Tough Chicks: Reba McEntire – Tremors
Not many people would have expected 1990’s surprise hit Tremors, from Ron Underwood, to go on to be a action/horror franchise that would spawn four sequels (and counting!) and introduce a species of creatures that I would place in the tier just below Predators and Aliens. The Graboids, or Caederus Mexicana for all you science folk, were a totally different type of beast. They had the same type of scaring ability that you might see in a shark movie but maybe even more so because of the unexpectedness of it happening on land. There is no doubt that it would take a special kind of person to survive an attack…
Tremors is the first film for country Queen Reba McEntire. She is arguably the greatest female country artist of all time and exploded on screen in 1990 with guns blazing and that type of country wit and ginger hair that drove men crazy. What can be more sexy than a woman who knows how to handle a rifle?
We’re introduced to the Gummer family after the Graboids have already attacked the small town and begun swallowing up men like a Kardashian at the NBA Draft. One might say that not only are Burt and Heather Gummer not caught unprepared for some sort of creature invasion, but one could even say that they were prepared for a full-scale alien invasion. A quick view of the wall covering the underground bunker in the Gummer household looks like they raided the firearms section at a local Gander Mountain.
It was no shock to me when the Gummer’s survived the Graboid ordeal and raised their blood-covered hands in victory at the end of Tremors. What WAS surprising was when Burt Gummer showed up in Tremors 2 without his lovely wife Heather. It was like a punch to the stomach. It was almost worst than having a character die off screen because I can imagine seeing the divorce hearings between Burt and Heather would be almost as exciting as seeing them kill an underground tentacle creature.
Elizabeth Olsen has stated that Tremors was her favorite movie as a kid and I have to believe that is due in part to the awesomeness of Reba McEntire as Heather Gummer.
