If you were the last line of defense against
a GRABOID INVASION of Asia, what would you do? Imagine a billionaire moved in next door to
you and opened a free range tiger hunting park for other rich idiots. Now imagine instead of tigers, it’s a subterranean
species of man-eating monsters that evolves like a pokemon into a velociraptor and eventually
into a pterodactyl. Sounds awesome…unless you’re on the menu. If you’re part of the isolated research
team in Thailand at risk of being eaten, you call in the big guns to handle your monster
problem before it gets out of hand. Fortunately for the team, this time, they
have us on their side. I’m going to break down the mistakes made
by the hunters and research team, try to make better decisions and ultimately attempt to
beat the SHRIEKERS in TREMORS: SHRIEKER ISLAND. These hunters are about to become the hunted. In a Thai jungle, a kid parkours his way to
a clearing where a group of American big game hunters lay in wait. As he steps into view, they aim their guns
and activate special poison dart ammo. Something roars into the clearing after the
kid. A massive Graboid breaks the surface of the
earth like a breaching megalodon and the hunters open fire with heavy artillery. When the hunt ends empty handed, Bill assures
the group they’ll bag their trophy tomorrow. His second in command, Anna, doesn’t want
to continue the hunt. She warns Bill that this isn’t like their
other jobs. The predators they’ve come to hunt on this
island were genetically modified. At least when they were hunting lions and
bears, they met on an even playing field. Bill’s too blinded by pride and adrenaline
to back down. This hunt is doomed…and not just because
they brought bows and arrows and pea shooters to a monster hunt. At this point in the lore of graboids, the
entire world knows of their existence. They’re well documented animals with known
biology and life cycles. Teams of people have had dangerous encounters
with them before. And better hunters than Bill have tried to
use guns and barely survived. Back in Nevada, Val, Earl and the residents
of Perfection learned to stay off the ground and eventually take shelter on giant boulders
to keep out of the graboids’ reach. You may be saying, “sure, but those were
local yokels and these are big game hunters” and I would tell you EXACTLY. Why are Bill and his crew messing this up
worse than a bunch of unarmed civilians playing the floor is lava in the Nevada desert? If Bill and his hunters actually want to kill
anything this century, they should be up off the ground, in tree house bases or on elevated
watchtowers like Ewoks. And they should all be packing better weaponry
than this. I count hunting rifles, elephant guns, and
a mini gun here. The rifles and elephant guns would be great
against a terrestrial predator, but they’re barely better than worthless against a subterranean
ambush predator with armored skin protected by compacted earth. Only rapid consistent penetrating rounds are
going to kill this thing, so bolt action rifles aren’t going to be effective. For a graboid, they would have been better
off going for an M82A2, a 50 BMG that was built to shoot at helicopters, nuke car engines,
and dismember soviet extremists from half a mile away. Or the GM6 Lynx, a shoulder fireable 50 BMG. The rounds from these guns hit with enough
force to penetrate 24 inches into the ground, meaning they can be fired whenever the graboid
is running close to the surface. The minigun might be a practical weapon, if
it was mounted to a reinforced base. The minigun averages 50 rounds a second. A single 7.62mm round generates 3,500 J of
force. So in one second you are hit with 175,000
J of force. That is equivalent to 130,000 foot-pounds
of force. There are youtube videos of people shooting
them but you will notice it is in extremely short bursts and super inaccurate. It would have been more effective to have
the parkour kid lure the worm into a narrow area with hunters on elevated platforms to
either side, firing at a 45 degree angle into the worm as it advances. From this position, the only means of escape
for the graboid would be to dive, which would still expose its body for long enough to do
serious damage with big guns. Hell, these guys are rich – if they want
a show, they should splurge on a few Cambodian RPG’s too. On the mainland, a conservation group led
by Dr. Jazz Welker and hungover Napoleon Dynamite tags a herd of Asian Elephants. Jazz spots Bill’s hunting party heading
for the AVEX-BIO Private Island 1.2 kilometers off shore. Jazz, Jimmy and Ishiman shuttle over to the
island and discover the carcass of a Graboid in the jungle. Giant orange holes suggest something from
inside tore its way out. Jazz says that what’s left of the carcass
is an exoskeleton and Jimmy tells us it had dorsal convex dermal armor plating. Suddenly, creatures begin to circle them. A shriek breaks the silence. Jimmy tells everyone to run. Halfway to the boat, Ishi stops, realizing
he’s surrounded. A bipedal shrieker appears behind him. Ishi twirls his machete, ready to defend himself,
when a second shrieker blindsides him. Jimmy grabs his arm, but the shrieker drags
Ishi away. Ishi’s death is just as much Jazz’s fault
as it is the snobby billionaires who came here to hunt these monsters. Jazz’s team has been picking up seismic
activity from her camp, she’s had encounters with graboids before, she knew Bill was a
psycho with a history of hunting big game impress other rich idiots, and she saw they
were armed to the freakin teeth while approaching this island. If you’re going to trespass on someone else’s
private island in search of illegal poaching or gaming hunting, bring weapons and a camera
so, you know, you can record evidence of illegal activity. Better yet, if you think it’s graboids before
you even get there, bring a boom box and idle the ship off shore while playing bad pop music
until you see the telltale dirt spouts of a graboid moving in the ground. Record that and call the World Wildlife Federation
or Green Peace and go full PETA on Bill’s ass. Wild predators hunt using a variety of tactics. Some ambush. Some are persistence predators who wear their
prey down. Some, like the tiger, like to chase fleeing
prey. No matter how they hunt, your best bet against
them isn’t to turn tail and run. Instead, back away slowly and make loud, deep
noises to avoid appearing submissive or weak. If you have a weapon like Ishi’s machete,
have it ready in your hand. Continually move toward your means of escape
or protection. If you find yourself surrounded, look for
a high tree to climb. And if your buddy gets ambushed, make the
best of their sacrifice and get out of there. Jazz and Jimmy make it back to the mainland. Jazz tells Jimmy he needs to track down Burt
Gummer – yes, the OG Graboid slayer from the Nevada desert – and bring him back to
handle the situation. Jimmy takes off for a remote island in Papua
New Guinea to find him. One false move on the beach and one of Burt’s
traps snares Jimmy like a wild boar. Burt appears with a four pronged pinning spear
and cuts Jimmy down. Burt’s deep into his Cast Away roleplay,
eating grubs and ranting about government sanitation from his tax free waterfront beach
property. Jimmy convinces him to help with their graboid
problem, warning that there are 800 people and a research team living within the island’s
kill zone. Back with the hunting party, the Elon Musk
wannabes are measuring wallets. One guy bets another that Anna can’t hit
a bullseye with an arrow from across the river. She ups the bet and offers to shoot an apple
off his head, while looking in a mirror facing the opposite way. The trick’s clearly old hat to her and she
nails it in style. Jazz arrives to ruin Bill’s day. He admits to flying in four graboids to the
island for this rich boy sports hunting extravaganza and reassures her they’ll all be dead by
the end of the weekend. She corrects him, saying that one of the graboids
is already dead. She tells him to call off the hunt or she’ll
report him to the World Wildlife Federation. He tells her he’s jammed the entire area’s
communication network until the hunt is over. At night a storm sweeps over the island and
a drunken trust funder wearing a scarf in 90 degree weather wanders into the jungle
to relieve himself. A noise sends him running. The drunk locks himself inside an outhouse. The creature scratches at the wall before
it grabs Richie Rich and yanks him into the septic tank. This is why no amount of money could convince
me to take a bunch of poser businessmen hunting an aggressive species. None of them has done the slightest bit of
research before coming on this trip and that hubris is going to get them all killed. A skilled game hunter learns the ways of his
prey in order to kill it. And a skilled leader of game hunters makes
sure his paying customers don’t become their prey’s lunch. Bill brags repeatedly about manipulating the
graboid genome of the eggs he flew to the island, but he never once thought to preemptively
inject the worms with an explosive or corrosive tag when they were still small, or edit the
genes that trigger the final stage of their evolution. Graboid biology has been studied for 30 years
at this point – you would think these weekend warriors would at least know the general behavior
of the species they’re stalking. If Bill were smart, he’d see Jazz’s interruption
as a lucky accident and at the very least ply her for information about the graboids
before starting the hunt. As for Jazz, I honestly don’t know if she
actually wants to stop a graboid invasion of Asia or just let Bill die for his arrogance. She knows at least one graboid has spawned
shriekers already and she knows what happens after shriekers evolve into their final form,
but she doesn’t tell Bill any of this here. Maybe she assumes he already knows, but that
is a bold mistake for a conservationist to make. Even though Bill’s base camp is on the mainland
away from Shrieker Island, it should have a security detail walking the perimeter at
all times, as well as seismic and thermal detection systems monitoring the surrounding
jungle. And this guy pees in the jungle only to end
up taking shelter in an outhouse anyway. If he had been of sound mind, and, ya know,
done any research whatsoever, he might have climbed onto the outhouse roof instead of
barricading himself inside. Because this creature pulls him underground,
it’s most likely a graboid and not a shrieker, meaning the best place to be is off the floor. Once on the roof, he could have screamed for
help from the heavily armed men partying only a few meters away. Burt arrives in Thailand with his very own
mini documentary detailing his extensive history with the graboids. The infomercial sums up the monster’s biology
with a nifty little cartoon – the graboid lives underground and hunts by sensing seismic
activity on the surface. It pulls its prey into its mouth using three
eel like tongues. Its next development stage begins when it
spawns three blind bipedal young called Shriekers that hunt with infrared sensors. For some reason, the video doesn’t detail
the final and most dangerous stage of the graboid’s evolution, which we’ll get to
in a minute. Just as Burt begins his address to the research
team in person, he’s interrupted by Bill and Anna. Burt zeros in on the rifle Bill’s carrying
– a Weatherby 308 with a biometric fingerprint trigger lock. Burt points out that using it on a graboid
would be about as effective as spitting at Godzilla. Bill warns Burt to behave himself and leaves. Burt tells the research team they need to
collect their weaponry…unfortunately they don’t have any. Jimmy takes him to a World War 2 bomb shelter
to show him what they DO have. Knives, steel machetes, and a M2 flamethrower
good at 30 meters. Jimmy swings around a crate of sweating dynamite. Freddie volunteers to use it to create a parameter
defense against the graboids, saying it might not kill them but it’ll at least sound the
alarm. On the beach, Freddie also brings a bird in
a cage to use as an early warning system for danger, as well as the only rifle they have,
for which they only have tranquilizing tracker darts. Gun measuring contests aside, this is the
point in the story where we HAVE to mention the most boring strategy of them all…and
that’s going for reinforcements. Burt’s an awesome addition to the team,
but no match for the raw power of armed soldiers or police. Bill may have cut off communication with their
location, but the research team has a boat which they could use to quickly shuttle to
a mainland military or police base and warn them about the graboid infestation on the
island. Again, people have known about graboids for
30 years at this point. This isn’t like someone wandering into town
claiming they saw bigfoot – he’s busy fighting wendigos in upstate New York. This is a credible threat that a military
base would definitely take seriously. As for the paltry weapons they DO have, well,
we have to burst your bubble again and point out that dynamite is simply the explosive
nitroglycerin stabilized by clay. Dynamite has a shelf life of around 6 months
before the nitroglycerin begins to decompose and sweat out into the container holding the
dynamite. These bang sticks are 80 years old, so by
this point, the dynamite might not explode at all. Even if they DO explode, blowing them up inside
a bunker that Jimmy tells us was designed to withstand nuclear explosions isn’t going
to kill the queen. It’s just going to scare her off. Ultimately, we’re not trying to reinvent
the wheel here – we’re trying to kill a giant maneating armor plated worm. Back in Nevada, Burt, Val and Earl used the
pipe bomb technique to kill graboids by dragging lit dynamite along the ground until the graboid
swallowed it and then blew up. He should do that here too. It’s safer, more dangerous to the worm,
AND allows them to try again and again with individual sticks of dynamite rather than
blowing their whole load at once. On Shrieker Island, Bill’s hunting party
hikes for high ground listening to shrieks in the jungle they want to believe are monkeys. Some of the party are drunk, others out of
shape. All are gunning for a mounted Graboid skull
on their office wall, completely oblivious to the shriekers stalking them via their built
in thermal vision. Anna’s forced to play babysitter for a drunk
wall street punk who’s being stalked by shriekers. At the edge of a clearing, their hike is halted
by movement in the brush, which turns out to be birds. Meanwhile, Burt, Freddie and Jimmy arrive
to the carcass of the graboid. Burt warns them that now that three shriekers
have emerged from the body, they’ll gorge on protein for two to five days before molting
into their final pokemon flying form, which is called an ass blaster. If they can’t kill the graboids and shriekers
before they become airborne, the monsters will leave the island and take over Asia. This is why people die, Burt. Because you bury the important part until
you’re standing on top of a nest of graboids and shriekers. The fact that these things metamorphosize
into the world’s ugliest carnivorous butterflies should have been the first thing you mentioned,
back on the mainland. More importantly, they knew before leaving
for this expedition that the graboids hunt by seismic movement and the shriekers hunt
by infrared tracking. It’s very possible that they could have
prepared traps for both forms of the graboids before they ever actually set foot on the
island. To kill the graboids, they could circle the
island to look for boulder outcroppings, then rig a sound and movement trap to use the pipe
bomb technique to kill them. For the shriekers, they could build a fire
to lure them in with the heat signature before Burt blasts them all with his flamethrower. Better yet, go to Bill’s unguarded camp
after they’ve left to scavenge for guns they couldn’t carry, then pull the boat
up along the island’s shore line waving a flare or giant torch to draw the shriekers’
attention and then pick them off from the safety of their boat with a sniper shot to
the back of their throats. The other way to sneak up on shriekers would
be to look for plastic paneling in the camps that they could hold up in front of themselves
as thermal shields. When viewed through thermal imaging, plastic
disperses thermal radiation, obscuring the human living form behind it and making it
simply look like a giant burning red rectangle, a shape which would likely confuse the creatures
long enough to get them focused on something else OR fire off a shot into their soft palette. And of course, it’s not the most environmentally
friendly way, but setting the island on fire is a great last resort scorched earth option. Back with Bill’s hunting party, they don’t
know about the graboid’s life cycle or that the shriekers can hunt via heat signature. They unknowingly loses a straggler as a shrieker
attacks the drunk wall street punk without anyone noticing. In a clearing, the party becomes surrounded
as the graboids speak to each other. Anna warns Bill they’ve lost a party member,
but he’s not fazed. Suddenly, four shriekers converge on the group. These ugly suckers are built like skeletal
pig goblins. They shriek, causing head splitting disorientation
for the party. The shriekers easily pick off three hunters. Mohawk fights back with his mini gun, but
the shrieks overpower him too. They’re saved at the last second by Burt
and his flamethrower. He kills one and scares the other three away,
but not before Freddie darts one with a tracker. It’s almost like these posers WANT to feed
themselves to the graboids. This hunting party has nine members and none
of them notice one of their own getting picked off feet behind them. And they barely bat an eye when they’re
suddenly surrounded and the creatures begin to use bioacoustics to communicate with one
another. Did none of these losers watch Jurassic Park? The moment a predator species starts talking,
this hunting party should rally its defenses, creating a tight circle with their backs to
each other, prepared for an oncoming attack. From this formation, it would have been impossible
for the shriekers to ambush them and hunters could have worked in pairs or trios to take
down individual shriekers. Working as teams would have also allowed them
to pool their resources and minimize their liabilities…like Mohawk with his minigun,
which he fires wildly and with little accuracy. Since only one shot needs to hit home in order
to kill each shrieker, concentrated fire from three rookies like this should overpower the
animals quickly and efficiently. And if they had done any research at all,
they would have known about the shriekers’ heat seeking vision. They could have brought flares with them to
create visual confusion and distract them long enough to fire their weapons. The shrieker’s super sonic attack seems
to be just one of the mutations caused by Bill’s genetic meddling, so there’s little
they could have done about that without ear protection, which they definitely should have
been wearing when on a hunt with a guy armed with a minigun. Had they all been wearing Gucci ear pro, the
shriekers sonic attack wouldn’t have disoriented and they’d have been able to return accurate
fire. After the shriekers are gone, Bill warns everyone
to stop moving, pointing out that the clearing is the perfect place for graboids to wait
to ambush prey. Burt learns that not only did Bill hatch four
graboids on the island, but that he enhanced them with stem cells and edited their genome
to increase their predatory instincts. Burt prepares to distract the graboid, using
the flamethrower as an explosive, but before he can, Mohawk is yanked underground with
his minigun. Burt throws the flamethrower and Anna shoots
it as the graboid bears down on it. Chunks of flesh rain down across the killing
field as the group races for the boat. That’s a second graboid down, with two to
go. Shooting the tank like this is a bit of movie
fun that’ll likely get you killed if you ever try it in real life. Even if a 9mm could penetrate the fuel tank
on that flamethrower, there still needs to be an ignition source to help it catch fire…which
they might have had if Burt had thought to bring a couple sticks of dynamite with them
to use as pipe bombs or percussive distractions. Honestly, since Bill refuses to listen the
wisdom and experience of a guy with a 30 year history of hunting graboids, I’d say let
him run, let him be the distraction we use to run in the opposite direction, back toward
the safety of the boat. He opened this can of worms, let him lie in
it. Back on the mainland, Jazz gives the group
bad news. One of their 11,000 pound bull elephants suddenly
disappeared. She tracked his gps tracker to a 19 meter
long mass that weighs 20 tons located 37 meters BELOW the surface. A giant genetically modified graboid somehow
escaped the island and is only 1000 meters away under Bill’s camp. Burt says it’s impossible – graboids can’t
swim and they aren’t big enough to eat elephants. But the data doesn’t lie. Bill interrupts and tells them they’re returning
to finish the hunt, even if he’s a few men short. Burt tells him he’s in over his head and
refuses to get out of his way. Bill has one of his men shoot him with a tranquilizer
dart. This is like that final handshake showdown
in Django Unchained, only even dumber. If Bill wants to risk death to continue the
hunt, let him. At worst, he reduces the number of beasts
we have to fight. At best, he becomes lunch and gets out of
our way while we strategize our next move. Wagging a moral finger here doesn’t do anybody
any good. Burt’s only lucky Bill hit him with a tranq
instead of a good old fashioned bullet. The strategy here is - don’t anger the idiot
glamping hunters. Wait till they leave and fix the radio to
call for military support or send someone off in the boat to the nearest base with firebombing
and bunker busting equipment. After nightfall, Bill’s camp is on high
alert. A noise in the jungle sparks an all out warzone
shoot out. Heavy caliber machine gun shells rain down
over the camp. Unfortunately, the hunters aim with about
as much accuracy as a blind man trying to take a leak. Something grabs one of the hunters and yanks
him out of sight. Another hunter named Doc tries to make a break
for it as Anna fires two flares into the sky to give them some visibility. Doc trips and comes face to face with a behemoth
graboid. The hunters are awestruck…until they realize
the giant is essentially using its tail as a lure while the rest of it moves in from
behind and devours Doc whole. Anna tells Bill they have to stop the hunt,
but he refuses and she resigns and runs off into the night. Meanwhile, Burt and the rest of the research
team are tied up with zip ties in the bunker. Burt tells them they’ll need a knife to
cut through the ties – Jimmy tells Burt that the shoes he borrowed have 550 paracord
instead of shoelaces, which he can use as a friction saw. Burt doesn’t need to be told twice. He saws through the zip ties on his wrists,
then helps the others. Unfortunately, they realize the bunker has
been locked from the outside. There’s suddenly a noise and the door opens. Anna has arrived to let them out and offer
them her help to stop the Queen graboid. Something big rams the bunker – Anna accidentally
led the queen right to them. Everyone freezes, but the generator suddenly
kicks on. The group devises a trap for the queen. They gather the remaining dynamite into bundles
and lay them out in the bunker. Anna turns on the generator, flooding the
space with noise. The queen graboid begins ramming the bunker. Burt tosses a lit stick of dynamite and the
group races outside as the rest of the stash explodes. It’s a great convenience that Jimmy learned
from the best and replaced his shoelaces with paracord that they can use to cut through
zip ties. If you’re NOT walking around with paracord
on your shoes, the easiest way to break zip ties is by using a method I’ve shown you
before for how to get out of duct tape. As counterintuitive as it may sound, when
you’re bound at the wrist with zip ties, you want to tighten them as tightly around
your wrists as possible. Use your teeth to makes it so tight your wrists
are practically laying against one another. Then, in one quick, sweeping motion lift your
arms high above your head, then yank your arms down past your stomach, almost like you’re
trying touch elbows behind your back. This should break the zip ties. You guys should be experts at this by now. While blowing up the bunker looks cool, it’s
massive overkill and a huge waste of their remaining supplies. Jimmy says this bunker was built to withstand
nuclear explosions, but he also says it was built for the fighting in World War 2. Since nuclear weapons weren’t built till
the end of the war, I’d say Jimmy doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Even if it wouldn’t withstand a nuclear
explosion, it WOULD likely contain the explosion from a few sticks of dynamite. The energy would likely escape through the
easiest route, which is the door, with damage contained to the bunker interior and nothing
done to the worm outside. All this is is a massive sound attack to drive
the worm away. Instead, they should rig a single crate of
explosives with a long fuse by the open front door and fish for graboid tentacles by banging
on the ground with a stick until a tentacle pops up and grabs the crate. Then, we could simply light the fuse and wait
for the nitro still left in the dynamite or the nitro that’s seeped into the crate to
ignite. The other option would be to LET the graboid
break through the bunker wall, much like the worm did to Burt’s basement wall all those
years ago. In that position, the worm would likely be
stuck and struggle to maneuver backward into the ground where it can move freely. At that point, everyone could move outside
and a pipe bomb could be thrown into its open mouth. The next morning, Bill’s last remaining
hunter Mr. Bowtie wants to call it a day, but Bill’s too pot committed – and insane
– to stop things now. He tells the hunter to meet him by the riverbank. Back with Burt, they’re rigging their defense
line of additional dynamite when Freddie tells him the GPS on the queen graboid says it returned
to Bill’s camp. Burt races over to find the last hunter being
dragged into the river by the queen while Bill peppers its armor plated hide with small
caliber bullets. Burt tries to talk sense into Bill, but he’s
too far gone. He fires wildly into the water, telling the
Queen exactly where he is. She reaches one wiley tentacle through the
bridge from below and easily claims his two hundred pounds of flesh. Pity Bowtie isn’t a real survivalist; he
might actually have stood a chance surviving this attack, by pulling a secondary weapon
and firing or slicing into the graboid’s sensitive mouth area. Pity still that he’s got Crazy Bill doing
jack all to help him. Bill should know his shots to the armor plated
exoskeleton of this beast aren’t doing anything. With the graboid distracted, he should be
standing up the slope in front of Bowtie firing shots into the beast’s mouth. Bill may just be too far gone at this point. But let’s not forget about Burt – there’s
no way he should have shown up empty handed to this melee fight. He might not have a gun, but he still has
some dynamite, machetes, and enough flammable gas to make another flamethrower later. Once Bill is dead, he should return to Bill’s
camp and gather every discarded weapon he can find before heading back to the research
group. Burt returns to his team and hatches a plan. They need to kill the queen and kill the shriekers
on the island before they molt into fliers. The group splits and Burt and Jimmy head back
to Shrieker island to kill the swarm. Their gps tracker leads them to a series of
cool underground caves. Armed with Macgyvered new flamethrower and
a chainsaw, they mud up in a puddle and put on ear protection as a growl echoes through
the caverns. Suddenly, the shriekers attack. Burt machetes one easily. Jimmy swings his chainsaw at another, but
the shrieker pins him. With the shrieker’s weird tongue literally
against his cheek, he grabs for the chainsaw and cuts into its belly, freeing himself. They turn a corner and see five more stalking
them in the darkness. Burt lights them up with his flamethrower
frying them to crisps. When his flamethrower runs out of juice, he
ends a barbecued straggler with a dagger to the heart. Jimmy is cornered by the last shrieker and
lunges into the beast’s mouth with the chainsaw, chewing him up from the inside. This cave fight makes me want to see Burt
take on the cave dwellers from The Descent in an epic underground battle royale. Let’s just hope Burt gets a bit more meticulous
about the details. Covering ourselves in mud is a good idea to
help camouflage us from the shrieker’s infrared vision BUT it’s only going to be effective
if we actually coat ourselves in thick mud, rather than rubbing loose liquid mud on a
few exposed areas of our skin. This wouldn’t ultimately cover up the heat
given off by our breath, however. The flamethrower is a great weapon for this
cave fight BUT it could be used more effectively with less risk to ourselves. If this were a completely sealed cave with
only a single opening, their best bet here would be to approach the entrance to the cave
with their flamethrower and shoot short flame bursts into the cave’s mouth sucking out
all of the oxygen and either driving the shriekers out directly into the flame’s path trying
to escape or suffocated them outright. That was one of the primary uses for flamethrowers
during the world wars. Because this cave has an opening, that may
not work, however. Instead, I would set a fire at the cave opening
leading out onto the island before circling back to this water entry landing. With the exit cut off, you could then yell
or shout to draw the shriekers to you and fire the flamethrower upon approach, also
removing oxygen from the higher platforms of the cave while you still have an easy getaway
in the boat. The other option would have been to bring
a third person, carrying weapons they stole from Bill’s camp. With Burt up front wielding the flamethrower,
the other two could have guarded his back. Teamwork makes the dream work, and right now
that dream is napalming bugs. Back at the research camp, the team quietly
waits for the queen to trip the dynamite parameter fence. She makes an explosive entrance, driving them
all off the ground into platforms in the trees. Burt and Jimmy arrive. Freddie warns them they’ve stepped right
on top of the queen. Burt tells the others to run for a nearby
volcano caldera where they’ve laid their next trap while he stays behind as a distraction
for her. When they’re gone, Burt walks calmly toward
a nearby horse as the queen breaks ground nearby, triggering dynamite as she goes. Burt rides to the ridge over the caldera,
leading the queen. There, the rest of the team has rigged a massive
punji pit lined with dynamite. Jimmy is there waiting for Burt when arrives. He tells Jimmy they need the queen to charge
them hard and fast so that she bursts through the cliff and falls to her death on the spears
below. The big girl growls upon approach. Burt and Jimmy step forward. Burt pounds the ground with his boot, triggering
her to charge. At the last second, Burt shoves Jimmy to safety
and flips the queen the bird as she swallows him and plunges over the cliff onto the spikes. Freddie lights her up with dynamite and they
all cerebrate in as her flesh rains down around them. While this finale gets the job done and kills
the queen, Burt’s death was an unnecessary flourish to end the series. In the Nevada desert, they used a drop fall
to kill the last graboid because they had no equipment or weapons to get the job done
otherwise. Here, they have all the equipment they never
took from Bill’s camp, as well as dynamite, to get the job done without sacrificing anyone’s
life. Bill and Jimmy should have burst in opposite
directions to reach high ground when Freddie alerted them to the queen’s presence under
their feet. From above, it should have been relatively
simple to arrange another dynamite swallowing trick. Even if the queen is ultimately big enough
to knock down trees and water towers, she only does that reactively when the dynamite
triggers her to strike the structure with enough force to tear it down. Safely off the ground, the group should have
been able to trick her into eating a tasty nitroglycerin treat with a very long fuse,
thereby saving everybody’s life. OR, if they really want to go for this off
the cliff trick, why not tether one of the horses to the edge of the cliff instead. Its terrifying clomping would have easily
drawn the beast in. OR maybe don’t walk toward the beast you’re
trying to lure up the slope. Just stomp your feet from the edge, giving
you plenty of time to dive out of the way without sacrificing yourself. Rich idiots are going to do rich idiot things,
so preventing the graboids from ending up on the island altogether is taking things
a step too far for these strategies. It is very likely, however, that if Jazz had
simply left the hunters alone and gone to the mainland to warn the military. The only victim of the graboids would have
been Ishi – RIP to a real one. To those of you who say they only had a few
days to stop the ass blasters from taking over Asia, I would remind you Jimmy had to
fly all the way to a remote Cast Away island in Papua New Guinea 3300 miles or (5300 km)
away to get Burt in the first place. Literally the whole country of Thailand and
three American military bases are closer to this island than Burt is. Bill and his bumbling band of poorly equipment
billionaires were basically cannon fodder. Their training was weak, their aim was atrocious
and I award all of them – including Bill – a survival score of 1/5. These guys are the stormtroopers of monster
hunters. Anna had enough sense to jump ship when she
could, but even then she came to fight godzilla with a bow and arrow and a 9mm handgun. She gets a survival score of 1/5 too. Once Burt arrives, using the dynamite effectively
would have solved most if not all of the research team’s problems without any casualties on
their side. But only if Burt properly debriefed them on
the graboid’s abilities before visiting the island. Jazz had zero understanding of her own mortality,
going to confront Bill instead of finding actual help. She survives basically because the queen graboid
isn’t hungry enough to eat her and because the shriekers got to Ishi first. She gets a survival score of 1/5. Jimmy is at least smart enough to take Burt’s
experience with the graboids seriously, so he gets a survival score of 2/5. Of the rest of the crew, Freddie’s the only
standout, with her hard knock backstory and ability to rig explosive trip wires and actually
hit her mark when she fires a gun. We’ll give her a survival score of 3/5. As for Burt, well…his symbolic sacrifice
is admirable but ultimately unnecessary. He held his own until the end, but if he’d
been more resourceful about scavenging Bill’s weapons and using tried and true methods like
the pipe bomb swallowing strategy, he would still be alive. I award him a survival score of 3.5/5. This is the first time plot armor guaranteed
a character’s death rather than preventing it – Burt got robbed, that’s all I’m
saying. Ultimately, I think the SHRIEKERS from TREMORS:
SHRIEKER ISLAND were BEATEN. How would you have beaten TREMORS: SHRIEKER
ISLAND? Let me know in the comments. Hit the like button to save a stranger’s
life. Hit the subscribe button to save your own. Thanks for watching, and remember, ignore
the expert with 30 years of experience at your own risk.
