Tremors II: Aftershocks (1996)

Tremors was too fun a movie to pass up on making a sequel. Inevitably it's not a patch on the original, and it's probably the worst of the four, but it still has plenty of fun to offer. Kevin Bacon doesn't return, as his character Val McKee has apparently gone off to marry a good woman, presumably Rhonda from film one. However Fred Ward does, reprising his role as Earl Bassett, and he gets a new partner here: Grady Hoover, a taxi driver and graboid nut played by Christopher Gartin. I don't know Gartin from Adam, but it would seem that he's best known for a couple of TV series called Aaron's Way and Side Order of Life. He isn't a great replacement for Kevin Bacon but he has his moments.

The graboids have resurfaced in Mexico and are causing chaos at the Petromaya oil field in Chiapas, apparently a huge place even though it doesn't look it. The oil company decide to go to the experts to solve their graboid problem, and given that only one of the two experts is in the film, it can't be too difficult to work out who gets the job. At $50,000 per graboid, he's easily convinced, especially since he didn't get any royalties from the Graboid arcade game. They do well for a while, racking up the 50k's but then the worms turn and they're up against something at once the same and completely new.

There is one other actor returning from Tremors. Michael Gross, who plays the survivalist nut Burt Gummer. After his wife Heather left him, he's been stuck in his basement doing nothing, until he gets the call from Earl and off he goes to join the fun, with a truck full of weapons he acquires from the Mexican Army. Making up a four is Helen Shaver as geologist Kate Reilly, and she's a pretty cool addition to the team. She also brings a back story that's nicely done indeed. The only catch is that there isn't enough of her.