Kevin Bacon calls working on ‘Tremors’ a ‘magical time’ spent with ‘ingenious’ Graboids

1990’s Tremors (now streaming on Peacock!) saw Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward fighting off malicious giant worms digging through the ground of their dusty, dilapidated town. The campy movie has since become a cult classic and spawned a franchise, even though it was a project that Bacon was initially none too excited to act in. 

"I had begrudgingly done it," Bacon told Entertainment Weekly in a retrospective on some of his many films. "I was broke, I had a kid on the way, and my mom had gotten sick, and I felt like I didn't have a choice — I was like, 'Jesus, this is a movie about underground monsters, how far I've fallen.'" 

Bacon’s feelings about the movie turned around once they started filming — he now looks back at the Tremors production as a “magical time” when he not only became a father for the first time, but also got the chance to work with his co-star, Ward. 

What was also magical about Tremors is that Bacon got to act against killer worms who are christened with a ridiculous name — Graboids. These Graboids were all up close and personal with Bacon since the movie came out before the heyday of CGI.  

"The super cool thing about Tremors is that Tremors is all practical effects,” he said. “It was all guys in puppets or people with things on their hands, and wires being pulled. It was ingenious. Acting with a puppet requires some acting, but we're professional pretenders."

You can once again see Bacon act against worm puppets on Peacock, where the entire Tremor franchise — the original Tremors as well as the six Tremor films after it — are now streaming.