By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
For horror comedy fans, there are few films worth sinking your teeth into more than Tremors, the movie in which a not-so-dynamic duo must save a small Nevada town from killer sandworms that detect prey via sound. That first film kicked off a franchise that has had its ups and downs but generally left the fandom wanting more. To that, we have good news and bad news: the bad news is that we’re a long way from getting a new Graboid film, but the good news is that you can stream the short-lived Tremors TV series for free on Tubi.
Tremors: The Series
This Tremors series came out in 2003 on SyFy (then called the Sci-Fi Channel), and it follows up on the third film in the franchise, Tremors 3: Back To Perfection. The primary returning character is Burt Gummer, the gun-loving redneck that eventually became the de facto face of the franchise. The show takes place in the familiar location of Perfection, Nevada, which now has its own albino Graboid…but that soon proves to be the least of the residents’ problems as they continuously deal with monsters, mobsters, and the machinations of the government.
In addition to Michael Gross, the Tremors television series has some other great actors, including Breaking Bad icon Dean Norris. Meanwhile, Back To The Future legend Christopher Lloyd plays a recurring character, as do familiar television faces Nicholas Turturro and Sarah Rafferty. The show even had a bevy of awesome guest stars which included Michael Rooker, Vivica A. Fox, and Armin Shimerman (we love you, Quark, now and forever!).
While it’s easy to stream these days, the Tremors series has been historically very hard to watch. SyFy originally aired episodes out of order, and when it was released on iTunes, only half the episodes were available. Hulu finally released the entire series on streaming in 2009, and the following year, it finally came out on DVD, albeit with no real bonus features. Now, at least, fans of this quirky monster mash of a franchise can sink their teeth into this Graboid ghoulishness for free on Tubi.
But is the Tremors series actually worth watching, though? That’s in the eye of the beholder…over on Rotten Tomatoes, the show doesn’t have a critical score, so it’s difficult to properly measure it against other genre fare. However, the show does have an 83 percent audience score via the Popcornmeter, indicating that the vast majority of Tremors fans who watched the series enjoyed it.
Also, while this may sound like faint praise, the Tremors television series is far better than some of the later films in the franchise. For example, Tremors 5: Bloodlines didn’t have enough critical ratings to generate an official score on Rotten Tomatoes, but audiences gave it a dismal 36 percent. The most recent film (Tremors: Shrieker Island) isn’t much better, earning a dismal 38 percent from audiences and a barely better 50 percent from the critics.
TREMORS: THE SERIES REVIEW SCORE
Finally, while a new Tremors movie may be in development, the newer TV series starring Kevin Bacon was killed by SyFy before it could ever start production. Considering that even most of the franchise’s superfans have never seen it, that makes now the best time to check out the old Tremors series, which is one of the best TV adaptations ever made. Sure, it’s not (ahem) “Perfection,” but it’s a perfectly great way to kill time while waiting for DoorDash to bring you a heaping helping of Graboid meat…the kind of dinner Burt Gummer would approve of.
