Everything about Tremors 2: Aftershocks screamed straight-to-video. The original’s leading man, Kevin Bacon, had decided that depicting a monumental space mission (Apollo 13) was more worthy of his time than fighting subterranean super-worms. As a result, studio execs reportedly slashed the budget to a measly $4 million and moved the setting from the Australian outback to a Mexican oilfield. And when the project looked destined to be buried deeper than its villainous Graboids, screenwriter S.S. Wilson reportedly offered to direct the film for free. Yet despite events conspiring against it, a second gleefully deranged B-movie throwback emerged.
Shot in 1994 but released two years later, the troubled sequel did get to grace a handful of big screens, receiving a limited international release and premiering domestically at California’s Alfred Hitchcock Theater. But the vast majority of viewers would have happened upon Tremors 2 the same way they did the box office flop Tremors — scouring the shelves of the local video rental store.
