ride. We got our classically constructed narratives with equal doses of clever and silly, and we’re good. Now, we just want what whatever franchise we’re watching is at its foundations. We want to see Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees carve people to ribbons.

So let’s just enjoy the unabated camp of a group of C and D list actors fight giant sand worms that do eventually mutate into giant bug-type creatures. You’ve got to keep them on their toes, right?

The original show that aired on Sci-Fi was equally dopey, if not more so. Without any of the original star-power, it wasn’t ever going to succeed. Still, the small screen turned out to be a fantastic medium for something low-budget that relied on over-the-top antics. The show was ahead of its time, though. Without the CGI to back up the increasingly outrageous monsters, the show couldn’t hack it.

With modern technology and the original brains behind it, my money’s on a wild success. Don’t expect the show to premier any time soon, though. It took years to get this far.

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