And we don’t want to spoil the fun either. So stop reading this article if you haven’t yet seen the new film!
Yesterday saw the release of Don Michael Paul’s Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell, the sixth installment in the franchise going straight to DVD/Blu-ray and also arriving on Netflix. Yes, the new Tremors film is already up for instant streaming through Netflix, and it’s pretty damn fun. With Michael Gross in top form as Burt Gummer and Graboid guts aplenty splattering freely across the screen throughout, Tremors 6 may be the most fun sequel since Tremors 2.
Since Syfy recently pulled the plug on their planned “Tremors” series that would’ve seen Kevin Bacon reprise his role from the original film – the pilot was filmed last year, but we don’t yet know when (or if) it’ll ever see the light of day – we unfortunately won’t be finding out what Valentine McKee is up to all these years after the initial Graboid incident that made him a hero in Perfection. But, much to our surprise, A Cold Day in Hell does reference Val in a fun way!
Completely unspoiled by the marketing, the film reveals early on that actress Jamie-Lee Money’s character in Tremors: A Cold Day in Hell is actually the daughter of Valentine McKee and Rhonda LaBeck! She goes by the name Val McKee, and she rocks a badass pair of Graboid skin boots that her father made for her. Fittingly, she’s a Graboid expert, with such an extensive knowledge about the creatures that even Burt Gummer himself is impressed.
It’s through Val that we learn what Valentine and Rhonda have been up to these past several years. Val refers to her dad as being more like “a crazy uncle” who has been telling her stories about Burt her whole life, which gives Val and Burt a nice little bond. Seeing Burt team up with McKee’s daughter to fight Graboids is one of the real joys of A Cold Day in Hell, as the franchise had previously never really addressed the Kevin Bacon situation. Bacon departed after the first film, and the new film cleverly allows for his character to at least have a presence in the story – even if Bacon himself was off filming a totally separate Tremors project.
If the Tremors franchise continues beyond A Cold Day in Hell, here’s hoping Val McKee plays an even more prominent role. And who knows, maybe her dad will eventually barge in too!
