TREMORS II: AFTERSHOCKS
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| Rated PG-13
| | Copyright 1996 Universal Studios
| | Reviewed by Information Geek
on 1 October 2008
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- Earl Bassett - Fred Ward! He's our hero. It looks a bit different without his beard and with longer hair. He runs an ostrich farm because he didn't get a cut of the profit from his discovery of the Graboids.
- Grady Hoover - A taxi cab driver who seems to be Earl's biggest fan. He volunteers to go Graboid hunting with Earl in Mexico.
- Kate "White" Reilly - A geologist working for the refinery. She was once a Playmate from the 70s and still looks pretty good for her age.
- Burt Gummer - Michael Gross! He is craziest and probably the most paranoid survivalist in the world. He brings meaning to the word overkill. He's a great shot and a bomb expert.
- Señor Ortega - He runs the oil refinery where the Graboids are attacking.
- Julio - He is Kate's assistant. He becomes Shrieker chow.
- Chief Engineer Pedro - He is one of the three people left working in the oil refinery. He only speaks Spanish. He is killed by the Shriekers and his remains remind me of what happened to Ray Arnold in Jurassic Park.
- Oil Worker - What can I say? The guy was dead less than five minutes into the film.
- Graboids - Giant underground monsters that resemble large worms with tentacles in their mouths. They are quite smarter, but easily fall for the remote control car gag used by Earl, Grady, and Burt. Most of them are blown up, besides eight of them which evolve into Shriekers.
- Shriekers - These things are very small and look like something you might find in a Star Wars film. They track down their prey using a built in thermal sensor. They also happen to attack anything giving off heat, including car engines. They are asexual and reproduce by eating more and more. The first wave is killed by Burt, while the rest are blown up.
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Monster or Killer Animal/Insect movies always interest me, and I do enjoy checking them out, which is how I found this website. I've watched a couple like "Them", Squirm, and "Eight Legged Freaks" which I have enjoyed or tolerated watching. One film franchise from this genre has always interested me and left me with happy feelings every time I watched one of the series. This series would be "Tremors" and I have enjoyed all of them. The first one was an instant classic, but how does the second one hold up?
It has been six years since the events of the last film and Earl Bassett is still living in Perfection. Unfortunately, he was not able to get any residuals from his monster discovery or any money that came from what spawned off the creatures, leaving him broke and running an ostrich farm. Meanwhile, an oil field has come under attack from the Graboids, causing the owner to come to Earl for help in eliminating the threat; he'll pay Earl $50,000 for every Graboid he kills. Earl agrees to it, and ends up taking the taxi cab driver who brought the oil refinery owner with him.
Both men head to Mexico and the refinery where they meet the remaining workers who decided to stay behind despite the monster threat. We have Kate Reilly, the company's geologist and love interest for Earl (Why is that there is always a love story going on in this series for every film?), we have Pedro, the company's chief engineer who only speaks Spanish and I think is making fun Grady, and Julio, who is Kate's assistant and is really bland.
Earl and Grady begin to eliminate the Graboid threat in the area by using an interesting plan that involves toy cars and dynamite. The plan goes along well until they become overrun with a lot more monsters than they originally thought. They call in Burt Gummer, a survivalist from Perfection and survivor of the original Graboid attack, to help them out.
Burt arrives and brings along tons of explosives. They all then head back out into the fields to kill some more Graboids. During this point, Grady and Earl run into one of the monsters who is now resting on top of the ground. In an attempt to get away from it, they crash and total their vehicle, only to discover the monster isn't even chasing them. Grady determines it is sick and decides to have it taken back to base since they were also asked to catch a live one if possible. They call base and ask that Pedro come out there with his truck to load the Graboid and give them a lift.
Later that night, they hear the monster shriek and cry out in pain. They go to investigate and discover the monster's hollowed-out corpse. Earl guesses that the monster went through an evolution and that something came out of it. They head back to their vehicle, and see Pedro's truck in the distance come to a complete stop.
They head there to investigate and discover the vehicle and engine ripped to shreds. Grady then discovers Pedro's body...at least his arms (the only thing left from the attack) on his truck. The arm thing reminds me of Ray Arnold's death, where it looks like he is still alive, but it turns out that the only thing left is his arm.
The both of them head to the radio tower next and discover it is also in ruins. While they try to hotwire a car to head back to base, they discover one of the monsters that attack Pedro, a Shrieker. They manage to kill it and escape before any more show up. Meanwhile, as Burt heads back to base, he is ambushed by a large swarm of Shriekers, but manages to kill them all, besides one which he captures.
Back at base, Julio is killed by one of the Shriekers. Before it can get to Kate, Earl and Grady kill it. As they decide to leave, another Shrieker attacks their car, disabling it. They kill it as well, just as Burt shows up with the Shrieker he caught. They move his large truck into the garage, where he is keeping all of his food he brought, and they take the Shrieker into the lab to study it. That's where they discover it reproduces by eating and that it hunts using thermal imaging.
Unknown to everyone, a Shrieker managed to get caught underneath Burt's truck; it begins to eat all of the food in the garage, multiplying greatly. By the time they discover it, it is too late. They end up making a run for it, with Burt hiding inside of a vehicle and the three others hiding on top of a building.
After Burt manages to lure the monsters into a building, they discover he accidently locked them inside the food storage shed. Earl heads inside and sets a time bomb in Burt's truck with the rest of the remaining explosives. The four heroes make a mad dash away from the refinery, just as it explodes, leveling the place and killing the entire Shrieker population.
It was overall a good film. It doesn't really match the excitement from the last film, but it sure was a good time. I also happened to notice this film has the lowest amount of actors from any film I have ever seen. Only eight actors in this entire film? Pretty good film for a low amount of actors. |
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| Things I Learned From This Movie: | |
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- Radios still can work and get signals while being inside of a monster underneath the dirt.
- Giant worms are very strong and can pull a truck with two full grown men in it.
- Very thin umbrellas can withstand being pelted by monster chunks and dirt.
- A survivalist's wish list includes TNT, an anti-tank gun, elephant guns, MREs, and C-4.
- Shriekers sound suspiciously like dinosaurs.
- Covering yourself in fire extinguisher residue allows you to be unseen by heating seeking monsters.
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- 2 mins – Didn't you drop your keys? What's the point of running for the van without your keys?
- 15 mins – He's right. Things only happen like that in the middle of nowhere.
- 25 mins – I don't think that little squirt bottle and those tiny towels are going to be able to clean up that mess.
- 33 mins – It's official, you can mount anything on the wall.
- 54 mins – This reminds me of Jurassic Park.
- 57 mins – RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A CAR WINDOW!
- 63 mins – RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A CAR ENGINE!
- 69 mins – Wait a minute! Wasn't that baseball cap covered in orange gunk before?
- 94 mins – RANDOM ACTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST AN ENTIRE OIL REFINERY!
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- Earl: (to Grady) "You know, you might come in useful. While they are eating you it will give me a chance to get away."
- Burt: "I am COMPLETELY out of ammo. That's never happened to me before."
- Earl Bassett: "Man Burt, you put a whole new shine on the word 'overkill'."
Burt Gummer: "When you need it, and don't have it...you sing a different tune."
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| | Audio clips in wav format | SOUNDS | Starving actors speak out | |
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| File | Dialog |  | tremorsii1.wav
| Earl: "You want somebody to go Graboid hunting?"
Señor Ortega: "Si." (Earl gets up to leave.) "Señor! Please, please, we have already spoken to your partner, Señor McKee. He is unwilling to help us."
Earl: "Sure. Val married a good woman. Why would he want to die?"
| | tremorsii2.wav
| Kate: "Who named them 'Graboids' anyway?"
Earl: "Ah, friend of ours, Walter Chang. He named them. Then they ate him."
| | tremorsii3.wav
| Burt describes MREs.
| | tremorsii4.wav
| Earl: "It only sees heat?"
Kate: "Yeah, that's not so weird. A rattlesnake strikes at heat."
Earl: "Well, that's why they tore up the cars: because the engines were hot. They thought it was food."
Kate: "And the same thing with the radio tower. That electronic gear puts off all kinds of heat."
Burt: "So basically, they bite anything that's warm."
Grady: "You mean they've been acting so smart, because they're so stupid?"
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| | Click for a larger image | IMAGES | Scenes from the movie | |
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| | Watch a scene | VIDEO | MPEG video files | |
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 | tremorsii1.mpg
- 5.0m
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| Burt is not lonely any more, but neither is he happy.
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| | Leave a comment | EXTRAS | Buy the movie | |
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