Last night I was in a feel good kind of mood, so I avoided the more serious dramas and genre films for the much lighter, but highly entertaining 1990 movie Tremors.

Tremors is not a horror film; it is a monster movie. It is a monster movie that winks an eye at the long tradition of monster movies, gleefully ditching certain aspects, such as a tedious set-up that explains the monsters, and retains what made the best monster films work, a delightful lack of cynicism.

The central characters are Val and Earl, two handymen in the particularly tiny and isolated Nevada town of Perfection. Not much of anything happens in Perfection, life from day to day doesn’t change and if you want a policeman you have to travel over thirty miles to Bixby. The residents are a eclectic collection of characters, and despite a glut of opportunities, such as the survivalist/gun enthusiast couple, Burt and Heather Gummer, there are no political cheap shot, or crude straw-men among the characters.

Things take a turn for the worse in Perfection when four subterranean monsters and begin feasting on the residents. After an abbreviated monster movie start of a few isolated deaths to pique the interests of the characters the story swing into full survival mode as the residents are forced to find more and more imaginative ways of keeping out of the monsters’ maws, while having limited success in eliminating the monsters. The film ends with a very slow chase, and one of the best defeat the monster moments.

Tremors avoids many clichés from monster movies, particularly the now far too predicable ending of the guy and gal, romantically entangled, being the only survivors.

I hadn’t watch my DVD in years, so many years in fact it had never been displayed in a widescreen TV. While the picture is letterboxed for a widescreen, it has not been formatted for the larger televisions, and so it produced a picture that was a perfect 16 X 9 rectangle inside the 16 x9 ratio of my screen.

There is much to love and enjoy in the film, the delightful lack of explanation, the simplicity with which the monster effects are produced, but what sells it, and in the end what also sells a film, is the characters. If you have never seen Tremors, rent it now, but avoid all sequels.