Five Legendary Moments from NBC's edit of Tremors.

Tremors is unquestionably one of the boys here at It's Only a Movie's top choice flicks of all time.  It is the perfect blend of horror and comedy with awesome monsters, a great cast of characters, and infinitely quotable dialogue.  But, the version of the movie that now sits on my shelf in all it's PG-13 glory isn't the one that I grew up on.  When I was a kid I recorded Tremors off of NBC's Saturday Night Movie presentation and I watched that VHS so often that it was burned into my mind.  So, when I finally saw the actual theatrical cut of the movie a few things seemed off.  Here are the top five moments from the hilarious television edit of Tremors:

5.  EVERYBODY NEEDS TO WATCH THEIR "FRENCH"

Rhonda LeBeck, resident seismologist and pole vaulter, is an innocent college student before she starts hangin' out with our boys Val and Earl.  See, the boys hang out and do odd jobs by themselves and never hold back on the profanity, so when a young lady starts coming around Earl feels compelled to apologize for his blue language by saying "Pardon my French".  By the time the crew has survived an entire movie's worth of monster attacks some of the boys' traits have rubbed off on Rhonda and she has come up with the plan to "run like goddamned bastards!" but of course follows that up with "pardon my French".  The television version though has her suggesting they "run like the damn blazes!" which is some French that doesn't need quite as much pardoning.

4. GRABOIDS ARE SUCH FOOLS 

Being that Tremors is a PG-13 movie they had to limit the amount of F-bombs dropped.  I believe the rule is that you can have up to three non-sexual reference utterances of the word or one sexual related one in a movie but Tremors only uses one of their allotted three non-sexy bombs.  After Val and Earl run from a monster and jump over a concrete trench the underground monster that was chasing them slams into the wall of the trench killing itself.  Val is pretty pumped about the situation and though Earl thinks the monster only knocked itself cold Val sets him straight:  "Cold my ass!  He's dead.  FUCK YOU!".  Glorious line delivery by Mr. Bacon.  Such words don't fly on NBC though and the line became "FOOLED YOU!" which is hilarious.

3. BURT HATES ALL THESE GAL-DURN MONSTERS!

Burt Gummer and his wife Reba are the gun nuts of the small town that Tremors takes place in.  They have moved to the isolated desert town of Perfection because of the seclusion and have basically created a fortress complete with it's own armory (or rec room according to Burt) in the basement full of countless guns and ammo.  It seems like the perfect place to hide out from something that is attacking unless they are barreling through the ground and crash right through your basement wall. Burt and ol' Reba don't waste any time and begin unloading every bit of ammo they have into the monster right down to the last resort elephant gun.  They finally put the monster down and Burt delivers one of the movie's most famous lines: "Broke into the wrong Goddamn rec room didn't you, you bastard!".  But come on now, NBC in the very early '90s couldn't be having that type of talk.  Burt's victorious boast had to be turned into "Broke into the wrong gal-durn rec room didn't you, you big jerk!".  Big jerk is just as good as bastard I guess.  Maybe even better.

2.  WHO SAYS MOTHERHUMPER ANYWAYS?

As stated earlier, Tremors is a PG-13 movie.  It was also produced by James Jacks who produced other great movies like Tombstone and Mallrats.  I've heard many people, most notably Kevin Smith, talk about how Jacks did not like profanity in movies and tried to tone it down on movies he produced so I've always assumed that the script for Tremors probably had a lot more cursing than the final product.  One of the more noticeable substitutions for an actual curse word that's in the actual movie, not the TV edit, is motherhumper.  I've never heard anyone ever say motherhumper before or since Tremors (unless it's in reference to Tremors) and it just seems like they wanted to say "motherfucker" but couldn't go for it.  Motherhumper pops up in the movie after Burt kills the monster in his basement and tells Val and the gang over the CB radio.  ""We killed it, you got that!? We killed that motherhumper, come back!" to which Val replies "Roger that Burt, and congratulations. Be advised, however, that there are two more, repeat, two more motherhumpers."  Despite the fact that there is no real curse word in the phrase motherhumper, the implication is still that the monsters are bonin' their mom and that's too risque for NBC.  The editors replaced motherhumper with "damn monster" which always seemed strange to me.  They took out a phrase that didn't really have any swear words in it and put one in.  I guess to NBC damning somebody is better than humpin' 'em.

1.  VAL'S BIG THROBBING PASSION

All of the edits on this list along with countless others that didn't make the cut are hilarious but this one is my favorite.  Before Val meets Rhonda he is a bit of a womanizer I guess.  He has specific likes when it comes to ladies but his buddy Earl thinks he needs to find a more respectable girl.  Val just laughs it off and says that he is a victim of circumstance to which Earl deadpans "I thought you called it your pecker."  Now, this is a pretty funny line and conveys that Earl knows that all Val is worried about is getting laid.  But the edit for NBC is absolutely hilarious to me.  Earl instead says "I thought you called it your passion."  Is Earl referring to Val's sexuality in general or does he really just call penis' passions.  I hope it's the latter.  I guess we will never know but these are the type of questions that I've been pondering for almost twenty years.

I wish I could point you to a way to see this amazing version of an amazing movie but alas I have never been able to find anybody else talking about it anywhere on the internet.  I do still have that cherished VHS at my parent's house, complete with the now faded hand written label that I put on there when I was but a youngin', so I would like to someday be able to get that sucker on Youtube for posterity.  Until then, however, just watch the original version as there is no bad time to watch Tremors.

Neither NBC or theaters could handle Bacon's passion.