Turn on, tune in, freak out; Tremors is now a TV series

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/04/2003 (8532 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

TORONTO — Look out! The graboids are back. Shriekers and ass-blasters, too.

Those giant, carnivorous wormy things that burrow along under the desert valley floor then pop up and devour cattle, coyotes, cars and even tourists, were the stars of three tongue-in-cheek horror movies over the past 13 years.

Now the isolated residents of Perfection, Nev., (Pop. 19 — Oops, make that 18, someone got careless.) must strive to co-exist with the ugly beasties week after week in Tremors the series, airing Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on Space: The Imagination Station. It’s seen on the Sci-Fi Channel south of the border.

Although the Tremors movies got progressively sillier, the series strives to maintain a believable balance between droll and downright scary. But one is tempted to ask how a weekly series could be maintained out of the premise of a tiny out-of-the-way desert community living with these mutated creatures. (The old Nevada A-bomb site is not far away, by the way.)

“I was thinking the same thing when I first took this project,” says Victor Browne, the Canadian-born star of the show. “But you know what? Once you see the series, they’ve done a pretty nice job of keeping it interesting and creative.”

Browne, 32, plays Tyler Reed, ex-NASCAR driver who bought out Desert Jack’s Graboid Tours business and hopes to settle down in the valley. He says they won’t be just ducking and dodging El Blanco, the albino, king-daddy graboid who roars past the local diner like some underground express train several times a day, rattling both the china and the customers.

It seems other graboid colonies have sprouted in places like Mexico and Argentina, and our experienced heroes will be contracted out to deal with them. They include the only continuing character from the movies, survivalist Burt Gummer, played in delightful over-the-top fashion by Michael Gross (Family Ties), who also serves now as series producer.

Gross actually dropped out of several episodes this debut season to film yet another big-screen installment, Tremors 4. Gummer is still described as an “anti-social paramilitary paranoid” but his cache of firepower tends to come in handy if anyone happens to step off of rock and pavement and onto the soft soil where they risk becoming graboid chow.

Despite the droll approach to the premise, the graboids are still terrifying because of the combination of clever digital and animatronic special effects.

Browne says it’s because the creators of the original films are on board.

As an added twist, El Blanco is now an endangered species protected by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The locals must learn to put up with the great white worm, hoping his appetite is appeased by the occasional sacrificial sheep or cow.

So the graboids pop up from underground and grab a snack. The shriekers emit a terrifying sound and the ass-blasters, well, it’s not hard to imagine their thing.

Browne says some new variations will show up in the series, too, created by the resident mad scientist (guest star Christopher Lloyd).

Tremors is filmed in Mexico, at Fox Studios Baja near Rosarito, where James Cameron filmed scenes for Titanic and his new IMAX documentary Ghosts of the Abyss.

Browne is suitably hunky, resembling a cross between Rob Lowe and square-jawed Bruce Campbell of the Evil Dead movies, another successful horror franchise. His father was in the U.S. Air Force and met his Newfoundland-born mother while stationed at Goose Bay. He left Newfoundland when he was four, an army brat who travelled the world with his family but maintains dual Canadian and American citizenships.

A business major from Georgia State University in Atlanta, he moved to New York City after graduation and landed a role in the soap One Life to Live. Now residing in Los Angeles, he’s had guest-star parts in series like Rescue 77, Sex and the City and Charmed and big-screen roles in I Shot Andy Warhol and 54 before landing the lead in Tremors.